USA > History > 2010 > War > Iraq (II)

Bob Gorrell

National/Syndicated

Cagle

19 August 2010

Obama Says

Iraq Combat Mission Is Over

August 31, 2010
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER
and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — President Obama declared an end on Tuesday to the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq, saying that the United States has met its responsibility to that country and that it is now time to turn to pressing problems at home.

In a prime-time address from the Oval Office, Mr. Obama balanced praise for the troops who fought and died in Iraq with his conviction that getting into the conflict had been a mistake in the first place. But he also used the moment to emphasize that he sees his primary job as addressing the weak economy and other domestic issues — and to make clear that he intends to begin disengaging from the war in Afghanistan next summer.

“We have sent our young men and women to make enormous sacrifices in Iraq, and spent vast resources abroad at a time of tight budgets at home,” Mr. Obama said. “Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it’s time to turn the page.”

Seeking to temper partisan feelings over the war on a day when Republicans pointed out that Mr. Obama had opposed the troop surge generally credited with helping to bring Iraq a measure of stability, the president offered some praise for his predecessor, George W. Bush. Mr. Obama acknowledged their disagreement over Iraq but said that no one could doubt Mr. Bush’s “support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.”

Mr. Obama spoke for about 18 minutes, saying that violence would continue in Iraq and that the United States would continue to play a key role in nurturing a stable democracy there. He celebrated America’s fighting forces as “the steel in our ship of state,” and pledged not to waver in the fight against Al Qaeda.

But he suggested that he sees his role in addressing domestic issues as dominant, saying that it would be difficult to get the economy rolling again but that doing so was “our central mission as a people, and my central responsibility as president.”

With his party facing the prospect of losing control of Congress in this fall’s elections and his own poll numbers depressed in large part because of the lackluster economy and still-high unemployment, he said the nation’s perseverance in Iraq must be matched by determination to address problems at home.

Over the last decade, “we have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas,” he said. “And so at this moment, as we wind down the war in Iraq, we must tackle those challenges at home with as much energy and grit and sense of common purpose as our men and women in uniform who have served abroad.”

Mr. Obama acknowledged a war fatigue among Americans who have called into question his focus on the Afghanistan war, now approaching its 10th year. He said that American forces in Afghanistan “will be in place for a limited time” to give Afghans the chance to build their government and armed forces.

“But, as was the case in Iraq, we cannot do for Afghans what they must ultimately do for themselves,” the president said. He reiterated that next July he would begin transferring responsibility for security to Afghans, at a pace to be determined by conditions.

“But make no mistake: this transition will begin, because open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people’s,” he said.

This was no iconic end-of-war moment with photos of soldiers kissing nurses in Times Square or victory parades down America’s Main Streets.

Instead, in the days leading to the Tuesday night deadline for the withdrawal of American combat troops, it has appeared as if administration officials and the American military were the only ones marking the end of this country’s combat foray into Iraq. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are all in Baghdad for the official ceremony on Wednesday.

The very sight of Mr. Obama addressing Americans from the Oval Office — from the same desk where Mr. Bush announced the beginning of the conflict — shows the distance traveled since the Iraq war began. On the night of March 20, 2003, when the Army’s Third Infantry Division first rolled over the border from Kuwait into Iraq, Mr. Obama was a state senator in Illinois.

Mr. Bush was at the height of his popularity, and the perception at home and in many places abroad was that America could achieve its national security goals primarily through military power. One of the biggest fears among the American troops in the convoy pouring into Iraq that night — every one of them suited in gas masks and wearing biohazard suits — was that the man they came to topple might unleash a chemical weapons attack.

Seven years and five months later, the biggest fears of American soldiers revolve around the primitive, basic, homemade bombs and old explosives in Afghanistan that were left over from the Soviet invasion. In Iraq, what was perceived as a threat from a powerful dictator, Saddam Hussein, has dissolved into the worry that as United States troops pull out they are leaving behind an unstable and weak government that could be influenced by Iran.

On Tuesday, a senior intelligence official said that Iran continues to supply militant groups in Iraq with weapons, training and equipment.

“Much has changed since that night,” when Mr. Bush announced the war in Iraq, Mr. Obama said. “A war to disarm a state became a fight against an insurgency. Terrorism and sectarian warfare threatened to tear Iraq apart. Thousands of Americans gave their lives; tens of thousands have been wounded. Our relations abroad were strained. Our unity at home was tested.”

The withdrawal of combat forces represents a significant milestone after the war that toppled Mr. Hussein, touched off waves of sectarian strife and claimed the lives of more than 4,400 American soldiers and more than 70,000 Iraqis, according to United States and Iraqi government figures.

“Operation Iraqi Freedom is over,” Mr. Obama said, using the military name for the mission, “and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country.”

As Mr. Obama prepared to observe the end of one phase of the war, he called Mr. Bush from Air Force One, as he was en route to Fort Bliss in Texas to meet with American troops home from Iraq.

The two spoke “just for a few moments,” Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, told reporters aboard the plane, declining to give any additional details.

American troops reached Mr. Obama’s goal for the drawdown early — last week Gen. Ray Odierno, the American commander in Iraq, said that the number of troops had dropped to 49,700, roughly the number that would stay through next summer.

That is less than a third of the number of troops in Iraq during the surge in 2007. Under an agreement between Iraq and the United States, the remaining troops are to leave by the end of 2011, though some Iraqi and American officials say they think that the agreement may be renegotiated to allow for a longer American military presence.

The remaining “advise and assist” brigades will officially concentrate on supporting and training Iraqi security forces, protecting American personnel and facilities, and mounting counterterrorism operations.

Still, as Mr. Obama himself acknowledged Tuesday, the milestone came with all of the ambiguity and messiness that accompanied the war itself.

A political impasse, in place since March elections, has left Iraq without a permanent government just as the government in Baghdad was supposed to be asserting more control.

Republican critics of the president were quick to point out Tuesday that Mr. Obama opposed the troop surge that they credit for decreased violence in Iraq.

“Some leaders who opposed, criticized, and fought tooth-and-nail to stop the surge strategy now proudly claim credit for the results,” Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, told veterans at the national convention of the American Legion in Milwaukee.


Carl Hulse and Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.

    Obama Says Iraq Combat Mission Is Over, NYT, 31.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/world/01military.html

President Obama’s Address on Iraq

August 31, 2010
The New York Times

The following is the text, as prepared for delivery, of President Obama’s address from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, provided by the White House:

Good evening. Tonight, I’d like to talk to you about the end of our combat mission in Iraq, the ongoing security challenges we face, and the need to rebuild our nation here at home.

I know this historic moment comes at a time of great uncertainty for many Americans. We have now been through nearly a decade of war. We have endured a long and painful recession. And sometimes in the midst of these storms, the future that we are trying to build for our nation — a future of lasting peace and long-term prosperity may seem beyond our reach.

But this milestone should serve as a reminder to all Americans that the future is ours to shape if we move forward with confidence and commitment. It should also serve as a message to the world that the United States of America intends to sustain and strengthen our leadership in this young century.

From this desk, seven and a half years ago, President Bush announced the beginning of military operations in Iraq. Much has changed since that night. A war to disarm a state became a fight against an insurgency. Terrorism and sectarian warfare threatened to tear Iraq apart. Thousands of Americans gave their lives; tens of thousands have been wounded. Our relations abroad were strained. Our unity at home was tested.

These are the rough waters encountered during the course of one of America’s longest wars. Yet there has been one constant amidst those shifting tides. At every turn, America’s men and women in uniform have served with courage and resolve. As commander in chief, I am proud of their service. Like all Americans, I am awed by their sacrifice, and by the sacrifices of their families.

The Americans who have served in Iraq completed every mission they were given. They defeated a regime that had terrorized its people. Together with Iraqis and coalition partners who made huge sacrifices of their own, our troops fought block by block to help Iraq seize the chance for a better future. They shifted tactics to protect the Iraqi people; trained Iraqi security forces; and took out terrorist leaders. Because of our troops and civilians — and because of the resilience of the Iraqi people — Iraq has the opportunity to embrace a new destiny, even though many challenges remain.

So tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country.

This was my pledge to the American people as a candidate for this office. Last February, I announced a plan that would bring our combat brigades out of Iraq, while redoubling our efforts to strengthen Iraq’s security forces and support its government and people. That is what we have done. We have removed nearly 100,000 U.S. troops from Iraq. We have closed or transferred hundreds of bases to the Iraqis. And we have moved millions of pieces of equipment out of Iraq.

This completes a transition to Iraqi responsibility for their own security. U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq’s cities last summer, and Iraqi forces have moved into the lead with considerable skill and commitment to their fellow citizens. Even as Iraq continues to suffer terrorist attacks, security incidents have been near the lowest on record since the war began. And Iraqi forces have taken the fight to Al Qaeda, removing much of its leadership in Iraqi-led operations.

This year also saw Iraq hold credible elections that drew a strong turnout. A caretaker administration is in place as Iraqis form a government based on the results of that election. Tonight, I encourage Iraq’s leaders to move forward with a sense of urgency to form an inclusive government that is just, representative, and accountable to the Iraqi people. And when that government is in place, there should be no doubt: the Iraqi people will have a strong partner in the United States. Our combat mission is ending, but our commitment to Iraq’s future is not.

Going forward, a transitional force of U.S. troops will remain in Iraq with a different mission: advising and assisting Iraq’s security forces; supporting Iraqi troops in targeted counterterrorism missions; and protecting our civilians. Consistent with our agreement with the Iraqi government, all U.S. troops will leave by the end of next year. As our military draws down, our dedicated civilians — diplomats, aid workers, and advisers — are moving into the lead to support Iraq as it strengthens its government, resolves political disputes, resettles those displaced by war, and builds ties with the region and the world. And that is a message that Vice President Biden is delivering to the Iraqi people through his visit there today.

This new approach reflects our long-term partnership with Iraq — one based upon mutual interests, and mutual respect. Of course, violence will not end with our combat mission. Extremists will continue to set off bombs, attack Iraqi civilians and try to spark sectarian strife. But ultimately, these terrorists will fail to achieve their goals. Iraqis are a proud people. They have rejected sectarian war, and they have no interest in endless destruction. They understand that, in the end, only Iraqis can resolve their differences and police their streets. Only Iraqis can build a democracy within their borders. What America can do, and will do, is provide support for the Iraqi people as both a friend and a partner.

Ending this war is not only in Iraq’s interest — it is in our own. The United States has paid a huge price to put the future of Iraq in the hands of its people. We have sent our young men and women to make enormous sacrifices in Iraq, and spent vast resources abroad at a time of tight budgets at home. We have persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people — a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it is time to turn the page.

As we do, I am mindful that the Iraq war has been a contentious issue at home. Here, too, it is time to turn the page. This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush. It’s well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security. As I have said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hope for Iraq’s future.

The greatness of our democracy is grounded in our ability to move beyond our differences, and to learn from our experience as we confront the many challenges ahead. And no challenge is more essential to our security than our fight against Al Qaeda.

Americans across the political spectrum supported the use of force against those who attacked us on 9/11. Now, as we approach our 10th year of combat in Afghanistan, there are those who are understandably asking tough questions about our mission there. But we must never lose sight of what’s at stake. As we speak, Al Qaeda continues to plot against us, and its leadership remains anchored in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. We will disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda, while preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a base for terrorists. And because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to apply the resources necessary to go on offense. In fact, over the last 19 months, nearly a dozen Al Qaeda leaders — and hundreds of Al Qaeda’s extremist allies — have been killed or captured around the world.

Within Afghanistan, I have ordered the deployment of additional troops who — under the command of General David Petraeus — are fighting to break the Taliban’s momentum. As with the surge in Iraq, these forces will be in place for a limited time to provide space for the Afghans to build their capacity and secure their own future. But, as was the case in Iraq, we cannot do for Afghans what they must ultimately do for themselves. That’s why we are training Afghan security forces and supporting a political resolution to Afghanistan’s problems. And, next July, we will begin a transition to Afghan responsibility. The pace of our troop reductions will be determined by conditions on the ground, and our support for Afghanistan will endure. But make no mistake: this transition will begin — because open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people’s.

Indeed, one of the lessons of our effort in Iraq is that American influence around the world is not a function of military force alone. We must use all elements of our power — including our diplomacy, our economic strength, and the power of America’s example — to secure our interests and stand by our allies. And we must project a vision of the future that is based not just on our fears, but also on our hopes — a vision that recognizes the real dangers that exist around the world, but also the limitless possibility of our time.

Today, old adversaries are at peace, and emerging democracies are potential partners. New markets for our goods stretch from Asia to the Americas. A new push for peace in the Middle East will begin here tomorrow. Billions of young people want to move beyond the shackles of poverty and conflict. As the leader of the free world, America will do more than just defeat on the battlefield those who offer hatred and destruction — we will also lead among those who are willing to work together to expand freedom and opportunity for all people.

That effort must begin within our own borders. Throughout our history, America has been willing to bear the burden of promoting liberty and human dignity overseas, understanding its link to our own liberty and security. But we have also understood that our nation’s strength and influence abroad must be firmly anchored in our prosperity at home. And the bedrock of that prosperity must be a growing middle class.

Unfortunately, over the last decade, we have not done what is necessary to shore up the foundation of our own prosperity. We have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has shortchanged investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits. For too long, we have put off tough decisions on everything from our manufacturing base to our energy policy to education reform. As a result, too many middle class families find themselves working harder for less, while our nation’s long-term competitiveness is put at risk.

And so at this moment, as we wind down the war in Iraq, we must tackle those challenges at home with as much energy, and grit, and sense of common purpose as our men and women in uniform who have served abroad. They have met every test that they faced. Now, it is our turn. Now, it is our responsibility to honor them by coming together, all of us, and working to secure the dream that so many generations have fought for — the dream that a better life awaits anyone who is willing to work for it and reach for it.

Our most urgent task is to restore our economy, and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work. To strengthen our middle class, we must give all our children the education they deserve, and all our workers the skills that they need to compete in a global economy. We must jump-start industries that create jobs, and end our dependence on foreign oil. We must unleash the innovation that allows new products to roll off our assembly lines, and nurture the ideas that spring from our entrepreneurs. This will be difficult. But in the days to come, it must be our central mission as a people, and my central responsibility as president.

Part of that responsibility is making sure that we honor our commitments to those who have served our country with such valor. As long as I am president, we will maintain the finest fighting force that the world has ever known, and do whatever it takes to serve our veterans as well as they have served us. This is a sacred trust. That is why we have already made one of the largest increases in funding for veterans in decades. We are treating the signature wounds of today’s wars post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury, while providing the health care and benefits that all of our veterans have earned. And we are funding a post-9/11 G.I. bill that helps our veterans and their families pursue the dream of a college education. Just as the G.I. Bill helped those who fought World War II — including my grandfather — become the backbone of our middle class, so today’s servicemen and women must have the chance to apply their gifts to expand the American economy. Because part of ending a war responsibly is standing by those who have fought it.

Two weeks ago, America’s final combat brigade in Iraq — the Army’s Fourth Stryker Brigade — journeyed home in the predawn darkness. Thousands of soldiers and hundreds of vehicles made the trip from Baghdad, the last of them passing into Kuwait in the early morning hours. Over seven years before, American troops and coalition partners had fought their way across similar highways, but this time no shots were fired. It was just a convoy of brave Americans, making their way home.

Of course, the soldiers left much behind. Some were teenagers when the war began. Many have served multiple tours of duty, far from their families who bore a heroic burden of their own, enduring the absence of a husband’s embrace or a mother’s kiss. Most painfully, since the war began 55 members of the Fourth Stryker Brigade made the ultimate sacrifice — part of over 4,400 Americans who have given their lives in Iraq. As one staff sergeant said, “I know that to my brothers in arms who fought and died, this day would probably mean a lot.”

Those Americans gave their lives for the values that have lived in the hearts of our people for over two centuries. Along with nearly 1.5 million Americans who have served in Iraq, they fought in a faraway place for people they never knew. They stared into the darkest of human creations — war — and helped the Iraqi people seek the light of peace.

In an age without surrender ceremonies, we must earn victory through the success of our partners and the strength of our own nation. Every American who serves joins an unbroken line of heroes that stretches from Lexington to Gettysburg; from Iwo Jima to Inchon; from Khe Sanh to Kandahar — Americans who have fought to see that the lives of our children are better than our own. Our troops are the steel in our ship of state. And though our nation may be travelling through rough waters, they give us confidence that our course is true, and that beyond the predawn darkness, better days lie ahead.

Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America, and all who serve her.

    President Obama’s Address on Iraq, NYT, 31.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/world/01obama-text.html

The War in Iraq

August 31, 2010
The New York Times

We were glad to see President Obama go to Fort Bliss on Tuesday before his Oval Office speech on Iraq, to thank those Americans who most shouldered the burdens of a tragic, pointless war. One of the few rays of light in the conflict has been the distance America has come since Vietnam, when blameless soldiers were scorned for decisions made by politicians.

President George W. Bush tried to make Iraq an invisible, seemingly cost-free war. He refused to attend soldiers’ funerals and hid their returning coffins from the public. So it was fitting that Mr. Obama, who has improved veterans’ health care and made the Pentagon budget more rational, paid tribute to them.

“At every turn, America’s men and women in uniform have served with courage and resolve,” he said on Tuesday night. He added: “There were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hope for Iraq’s future.”

The speech also made us reflect on how little Mr. Bush accomplished by needlessly invading Iraq in March 2003 — and then ludicrously declaring victory two months later.

Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction proved to be Bush administration propaganda. The war has not created a new era of democracy in the Middle East — or in Iraq for that matter. There are stirrings of democratic politics in Iraq that give us hope. But there is no government six months after national elections.

In many ways, the war made Americans less safe, creating a new organization of terrorists and diverting the nation’s military resources and political will from Afghanistan. Deprived of its main adversary, a strong Iraq, Iran was left freer to pursue its nuclear program, to direct and finance extremist groups and to meddle in Iraq.

Mr. Obama graciously said it was time to put disagreements over Iraq behind us, but it is important not to forget how much damage Mr. Bush caused by misleading Americans about exotic weapons, about American troops being greeted with open arms, about creating a model democracy in Baghdad.

That is why it was so important that Mr. Obama candidly said the United States is not free of this conflict; American troops will see more bloodshed. We hope he follows through on his vow to work with Iraq’s government after the withdrawal of combat troops.

There was no victory to declare last night, and Mr. Obama was right not to try. If victory was ever possible in this war, it has not been won, and America still faces the daunting challenges of the other war, in Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama, addressing those who either believe that he is not committed to the fight in Afghanistan or believe that he will not leave, said Americans should “make no mistake” — he will stick to his plan to begin withdrawing troops next August. He still needs to clearly explain, and soon, how he will “disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda” and meet that timetable.

As we heard Mr. Obama speak from his desk with his usual calm clarity and eloquence, it made us wish we heard more from him on many issues. We are puzzled about why he talks to Americans directly so rarely and with seeming reluctance. This was only his second Oval Office address in more than 19 months of crisis upon crisis. The country particularly needs to hear more from Mr. Obama about what he rightly called the most urgent task — “to restore our economy and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work.”

For this day, it was worth dwelling on this milestone in Iraq and on some grim numbers: more than 4,400 Americans dead and some 35,000 wounded, many with lost limbs. And on one number that American politicians are loath to mention: at least 100,000 Iraqis dead.

    The War in Iraq, NYT, 31.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/opinion/01wed1.html

After Years of War,

Few Iraqis Have a Clear View of the Future

August 31, 2010
The New York Times
By ANTHONY SHADID

BAGHDAD — The invasion of Iraq, occupation and tumult that followed were called Operation Iraqi Freedom back then. It will be named New Dawn on Wednesday.

But America’s attempt to bring closure to an unpopular war has collided with a disconnect familiar since 2003: the charts and trend lines offered by American officials never seem to capture the intangible that has so often shaped the pivots in the war in Iraq.

Call it the mood. And the country, seemingly forever unsettled and unhappy, is having a slew of bad days.

“Nothing’s changed, nothing!” Yusuf Sabah shouted in the voice of someone rarely listened to, as he waited for gas in a line of cars winding down a dirt road past a barricade of barbed wire, shards of concrete and trash turned uniformly brown. “From the fall of Saddam until now, nothing’s changed. The opposite. We keep going backwards.”

Down the road waited Haitham Ahmed, a taxi driver. “Frustrated, sick, worn out, pessimistic and angry,” he said, describing himself.

“What else should I add?”

The Iraq that American officials portray today — safer, more peaceful, with more of the trappings of a state — relies on 2006 as a baseline, when the country was on the verge of a nihilistic descent into carnage. For many here, though, the starting point is the statement President George W. Bush made on March 10, 2003, 10 days before the invasion, when he promised that “the life of the Iraqi citizen is going to dramatically improve.”

Iraq generates more electricity than it did then, but far greater demand has left many sweltering in the heat. Water is often filthy. Iraqi security forces are omnipresent, but drivers habitually deride them for their raggedy appearance and seeming unprofessionalism. That police checkpoints snarl traffic does not help.

What American officials portray as their greatest accomplishment — a nascent democracy, however flawed — often generates a rueful response. “People can’t live only on the air they breathe,” said Qassem Sebti, an artist.

In a conflict often defined by unintended consequences, the March election may prove a turning point in an unexpected way. To an unprecedented degree, people took part, regardless of sect and ethnicity.

But nearly six months later, politicians are still deadlocked over forming a government, and the glares at the sport-utility vehicles that ferry them and their gun-toting entourages from air-conditioned offices to air-conditioned homes, after meetings unfailingly described as “positive,” have become sharper.

Disenchantment runs rife not with one faction or another, but with an entire political class that the United States helped empower with its invasion.

“The people of Kadhimiya mourn for the government in the death of water and electricity,” a tongue-and-cheek banner read near a Shiite shrine in Baghdad.

The year 2003, when the Americans invaded, often echoes in 2010, as they prepare to leave. Little feels linear here these days; the sense of the recurrent is more familiar.

Lines at fuel stations returned this month, that testament to one the greatest of Iraq’s ironies: a country with the world’s third largest reserve of oil in which people must endure long waits for gas.

“Ghamidh” was the word heard often in those earliest years. It means obscure and ambiguous, and then, as now, it was typically the answer to any question.

“After seven years our destiny is still unknown,” Mr. Sabah said, waiting in a gas line. “When you look to the future, you have no idea what it holds.”

Complaints over shoddy services paraphrase the same grievances of those anarchic months after Saddam Hussein’s fall. The sense of the unknown persists, as frustration mounts, Iraqi leaders bicker and no one seems sure of American intentions, even as President Obama observes what the administration describes as a turning point in the conflict.

“I challenge anyone to say what has happened, what’s happening now and what will happen in the future,” Mohammed Hayawi, a bookseller whose girth matched his charm, said as sweat poured down his jowly face on a hot summer day in 2003.

Mr. Hayawi died in 2007, as a car bomb tore through his bookstore filled with tomes of ayatollahs, predictions by astrologers and poems of Communist intellectuals. This week, in the same shop, still owned by his family, Najah Hayawi reflected on his words, near a poster that denounced “the cowardly, wretched bombing” that had killed his brother.

“There is no one in Iraq who has any idea — not only about what’s happened or what’s happening — but about what will happen in the future,” he said. “Not just me, not just Mohammed, God rest his soul, but anyone you talk to. You won’t find anyone.”

Iraqis call the overthrow of Mr. Hussein’s government the “suqut.” It means the fall. Seven years later, no one has yet quite defined what replaced it, an interim as inconclusive as the invasion was climactic. “Theater,” Mr. Hayawi’s brother called it, and he said the populace still had no hand in writing a script that was in others’ hands.

“The best thing is that I have no children,” Shahla Atraqji, a 38-year-old doctor, said back in 2003, as she sipped coffee at Baghdad’s Hunting Club to the strains of Lebanese pop. “If I can’t offer my children a good life, I would never bring them into this world.”

This week, Thamer Aziz, a doctor who helps fit amputees with artificial limbs at the Medical Rehabilitation Center, stared at Musafa Hashem, a 6-year-old boy who lost his right leg in a car bomb in Kadhimiya in July. His father was paralyzed.

“I’ve believed this for a long time, and I still do,” he said. “I cannot get married and have a family because I may lose them any minute, by a bomb or bullet.”

“Just like him,” he said, gesturing toward the boy.

Even in the denouement of America’s experience here, old habits die hard.

On Monday, four American Humvees drove the wrong way down a street, turrets swinging at oncoming traffic. Cars stopped, giving them distance. The Humvees turned, plowed over a curb, dug a trench in the muddy median, then rumbled on their way.

“See! Did you see?” asked Mustafa Munaf, a storekeeper.

“It’s the same thing,” he said, shaking his head. “What’s changed?”

    After Years of War, Few Iraqis Have a Clear View of the Future, NYT, 31.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/world/middleeast/01iraq.html

Leader Says Iraq Independent as U.S. Ends Combat

August 31, 2010
Filed at 7:55 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By REUTERS

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's prime minister said the end of U.S. combat operations on Tuesday restored Iraq's sovereignty and meant it stood as an equal to the United States, despite political deadlock and persistent violence.

U.S. troop levels were cut to 50,000 before the partly symbolic deadline of August 31 pledged by President Barack Obama to fulfill his pledge to end the war launched by his predecessor George W. Bush.

The six remaining U.S. brigades will turn their focus to training Iraqi police and troops as Iraq takes charge of its own destiny ahead of a full U.S. withdrawal by the end of next year.

"Iraq today is sovereign and independent," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told Iraqis in a televised address to mark the U.S. forces' shift to assisting rather than leading the fight against a Sunni Islamist insurgency and Shi'ite militia.

"With the execution of the troop pullout, our relations with the United States have entered a new stage between two equal, sovereign countries."

Obama promised war-weary U.S. voters he would extricate the United States from the war, launched by Bush with the stated aim of destroying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

No such weapons were found. Almost a trillion dollars have been spent and more than 4,400 U.S. soldiers and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed since the 2003 invasion.

Obama's Democrats are battling to retain control of Congress in November elections and he faces other challenges -- a worsening war in Afghanistan and storm clouds over the economy.

Tuesday's deadline was to some extent a symbolic one. The 50,000 U.S. soldiers staying on in Iraq for another 16 months are a formidable and heavily-armed force.

Iraqi security forces have already been taking the lead since a bilateral security pact came into force in 2009. U.S. soldiers pulled out of Iraqi towns and cities in June last year.

"WE'LL BE FINE, THEY'LL BE FINE"

Nevertheless, Iraqis are apprehensive as U.S. military might is scaled down, especially amid a political impasse six months after an inconclusive election.

"We'll be just fine, they'll be just fine," U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said after flying into Baghdad on Monday to mark the end of combat operations and to urge Iraqi leaders to speed up the formation of a new government.

"Notwithstanding what the national press says about increased violence, the truth is things are very much different. Things are much safer," Biden told Maliki on Tuesday before their meeting was closed to the media.

Toppled dictator Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath party crowed that the U.S. pullback was a result of "devastating" strikes against U.S. troops by Iraqi resistance fighters.

"They withdrew dragging tails of failure and defeat, leaving by the same roads they used as invaders," it said in a statement carried by Iraqi websites. "The end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq is a useless attempt to save face, if any is left."

U.S. officials said Washington had a long-term commitment to Iraq, and the military pullback would allow diplomats to take the lead in building economic, cultural and educational ties. For that they need a new Iraqi government to be in place.

Violence has declined sharply since the peak in 2006/07 of the sectarian slaughter unleashed by the invasion, but a recent series of attacks has rung alarm bells.

The animosity that led to carnage between majority Shi'ites and once dominant Sunnis has not healed, and a potentially explosive dispute between Arabs and Kurds has not been resolved.

More than 1.5 million Iraqis are still displaced after being driven from their homes by violence. Many live in squalor.

Many Iraqis had hoped the March 7 election would chart a path toward stability at a time when deals to develop the country's vast oilfields hold the promise of prosperity.

Instead, the ballot could widen ethnic and sectarian rifts if the actual vote leader, ex-premier Iyad Allawi's Sunni-backed cross-sectarian Iraqiya alliance, is excluded from power by the major Shi'ite-led political factions.

"I promise you the sectarian war will not return. We will not allow it. Iraqis will live as loving brothers," Maliki said.

Suspected Sunni Islamist insurgents linked to al Qaeda have tried to exploit the political vacuum and declining U.S. troop numbers with suicide bombings and assassinations.

They have targeted security forces in particular. A suicide bomber killed 57 army recruits and soldiers on August 17 and more than 60 died on August 25 in attacks on police stations.

Iraqis also fear that Shi'ite Iran will seek to fill any vacuum left by the U.S. military, in competition with Sunni-led neighbors such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed, Khalid al-Ansary, Muhanad Mohammed and Aseel Kami; writing by Michael Christie; editing by Andrew Roche)

    Leader Says Iraq Independent as U.S. Ends Combat, NYT, 31.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/08/31/world/middleeast/international-us-iraq.html

Marking Iraq Milestone, Gates Strikes Cautious Note

August 31, 2010
The Newx York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

MILWAUKEE — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned on Tuesday against “premature victory parades or self-congratulations” as American combat operations in Iraq drew officially to a close, and at the same time said that the success of United States forces in Afghanistan was only “possible,” not inevitable.

In remarks to the American Legion that foreshadowed an address by President Obama on Tuesday night to mark the Aug. 31 date for the withdrawal of all United States combat troops from Iraq, Mr. Gates sounded a restrained, sober note about the state of America’s two wars.

In Iraq, he said, the most recent elections have yet to result in a coalition government, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is beaten but not gone, and sectarian tensions remain. He said the 50,000 United States troops still in Iraq would continue to work with Iraqi security forces, who only last week faced a flurry of coordinated insurgent attacks across the country that killed at least 51 people.

“I am not saying that all is, or necessarily will be, well in Iraq,” Mr. Gates, who is one of Mr. Obama’s most influential advisers, told the legion.

In Afghanistan, he said, the Taliban are “a cruel and ruthless adversary, and are not going quietly.” Their leadership, he said, has ordered a campaign of intimidation against Afghan civilians and is singling out women for brutal attacks.

“I know there is a good deal of concern and impatience about the pace of progress since the new strategy was announced last December,” Mr. Gates said, referring to Mr. Obama’s decision to send to Afghanistan 30,000 additional United States troops, who have finished arriving only this month. Total American forces in Afghanistan now number nearly 100,000.

But in an attempt to draw a parallel between the current fragile stability of Iraq and what might be possible in Afghanistan, Mr. Gates said that the intensifying combat and rising casualties in Afghanistan were in many ways reminiscent of the early months of the surge of United States forces ordered in Iraq by President George W. Bush in 2007, when American troops were taking the highest losses of the war.

“Three and a half years ago very few believed the surge could take us to where we are today in Iraq, and there were plenty of reasons for doubts,” said Mr. Gates, who helped make the surge decision as Mr. Bush’s defense secretary at the time. But “back then, this country’s civilian and military leadership chose the path we believed had the best chance of achieving our national security objectives, as we are doing in Afghanistan today.”

He added: “Success there is not inevitable. But with the right strategy and the willingness to see it through, it is possible. And it is certainly worth the fight.”

Despite his cautious tone on Iraq, Mr. Gates cited what he called dramatic security gains. He said that violence levels this year remained at their lowest level since the beginning of the war in 2003, that American forces have not had to conduct an airstrike in six months and that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia had been largely cut off “from its masters abroad.”

But he said the gains had been purchased “at a terrible cost”: 4,427 American service members killed, 34,268 Americans wounded or injured and untold losses and trauma endured by the Iraqis themselves.

Mr. Gates’s voice seemed to choke as he then said: “The courage of these men and women, their determination, their sacrifice — and that of their families — along with the service and sacrifice of so many others in uniform, have made this day, this transition, possible. And we must never forget.”

In Afghanistan, Mr. Gates promised that the United States would take a hard line against corruption in the Afghan government. He also echoed Mr. Obama and senior military commanders by saying that the president’s deadline for the start of withdrawals of United States forces from Afghanistan next July would be a gradual beginning, not a massive departure.

“If the Taliban really believe that America is heading for the exits next summer in large numbers, they’ll be deeply disappointed and surprised to find us very much in the fight,” he said.

    Marking Iraq Milestone, Gates Strikes Cautious Note, NYT, 31.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/world/01military.html

We Owe the Troops an Exit

August 30, 2010
The New York Times
By BOB HERBERT

At least 14 American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan over the past few days.

We learned on Saturday that our so-called partner in this forlorn war, Hamid Karzai, fired a top prosecutor who had insisted on, gasp, fighting the corruption that runs like a crippling disease through his country.

Time magazine tells us that stressed-out, depressed and despondent soldiers are seeking help for their mental difficulties at a rate that is overwhelming the capacity of available professionals. What we are doing to these troops who have been serving tour after tour in Afghanistan and Iraq is unconscionable.

Time described the mental-health issue as “the U.S. Army’s third front,” with the reporter, Mark Thompson, writing: “While its combat troops fight two wars, its mental-health professionals are waging a battle to save soldiers’ sanity when they come back, one that will cost billions long after combat ends in Baghdad and Kabul.”

In addition to the terrible physical toll, the ultimate economic costs of these two wars, as the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and his colleague Linda Bilmes have pointed out, will run to more than $3 trillion.

I get a headache when I hear supporters of this endless warfare complaining about the federal budget deficits. They’re like arsonists complaining about the smell of smoke in the neighborhood.

There is no silver lining to this nearly decade-old war in Afghanistan. Poll after poll has shown that it no longer has the support of most Americans. And yet we fight on, feeding troops into the meat-grinder year after tragic year — to what end?

“Clearly, the final chapters of this particular endeavor are very much yet to be written,” said Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, during a BBC interview over the weekend. He sounded as if those chapters would not be written any time soon.

In a reference to President Obama’s assertion that U.S. troops would begin to withdraw from Afghanistan next July, General Petraeus told the interviewer: “That’s a date when a process begins, nothing more, nothing less. It’s not the date when the American forces begin an exodus and look for the exit and the light to turn off on the way out of the room.”

A lot of Americans who had listened to the president thought it was, in fact, a date when the American forces would begin an exodus. The general seems to have heard something quite different.

In truth, it’s not at all clear how President Obama really feels about the awesome responsibilities involved in waging war, and that’s a problem. The Times’s Peter Baker wrote a compelling and in many ways troubling article recently about the steep learning curve that Mr. Obama, with no previous military background, has had to negotiate as a wartime commander in chief.

Quoting an unnamed adviser to the president, Mr. Baker wrote that Mr. Obama sees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as “problems that need managing” while he pursues his mission of transforming the nation. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking on the record, said, “He’s got a very full plate of very big issues, and I think he does not want to create the impression that he’s so preoccupied with these two wars that he’s not addressing the domestic issues that are uppermost in people’s minds.”

Wars are not problems that need managing, which suggests that they will always be with us. They are catastrophes that need to be brought to an end as quickly as possible. Wars consume lives by the thousands (in Iraq, by the scores of thousands) and sometimes, as in World War II, by the millions. The goal when fighting any war should be peace, not a permanent simmer of nonstop maiming and killing. Wars are meant to be won — if they have to be fought at all — not endlessly looked after.

One of the reasons we’re in this state of nonstop warfare is the fact that so few Americans have had any personal stake in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no draft and no direct financial hardship resulting from the wars. So we keep shipping other people’s children off to combat as if they were some sort of commodity, like coal or wheat, with no real regard for the terrible price so many have to pay, physically and psychologically.

Not only is this tragic, it is profoundly disrespectful. These are real men and women, courageous and mostly uncomplaining human beings, that we are sending into the war zones, and we owe them our most careful attention. Above all, we owe them an end to two wars that have gone on much too long.

    We Owe the Troops an Exit, NYT, 30.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/opinion/31herbert.html

Obama to Make 2nd Oval Office Speech

August 30, 2010
The New ork Times
By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON — For only the second time since he took office, President Obama will speak to the nation from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, in an address meant to convey that he has kept one of the central promises of his campaign: withdrawing American combat troops from Iraq.

Mr. Obama will steer clear of the “mission accomplished” tone that President George W. Bush struck so famously seven years ago — and that subsequently came back to haunt him as Iraq fell into further chaos. “You won’t hear those words coming from us,” said the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs.

But Mr. Obama will still strike a promises-kept theme, aides said, even as he seeks to reconcile his opposition to the Iraq war — and his opposition to the so-called troop surge, which Republicans and many military officials credit for the decrease in violence in Iraq — with his role as a wartime commander in chief seeking to credit his troops with carrying out a difficult mission. The president, his aides said, will seek to honor the American soldiers who served in Iraq.

On Monday, Mr. Obama made an unannounced trip to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington to visit with soldiers wounded in Iraq, and on Tuesday morning he will travel to Fort Bliss, Tex., to meet with American troops.

In his Oval Office address, Mr. Obama will also try to put into larger context “what this drawdown means to our national security efforts in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia and around the world as we take the fight to Al Qaeda,” Mr. Gibbs said. That means speaking to the country about the American presence in Afghanistan, a topic that the president has spoken about only in general terms since announcing his Afghanistan policy last December.

“I’m a general fan of how he’s handled the two wars,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “But if there’s a consistent weakness, it’s the episodic quality in how we hear from him about the wars. He temporarily engages.”

Mr. Obama, Mr. O’Hanlon said, should use his Oval Office pulpit on Tuesday night to explain in clear terms exactly what American troops have been doing in Afghanistan over the past few months, and, looking forward, what his aims are over the next year.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrived in Baghdad on Monday to commemorate the official end of the American combat mission in Iraq, which saw about seven years of fighting, and 4,400 American soldiers and countless Iraqis killed. But for all of the celebration in Washington and among American officials in Baghdad, this week’s commemorations come as Iraq is wrestling with a political stalemate that has been in place since an inconclusive general election about six months ago.

Administration officials have hastened to say that the stalemate simply means that — in Mr. Biden’s words — “politics has broken out in Iraq.”


Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting from Baghdad.

    Obama to Make 2nd Oval Office Speech, NYT, 30.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/world/middleeast/31prexy.html

Abandoned in Baghdad

August 30, 2010
The New York Times
By SAURABH SANGHVI

New Haven

AS the United States ends combat operations in Iraq today, it is leaving behind the thousands of Iraqis who worked on behalf of the American government — and who fear their lives and families are threatened by insurgents as a result.

In 2008 Congress significantly expanded a program that provided these Iraqis with visas to immigrate to the United States. But in the intervening years, the program has proven to be a bureaucratic failure. Unless we improve the resettlement process for our Iraqi allies, their lives will continue to be in danger long after the last American soldier has returned home.

The basic problem with the program, called the special immigrant visa, is that it treats applicants — many of whom are on the run and often facing death threats — as if they were being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.

First, to apply for a visa Iraqis have to get a letter of clearance from the American Embassy, a step that can involve bizarre requirements: for example, the embassy has at times asked applicants who were low-level employees of major contractors to list all contracts between their former employers and the American government, information they almost certainly don’t have.

The process also throws up unexpected hurdles. Minor issues — like whether the applicant provides two letters of recommendation or one letter that is co-signed, or whether the letter comes on the appropriate letterhead — have delayed applications for months.

Embassy approval is just the first step. The applicant must then send the paperwork through the unreliable Iraqi postal service to Nebraska — a challenge in its own right — and then go through two more similarly bureaucratic approval rounds, each with different government entities.

A single stage can take months to complete, and applicants receive little word in the meantime about where they stand. One senior State Department official said at a recent hearing that the program is more difficult for applicants to navigate than the refugee process it was supposed to bypass.

Indeed, while applicants who are rejected for refugee status can at least ask for a limited review of their cases, Iraqis who go through the special immigrant visa process have little recourse if they are rejected.

One Iraqi I know who submitted his paperwork in January 2009 was rejected five months later, before any interview and despite passing a background check. Even his former supervisors could not uncover the reason for his rejection. The embassy said he could reapply, but it gave no guidance about what he could do differently. In the meantime, he has been shot at and nearly killed by militants. He remains in hiding in Iraq.

Given such obstacles, it’s no surprise that relatively few people have successfully used the program: an Aug. 12 letter to the administration by 22 members of Congress noted that only 2,145 visas have been issued, even though the program has 15,000 available slots.

Fortunately, there are some obvious ways to simplify the process. For starters, the agencies involved should gather information on Iraqi employees from contractors and internal databases so that they can verify the applicants’ employment records themselves — a step required by the original Congressional legislation. That way applicants wouldn’t need to hunt down former employers while avoiding insurgents.

The agencies should also allow Iraqis to submit their applications by e-mail, and then bring their original documents to a subsequent interview. And they should provide rejected applicants with sufficient information about why they were denied visas and a fair, transparent process for challenging the decisions.

Some might worry that making it easier to apply would also increase the risk of fraud. But these common-sense changes would streamline the process and lead to better information sharing, which if anything would help prevent abuse of the program.

True, the American Embassy in Baghdad has a lot of work on its plate right now. But given the risks that our Iraqi allies have taken, fulfilling our promise to help them immigrate to the United States is the least we owe them.


Saurabh Sanghvi, a third-year law student at Yale, is a student director of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project.

    Abandoned in Baghdad, NYT, 30.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/opinion/31sanghvi.html

Restoring Names to Iraq War’s Unknown Casualties

August 30, 2010
The New York Times
By ANTHONY SHADID
 

BAGHDAD — In a pastel-colored room at the Baghdad morgue known simply as the Missing, where faces of the thousands of unidentified dead of this war are projected onto four screens, Hamid Jassem came on a Sunday searching for answers.

In a blue plastic chair, he sat under harsh fluorescent lights and a clock that read 8:58 and 44 seconds, no longer keeping time. With deference and patience, he stared at the screen, each corpse bearing four digits and the word “majhoul,” or unknown:

No. 5060 passed, with a bullet to the right temple; 5061, with a bruised and bloated face; 5062 bore a tattoo that read, “Mother, where is happiness?” The eyes of 5071 were open, as if remembering what had happened to him.

“Go back,” Hamid asked the projectionist. No. 5061 returned to the screen. “That’s him,” he said, nodding grimly.

His mother followed him into the room, her weathered face framed in a black veil. “Show me my son!” she cried.

Behind her, Hamid pleaded silently. He waved his hands at the projectionist, begging him to spare her. In vain, he shook his head and mouthed the word “no.”

“Don’t tell me he’s dead,” she shouted at the room. “It’s not him! It’s not him!”

No. 5061 returned to the screen.

She lurched forward, shaking her head in denial. Her eyes stared hard. And in seconds, her son’s 33 years of life seemed to pass before her eyes.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she finally sobbed, falling back in her chair.

Reflexively, her hands slapped her face. They clawed, until her nails drew blood. “If I had only known from the first day!” she cried.

The horror of this war is its numbers, frozen in the portraits at the morgue: an infant’s eyes sealed shut and a woman’s hair combed in blood and ash. “Files tossed on the shelves,” a policeman called the dead, and that very anonymity lends itself to the war’s name here — al-ahdath, or the events.

On the charts that the American military provides, those numbers are seen as success, from nearly 4,000 dead in one month in 2006 to the few hundred today. The Interior Ministry offers its own toll of war — 72,124 since 2003, a number too precise to be true. At the morgue, more than 20,000 of the dead, which even sober estimates suggest total 100,000 or more, are still unidentified.

This number had a name, though.

No. 5061 was Muhammad Jassem Bouhan al-Izzawi, father, son and brother. At 9 a.m., on that Sunday, Aug. 15, his family left the morgue in a white Nissan and set out to find his body in a city torn between remembering and forgetting, where death haunts a country neither at war nor peace.

There is a notion in Islamic thought called taqiya, in which believers can conceal their faith in the face of persecution. Hamid’s family, Sunnis in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of New Baghdad, engaged in their own.

As sectarian killings intensified in 2005 and Shiite militias stepped up attacks, they hung two posters of Shiite saints near the apartment’s windows, shattered in car bombings and patched with cardboard. To strangers, they changed their tribal name from Izzawi to Mujahadi, hoping to blend in. They learned not to say, “Salaam aleikum” — peace be upon you — in farewell, as more devout Sunnis will do.

Burly and bearded, Muhammad was the most devout in the family, and perhaps the least discreet. He allowed himself American action films, “Van Damme and Arnold,” his brother recalled. But his routine was ordered by the call to prayer, bringing him five times a day to the Arafat Mosque.

“We said, ‘Listen to us, just pray at home,’ ” Hamid recalled begging him.

“It’s in God’s hands if I’m killed,” he said his brother replied.

On July 1, 2005, at 5 a.m., guns clanged on their metal front door like brittle bells. Muhammad’s mother opened it, and men dressed as police officers forced her back. Barely awake, Muhammad clambered down the stairs in a white undershirt and red pajamas. The men bundled him into a police pickup and drove off, leaving his 2-month-old daughter, Aisha, and his wife and mother, who cried for help as the headlights disappeared into the dawn.

In all, 11 men joined the ranks of the missing that morning.

Willing to Help, for $20,000

Shadowed by militias, the family found that going to the morgue was often too dangerous, but as the weeks passed, Muhammad’s brother-in-law went anyway. He found nothing. The family gave nearly $650 to a relative who had a friend who knew a driver for a Shiite militiaman. A month later, he came back with no word, but kept $100 for his time. Another acquaintance offered to help for $20,000.

“Where were we going to get that kind of money?” Hamid asked.

A chance encounter in August brought the family to the morgue. A neighbor had found his father among the pictures in the Missing room. He was one of the 11.

Hamid is a quiet man in a city that does not embrace silence. Modest, even bashful, he is full of abbreviated gestures, questions becoming stutters when faced with authority.

Gingerly, he clutched a note from the morgue. No. 5061, it said, along with the name of the police station, Rafidain, that had recovered his brother’s body. He drove his family to the vast Shiite slum Sadr City, past a gas station named for April 9, the date of Saddam Hussein’s fall, and a bare pedestal where the dictator’s statue once stood.

Police officers in mismatched uniforms sprawled in chairs at the entrance, near a barricade of razor wire laced through tires, a car seat and a fender that suggested the city’s impermanence. “What do you want?” one of them barked at Hamid.

The family needed a letter from the police station, the first step in claiming Muhammad’s death certificate and finding out where he was buried. With Hamid beside her, the mother pleaded to let them inside. For five years they had looked for him, she said.

The policeman glared at her suspiciously. “If you’re lying, I’ll put you all in jail right now,” he shouted.

“My son is dead, and this is what you say to us?” the mother answered.

The policeman turned his head in disgust.

“Dog,” he muttered under his breath.

Slogans litter Baghdad. They are scrawled on the blast walls that partition this city of concrete. They proclaim unity from billboards over traffic snarled at impotent checkpoints. The more they are uttered, it seems, the less resonant they become.

“Respect and be respected,” read the one the family passed, entering the police station.

They followed Kadhem Hassan, the weary 60-year-old police officer in charge of records, whose office was around the corner from toilets piled with excrement.

“They keep throwing rocks at us at night,” he said, kicking shards of bricks away from the entrance to his office, near a slogan that read, “Heroes.”

His office was bare but for a rickety desk and cabinets piled with curled, yellowing files. A fan circulated the heat; Officer Hassan had bought it for $20. Sitting in his chair, he endlessly shuffled files. In words slurred by missing teeth, he told Hamid’s nephew to go buy paper if they wanted a letter.

Eventually, he found the police report of Muhammad’s death.

Dated July 3, 2005, it read: “We discovered 11 unidentified bodies, their hands bound from behind, their eyes blindfolded and their mouths gagged. The bodies bore signs of torture.”

“All of us were victims,” Officer Hassan told Hamid, in an attempt at sympathy. “Who was the exception? No one was. Not the martyrs, not the policemen, no one.”

“If they just shot them, O.K.,” Hamid said. “But they beat them, tortured them and then they burned them. Why? And those guys” — the politicians, he meant — “ are just watching.”

“Power and positions, that’s all they’re worried about,” Officer Hassan said.

“Let me be honest,” Hamid said, flashing rare anger at no one in particular. “Just to tell the truth. It would have been better if we had stayed under Saddam Hussein.”

The policeman shrugged and stayed silent.

A Bureaucratic Odyssey

From the Rafidain police station, carrying a letter on paper he had paid for, Hamid went to the morgue. His letter, said a clerk there, Ihab Sami, was incomplete.

“The police don’t understand and neither do you!” Mr. Sami shouted at him.

Quiet, Hamid shook his head and returned to Sadr City.

“Come tomorrow morning,” Officer Hassan told him.

He did. Sometimes with his mother, sometimes his nephew, he went back to the morgue, the police station again, the courthouse in Sadr City and the morgue. Over seven days, he collected papers, each with the number 5061.

“We lost someone,” Hamid said as he drove. “They should take it easy on us.” He grew quiet. “I guess nothing ends easily,” he whispered, “for the living or the dead.”

In a cauterized country caught between its haunted past and uncertain future, death seems to shape life in Baghdad. As Hamid drove patiently through its crumpled landscape, he passed the cemeteries whose tombstones read like an inventory of war, one built on the day after the fall of Saddam Hussein, at a riverside park, near pomegranate trees too desiccated to bear fruit.

“Whoever reads the Koran for me, cry for my youth,” read the marker for Oday Ahmed Khalaf. “Yesterday I was living, and today I’m buried beneath the earth.”

Across the Tigris River was the Jawad Orphanage, where Hussein Rahim, who does not know his age, played with other children whose parents had been killed in the violence. An explosion entombed his family in their home in July 2008. He lived because he was playing soccer. His father’s name, he thinks, was Ali. But he can’t recall the name of his 6-month-old sister, nor his mother. They are the past, he said, and “no one wants to talk about it.”

“I can’t forget,” Hamid said, on the eighth day of his odyssey.

A roadside mine had closed the street, and Hamid parked nearly a mile away. With his nephew, he walked toward the office for unclaimed death certificates and past a billboard that read, “Hand in hand, we’ll build Iraq together.” Government offices under construction had grown dilapidated even before they were finished. The carcasses of car bombs were piled on the side of the street.

“I don’t consider this my country anymore,” Hamid said. “Really, I feel like a stranger. Not just me. Everyone does.”

The office — a flattering term for a ramshackle tan trailer with brown trim — was down a dirt road, across from a nursery lined with unplanted pots. Here, even the nursery was coiled in barbed wire.

“They don’t even put a sign out front,” Hamid complained.

Perky, with good-natured cheer that seemed at odds with her work, Maysoun Azzawi sat inside with her harried and haggard assistant, Hajji Saleh. She dispatched him to plumb the 100 notebooks — stacked upright and on their side, some with binders missing, all with pages torn — to find the death certificate for 5061.

“Come on, hurry up!” she yelled at him. “Look for the old records! 2005!”

She turned to Hamid. “Are you a Sunni or Shiite?” she asked.

“Mixed,” he answered.

She nodded knowingly, then yelled again. “Hajji, are you going to find it or do I have to come in there?”

He shuffled in, and she pored over the ledger, line after line of unidentified dead, its pages blown by an air-conditioner propped up on two broken cinder blocks.

“Whatever happened to us?” she asked, as she turned the pages, looking for 5061. “There are good people here, brother, but God damn this country.”

“It’s here,” she said finally, and asked for a pen.

She pulled out the death certificate, written in red and numbered 946777. The morgue had sent Muhammad’s body south for burial on July 22, she told Hamid, and the undertaker was Sheik Sadiq al-Sheikh Daham. She handed him the onionskin paper certificate.

“You have everything you need now,” she said. “You can go to Najaf.”

She kept the pen.
 

In the Valley of Peace

Najaf, the spiritual capital of Shiite Islam, is a city of the dead.

For more than a millennium, the deceased have arrived at its cemetery, the Valley of Peace, seeking blessings in their burial near the golden-domed tomb of Imam Ali, the revered Shiite saint. There are moments of beauty here — finely rendered calligraphy on turquoise tiles, domes of a perfect symmetry that life cannot share. But shades of ocher predominate, the tan brick of headstones stretching to the horizon like supplicants awaiting an audience.

The cemetery receives the unknown, whether Sunni or Shiite.

Before the sun rose, on the ninth day after identifying his brother’s picture, Hamid drove his three sisters, Muhammad’s wife and daughter and his mother past Baghdad’s outskirts. American jets whispered through the sky. As the sun rose gingerly, Hamid’s car passed the tomb of the Prophet Job.

In Hamid’s hand was his brother’s death certificate.

“Corrected,” it read simply.

Only the caretaker knew where Muhammad’s grave was; he had sketched its location on a hand-drawn map in a red leather book bound by yellow tape. Three stacks of bricks covered in hastily poured concrete marked it. “Unknown, 5061, July 2, 2005,” it read. Next to it was 5067, 5060 and so on, hundreds more, stretching row after row, so cluttered that some of the dead shared a grave.

The women stumbled toward it, throwing sand on their heads in grief. Their chorus of cries intersected with the Shiite lamentations of a nearby funeral. Muhammad’s wife grasped the marker, as though it was incarnate. His sister kissed the cement.

“How long have we looked for you, my son?” his mother screamed, tears turning the sand on her face to mud. “All this time, and you’ve been suffering under the sun.”

She shouted at Hamid and the others.

“Please dig him out! Let me see him. It’s been five years. Hamid! We haven’t seen him. Show him to me, just show him to me for a little while.”

She turned to Muhammad’s daughter, Aisha.

“This is your child!” she yelled.

Wearing pink, Aisha paid no attention. Too young to know grief, she played with dusty red plastic carnations, glancing at the rest of the dead, anonymous like her father.

Hamid stayed back, his tears turning to sobs.

“There is nothing left to do,” he said, shaking his head.

An hour later, the family pulled away in Hamid’s car, his mother’s cries still audible. “Let me take your place,” she moaned. It turned onto a ribbon of black asphalt. For a moment, the car caught the glint of the sun, then disappeared behind the countless tombs.

Behind them was 5061. With a brick, they had furrowed a line into the marker. With a bottle of water, they had washed it, revealing a newly white tile in a sea of brown.

    Restoring Names to Iraq War’s Unknown Casualties, NYT, 30.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/world/middleeast/31legacy.html

Nation Building Works

August 30, 2010
The New York Times
By DAVID BROOKS

The U.S. venture into Iraq was a war, but it was also a nation-building exercise. America has spent $53 billion trying to reconstruct Iraq, the largest development effort since the Marshall Plan.

So how’s it working out?

On the economic front, there are signs of progress. It’s hard to know what role the scattershot American development projects have played, but this year Iraq will have the 12th-fastest-growing economy in the world, and it is expected to grow at a 7 percent annual clip for the next several years.

“Iraq has made substantial progress since 2003,” the International Monetary Fund reports. Inflation is reasonably stable. A budget surplus is expected by 2012. Unemployment, though still 15 percent, is down from stratospheric levels.

Oil production is back around prewar levels, and there are some who say Iraq may be able to rival Saudi production. That’s probably unrealistic, but Iraq will have a healthy oil economy, for better and for worse.

Living standards are also improving. According to the Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index, the authoritative compendium of data on this subject, 833,000 Iraqis had phones before the invasion. Now more than 1.3 million have landlines and some 20 million have cellphones. Before the invasion, 4,500 Iraqis had Internet service. Now, more than 1.7 million do.

In the most recent Gallup poll, 69 percent of Iraqis rated their personal finances positively, up from 36 percent in March 2007. Baghdad residents say the markets are vibrant again, with new electronics, clothing and even liquor stores.

Basic services are better, but still bad. Electricity production is up by 40 percent over pre-invasion levels, but because there are so many more air-conditioners and other appliances, widespread power failures still occur.

In February 2009, 45 percent of Iraqis said they had access to trash removal services, which is woeful, though up from 18 percent the year before. Forty-two percent were served by a fire department, up from 23 percent.

About half the U.S. money has been spent building up Iraqi security forces, and here, too, the trends are positive. Violence is down 90 percent from pre-surge days. There are now more than 400,000 Iraqi police officers and 200,000 Iraqi soldiers, with operational performance improving gradually. According to an ABC News/BBC poll last year, nearly three-quarters of Iraqis had a positive view of the army and the police, including, for the first time, a majority of Sunnis.

Politically, the basic structure is sound, and a series of impressive laws have been passed. But these gains are imperiled by the current stalemate at the top.

Iraq ranks fourth in the Middle East on the Index of Political Freedom from The Economist’s Intelligence Unit — behind Israel, Lebanon and Morocco, but ahead of Jordan, Egypt, Qatar and Tunisia. Nearly two-thirds of Iraqis say they want a democracy, while only 19 percent want an Islamic state.

In short, there has been substantial progress on the things development efforts can touch most directly: economic growth, basic security, and political and legal institutions. After the disaster of the first few years, nation building, much derided, has been a success. When President Obama speaks to the country on Iraq, he’ll be able to point to a large national project that has contributed to measurable, positive results.

Of course, to be honest, he’ll also have to say how fragile and incomplete this success is. Iraqi material conditions are better, but the Iraqi mind has not caught up with the Iraqi opportunity.

There is still very little social trust. Iraq is the fourth-most-corrupt nation on earth, according to Transparency International’s rating system. The role of women remains surprisingly circumscribed. Iraqi politicians clearly find it very hard to compromise (though they may be no worse than American politicians in this regard).

Human capital is lagging. Most doctors left Iraq after the invasion, and it is hard to staff health clinics. The engineers left too, so American-built plants lie dormant because there is no one with the skills to run them. Schools are suffering because of a lack of teachers.

Ryan Crocker, the former ambassador, recently wrote an article in The National Interest noting that fear still pervades Iraq. Ethnic animosities are in abeyance, but they are not gone. Guns have been put in closets, but not destroyed.

If he is honest, Obama will have to balance pride with caution. He’ll have to acknowledge that the gains the U.S. is enabling may vanish if the U.S. military withdraws entirely next year. He’ll have to acknowledge that bottom-up social change requires time and patience. He’ll have to heed the advice of serious Iraq hands like Crocker, Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings and Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, and shelve plans to withdraw completely.

Such a move may rob him of a campaign talking point. But it will safeguard an American accomplishment that has been too hard won.

    Nation Building Works, NYT, 30.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/opinion/31brooks.html

Biden Visits Iraq for Ceremony

August 30, 2010
Filed at 3:49 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Vice President Joe Biden returned to Iraq Monday to mark the formal end to U.S. combat operations and push the country's leaders to end a six-month stalemate blocking formation of a new government.

He came to preside over a military change-of-command ceremony on Wednesday. The event will signal a shift toward a greater U.S. diplomatic role as the military mission dwindles seven years after the American invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Biden tried to reassure Iraqis on the transition.

''We're going to be just fine. They're going to be just fine,'' he said during a photo opportunity at the U.S. Embassy. He was flanked by Gen. Ray Odierno, Ambassador Jim Jeffrey and Marine Gen. James Mattis, the new leader of the U.S. Central Command.

The Sept. 1 ceremony also marks the start of the so-called ''Operation New Dawn'' -- symbolizing the beginning of the end of the American military's mission in Iraq since invading in March 2003.

Just under 50,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq -- down from a peak of nearly 170,000 at the height of the 2007 military surge that is credited with helping turn the tide in Iraq as it teetered on the brink of civil war. Additionally, U.S. troops no longer will be allowed to go on combat missions unless requested and accompanied by Iraqi forces.

Underscoring the shift, officials said Biden will make a new appeal to Iraqi leaders, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and political archrival former premier Ayad Allawi, to end the political deadlock and seat a new government. March 7 parliamentary elections left Iraq without a clear winner, and insurgents have exploited the uncertainty to hammer Iraqi security forces in near-daily attacks.

In a daylong meeting Tuesday, Biden will ''urge Iraqi leaders to conclude negotiations on the formation of a new government,'' the White House said in a statement.

Allawi heads the secular, Sunni-dominated Iraqiya political coalition that narrowly denied al-Maliki a win in the March vote. Both al-Maliki and Allawi want to be prime minister, and U.S. diplomats have encouraged a power-sharing agreement between them to control a majority of parliament and win the right to choose the new government's leaders.

So far, neither man has backed down, creating a political impasse and leading to back-room jockeying by hard-line Shiite groups for a larger share of power.

The White House said Biden also plans to sit down with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, Shiite Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, and Shiite cleric Ammar al-Hakim, leader of the Iranian-backed Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

Tony Blinken, Biden's top national security adviser, said the delay in seating a new government has slowed U.S. pressure on the United Nations to lift sanctions on Iraq that have been in place since the 1991 Kuwaiti invasion.

Still, Blinken said the U.S. is ''determined to build a long-term partnership'' with Iraq.

''We're not disengaging from Iraq,'' Blinken told reporters. ''And even as we draw down our troops, we are ramping up our engagement across the board.''

It was the vice president's sixth trip to Iraq since he was elected.

He will preside over a ceremony Wednesday where Odierno ends more than five years in Iraq and hands over the reins as commander of U.S. forces here to Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin. Austin also has served extensively in Iraq, most recently as commander of troop operations in 2008-09.

Under a security agreement between the two nations, all U.S. forces must leave Iraq by the end of 2011. But the Obama administration, sensitive to charges of American abandonment, has directed its diplomats to step into the void and help Iraq's weak government, economy and other institutions get back on their feet for years to come.

Threats still remain.

Al-Maliki last week put Iraq on its highest level of alert for possible attacks by al-Qaida and Saddam's former Baath Party loyalists in the days leading up to the U.S. ceremony on Wednesday. An Iraqi intelligence official said suicide bombers are believed to have entered Iraq with plans to strike unspecified targets in Baghdad, the capital.

And on the eve of Biden's arrival, Iraqi police said two mortar rounds landed in the capital's Green Zone, where the parliament and many foreign embassies are housed behind blast walls, steel gates and barbed wire. The rounds landed near the U.S. Embassy but did not kill or injure anyone, police said.

U.S. Brig. Gen. Ralph Baker said Monday that there had been a marked increase in indirect fire -- usually meaning a mortar or rocket -- into the Green Zone and the international airport. Over the last two months there have been about 60 indirect fire attacks compared to just a handful in previous months, Baker said.

The attacks are the work of Shiite militias backed by Iran trying to portray themselves as driving the American forces from Iraq, Baker said.

''They're trying to all claim credit for the U.S. drawdown,'' he said.

The vice president's last trip to Baghdad in July was punctuated by an explosion in the Green Zone; no one was injured in the attack.

All Iraqi security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they was not authorized to discuss sensitive information with the media.

    Biden Visits Iraq for Ceremony, NYT, 30.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/08/30/world/asia/AP-ML-Iraq-Biden.html

Families of Dead Soldiers Sue Insurer Over Its Handling of Survivors’ Benefits

August 29, 2010
The New York Times
By DAN FROSCH

Vickie Castro’s only child was killed six years ago just before Christmas, when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside an Army mess tent in Mosul, Iraq, killing more than 20 people.

In those dizzying days after the death of her son, Jonathan Castro, Ms. Castro vaguely remembers getting a letter and a draft checkbook from the Prudential Insurance Company of America, which provides life insurance to American soldiers and veterans on behalf of the federal government.

The letter informed Ms. Castro that she was entitled to $250,000 from her son’s military life insurance policy. Whenever she wanted the money, she could simply deposit one of the checks into a special account that had been set up in her family’s name, the letter said.

Still grieving over her son’s death, Ms. Castro finally brought herself to look at the account’s monthly statements a year later and noticed that the money was yielding an interest rate of just 1.2 percent. She quickly transferred the funds into a certificate of deposit at her local credit union, where the interest rate was considerably higher.

Now, the Castros and five other military families are suing Prudential, accusing it of profiting off dead service members by keeping their life insurance benefits in the company’s own general account to earn interest for itself, instead of immediately handing them over to the families.

The lawsuit, which was first reported by Bloomberg News last month, was filed in federal court in Springfield, Mass., on July 29. An amended version of the suit, a draft of which was obtained by The New York Times, will be filed in federal court on Monday, lawyers say. It has additional plaintiffs and also accuses Prudential of committing fraud by pretending to put the money of military families into personal interest-bearing accounts, called Alliance Accounts.

Instead, according to the new claim, Prudential held the money in its own coffers and earned an investment profit estimated at 5 percent to 6 percent. Only when families wanted to withdraw funds would the company shuttle money into the Alliance Accounts, and then pay out the benefits with a markedly lower interest rate that varied from 0.5 to 1.5 percent, the suit says.

Prudential has made an estimated half-billion dollars off this practice over the last 11 years, the plaintiffs’ lawyers say. Though that may amount to only a few thousand dollars less in interest payments per beneficiary, some military families like the Castros say they are aghast at the idea of a business making money off dead military members.

“That they would dishonor my son, who died serving his country, that Prudential would use his insurance policy to make a higher profit — it can’t be true, but it is,” said Ms. Castro, who lives in Corona, Calif.

Prudential would not comment on the lawsuit but has vigorously defended the military life insurance policies.

A Prudential spokesman, Bob DeFillippo, said that services like the Alliance Accounts had become the industry standard, and that they provided a safe, reliable place for military families to keep their money in trying times.

The accounts are administered much the same way a bank runs any conventional on-demand money service, like a checking account, Mr. DeFillippo said. He said that the funds were readily available to the beneficiary and that interest rates were on par with similar banking setups.

“The notion that we’re taking something away from the beneficiaries is completely wrong and one of the worst, most misleading facts that has come out,” Mr. DeFillippo said. “We’ve been doing this for 40 years. We don’t consider this a business; it’s more of a service. It’s the beneficiary’s money, and they have access to it whenever they want.”

Prudential has been administering life insurance plans for soldiers since 1965, when Congress created Service Members’ Group Life Insurance and later a similar program for veterans. When a soldier or veteran dies, beneficiaries can receive up to $400,000 in benefits. Federal law requires Prudential to pay out either in a lump sum or in 36 monthly installments.

If a soldier’s family wants to collect the lump sum, the Alliance Account is set up for them. Until they actually withdraw money, it sits in Prudential’s general account, of which military benefits make up only a small fraction, Mr. DeFillippo said.

Prudential says the account yielded 4.1 percent interest over the last six months. The interest on money paid to military beneficiaries through the Alliance Accounts over a similar time period was 0.5 percent — a rate Prudential sets based on comparable banking options, it says.

Mr. DeFillippo says it is unfair to compare the two rates because the military life insurance benefits are placed in short-term investments with little return and must be liquidated quickly if a family withdraws money.

“This is a complete fabrication to say that we’re earning a lot of money,” he said, adding that out of about $200 billion in the general account, about 2 percent came from the Alliance accounts.

But lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Jacqueline Scott Corley, Michael von Loewenfeldt and Cristóbal Bonifaz, say that from the day a claim is made on a soldier or veteran’s death, the money is no longer Prudential’s. Therefore, the company has no right to invest or profit from it at all — particularly without giving the beneficiary a choice, the lawyers contend.

The suit is premised on a basic point: transferring money into the Alliance Account only after a family seeks to withdraw it, the lawyers say, is not the same as making a lump-sum payment, which is required by the federal law that set up the program.

“Our clients trusted Prudential — they didn’t know Prudential was using the money for its own benefit,” Mr. von Loewenfeldt said. “It would be like if I went to your house and stole a check out of your mailbox, invested it and then sent you a letter saying: ‘I have your money. Let me know when you want it, and in the meantime I’ll pay you a little bit of interest.’ ”

The lawsuit seeks the return of a half-billion dollars that it says Prudential has made off the benefits.

Responding to news reports about the carrier, New York’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, began an investigation into the life insurance industry, and members of Congress are looking into Prudential’s handling of the military insurance program. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which oversees the program, is reviewing how Prudential manages the Alliance Accounts.

Mr. DeFillippo said Prudential was cooperating with the investigations and working with the veterans agency.

Ms. Castro says her lawsuit is less about money than the fact that Prudential has somehow earned profits — whatever the amount — from her son’s death in Iraq.

“To think that these people are so unfeeling, so heartless that they would put profit above the honor that should be guaranteed to our servicemen and women who die in the line duty,” she said. “How could anybody think this is just another way to make a buck?”

    Families of Dead Soldiers Sue Insurer Over Its Handling of Survivors’ Benefits, NYT, 29.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/us/30prudential.html

Winning, Losing and War

August 28, 2010
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON

AS the last officially designated American combat forces left Iraq, television cameras caught the exultation of a soldier finally heading home.

“We won!” he yelled. “It’s over! America, we brought democracy to Iraq!”

Which naturally raises an intriguing and provocative question: Did we win? Seven years later, after all the spilled blood, after all the roadside bombs and sectarian strife, after all the terror and torment, did the United States actually win the war in Iraq?

The soldier was right in that the United States deposed a dictator and brought democracy to Iraq — a rudimentary, still-in-progress, somewhat dysfunctional democracy that has yet to seat a government nearly six months after an election, but a democracy nonetheless. And certainly it looks more like victory than it did just three years ago in the depths of the devastation before the American troop surge and the Sunni uprising against Al Qaeda in Iraq.

But don’t look for sailors kissing nurses in Times Square or ticker-tape parades in the streets of Washington. Don’t look for President Obama or most other elected leaders to use terms like “victory” to describe what happened in Iraq. Whatever progress has been achieved has come at great sacrifice and seems fragile and incomplete at best. Rather than winning, Mr. Obama describes his goal as “responsibly ending this war.”

“We neither won nor lost,” said Lee H. Hamilton, the former Democratic congressman from Indiana who served as co-chairman of the Congressionally chartered Iraq Study Group that in 2006 recommended pulling nearly all American combat troops out by 2008. “The best that can be said is that at enormous cost, we’ve given them a chance to establish a stable country.”

Making a final evaluation, of course, would be premature. Even after Tuesday, when Mr. Obama will declare the end of America’s combat mission, there will still be nearly 50,000 troops to advise and assist the Iraqis and conduct counterterrorism operations before pulling out at the end of 2011. A string of attacks last week demonstrated that radicals can still do damage even if not as much as before.

Still, the American role in the war has been subsiding for some time, with soldiers based mainly outside the cities for the last year and encountering less and less direct combat as Iraqi forces take the lead. As of Friday, 46 members of the American military had died in Iraq in 2010, according to the Web site, icasualties.org, a fraction of the 904 who died at the peak in 2007.

The situation was so bad back then that even President George W. Bush acknowledged at one point that “we’re not winning, we’re not losing.” Senator Harry M. Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, went even further, declaring, “this war is lost.”

By the time he left office, Mr. Bush’s optimism had returned and he declared that Iraqi forces were increasingly capable of “winning the fight.” Today, Mr. Reid does not take back his assessment but credits the soldiers. “Senator Reid believes our combat troops did a great job,” said his spokesman, Jim Manley. “However, he and many others believed in 2007, and still believe, that the ultimate outcome of this war will not be decided by U.S. combat troops. The future of Iraq will be decided by the Iraqi people.”

That is a common theme offered even by those on the other side of the ideological battles that marked the long slog in Iraq. Meghan O’Sullivan, who oversaw the war as Mr. Bush’s deputy national security adviser, said it came down to the Iraqis. “My standard of success for Iraq is not whether the Iraqis can resolve every last issue between themselves and their neighbors but whether they can continue to tackle and manage their differences through politics, not violence,” she said.

James M. Dubik, a retired Army three-star general who led the training of Iraqi troops, said the keys now were building governance and economics. “The waning of combat doesn’t mean the war is over,” said General Dubik, now a senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of War. “Wars end, in my view, not when the conflict is done but when the right diplomatic, economic and security arrangements get put in place.”

And for those who have suffered deep loss, like the relatives of the 4,400 Americans or the many more Iraqis who died, the notion of victory or defeat can feel remote. “Well, first of all, my family lost in a big way,” said Cindy Sheehan, who became perhaps the nation’s most prominent antiwar activist after her son died in Iraq. “We had one of our cherished members, Casey, murdered by the U.S. empire in Iraq.”

In her view, “the only winners have been Halliburton, KBR, CACI, Xe, Unocal, BP, Standard Oil, Boeing” and other corporations that profited from the war. “People here in the U.S. who don’t know that they lost have lost big time,” she said.

The debate underscores the changing nature of war. The United States claimed victory in most of the wars it has fought from the American Revolution through World War II. The Korean War essentially ended in a stalemate, with American-led troops repelling North Korean invaders but then being pushed back to the prewar border. Vietnam is widely seen as a defeat after Americans withdrew and the South fell to the North. The first Gulf War succeeded in pushing Iraq out of Kuwait.

But many Americans remain unsure about the current war in Iraq. In a CBS News poll last week, 57 percent of Americans said the war was going well, compared with 22 percent who thought so in July 2007. Among those who believe that now, 26 percent gave most credit to the Bush administration, which ordered the 2007 troop surge; 20 percent gave credit to the Obama administration, which has managed the drawdown of more than 90,000 troops; and 33 percent credited both.

Yet for all that, 59 percent said the United States did not do the right thing going to war in Iraq in the first place and 72 percent said the war was not worth the loss of life and other costs to the country, the highest percentage since the invasion in March 2003.

The larger geopolitical repercussions of the war are still playing out. It drained American credibility around the world, particularly after the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction proved false and after the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison. The specter of an American war on Islam, no matter how much it is denied by Washington, looms large in parts of the world.

Many argue that Iran grew stronger as a result of the war, allowing it to extend its influence to Iraq, where the Shiites, not the Sunnis, now dominate political life. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who manages Iraq policy for Mr. Obama, disputed that last week in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign War, asserting that “Iranian influence in Iraq is minimal” and “greatly exaggerated.”

And while violence is down, it is not gone. The difference is that the administration deems it below a threshold where it can be managed by the Iraqis without posing a threat to the Iraqi state.

“That is what victory looks like in this kind of war — a long-term U.S. security relationship with a country that enjoys slowly improving host country governance while confronting a gradually decreasing level of violence,” said Lt. Col. John Nagl, a retired officer who served in Anbar Province and is now president of the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

One of those who from the beginning saw clearly what would come in Iraq was Col. Alan Baldwin, the chief Marine intelligence officer in Iraq during the invasion. A few days before the war began, he sat down with a few reporters and, off the record, predicted that the American invasion would lead to what he called a “rolling civil war.”

Today, retired from the Marines, he said sticking it out during the roughest moments and avoiding defeat prevented an even worse outcome. “We’ve won by not losing and we continue to win by continuing to engage, continuing to support,” he said. “We lose in some ways, too, by not doing so perfectly. But we’re still there.”

Looking back to his prediction seven years ago, he said: “We opened a Pandora’s box. Lots of bad things were flying out of there. But good things are there now too. It’s amazing we had the patience to be where we are today.”

    Winning, Losing and War, NYT, 28.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/weekinreview/29baker.html

Qaeda in Iraq Says It Was Behind Latest Attacks

August 28, 2010
The New York Times
By ANTHONY SHADID

BAGHDAD — Insurgents affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility on Saturday for a wave of car bombings, roadside mines and hit-and-run attacks this week in at least 13 Iraqi cities and towns, a deadly and relentless campaign whose breadth surprised American military officials and dealt a blow to Iraq’s fledgling security forces.

At least 56 people were killed in the attacks, in which insurgents deployed more than a dozen car bombs. Two of the assaults wrecked police stations in Baghdad and Kut, a city southeast of the capital, though American and Iraqi officials said measures taken by the security forces had prevented the attacks from inflicting an even higher toll.

The statement from the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group for the Qaeda militants, was posted on one of its Web sites. It called the assaults “the wings of victory sweeping again over a new day.” It said it had attacked “the headquarters, centers, and security barriers of the apostate army and police.”

For weeks, officials had warned that insurgents might try to escalate attacks during the holy month of Ramadan, which began in August, capitalizing on months of stalemate over forming a new government here. Popular frustration has risen sharply this summer, as scorching temperatures accentuate shortages of electricity and drinking water, whose shoddy delivery remains one of Iraqis’ long-standing grievances.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ordered the security forces on high alert Friday, saying that insurgents were planning more attacks across the country “to kill more innocents and spread panic.” He urged a public that has yet to bestow much confidence in the security forces to cooperate with them in an effort to stanch coming attacks.

“We call upon citizens to open their eyes, to observe the movements of those terrorists, to abort their evil planning and inform on any suspect movements as soon as possible,” said the statement, which was broadcast Friday night on television.

On Wednesday, the United States will formally end what it describes as combat operations in the country, assuming a training and advisory role for the nearly 50,000 troops who will remain here through next summer. The administration has described the date as a turning point in the war, though it remains somewhat ceremonial. The levels the American military will maintain still represent a formidable force here, and while most combat has indeed ended, troops will still take part in what it calls counterinsurgency.

American military officials have said the most formidable Sunni insurgents may number just in the hundreds. While they said they knew that attacks like Wednesday’s were still possible, they were nevertheless struck by the breadth of the campaign, which hit towns and cities from southernmost Basra to restive Mosul in the north.

“The potential for violence, what I would characterize now as primarily terrorist acts here, is quite significant, and the ability of terrorist acts to have an impact on the political life of this country is still a significant risk,” James F. Jeffrey, the new American ambassador to Iraq, told reporters at the embassy this week.

But, he added, “This does not change our assessment that the security situation, by every statistic that we have looked at, is far better than it was a year or two ago.”

At the scene of the worst bombing in Baghdad, where explosives piled in a blue pickup toppled a police station and sheared the top floors off a block of houses, residents on Saturday walked aimlessly through houses in which they could no longer sleep. They were angry that no one from the government had visited and that no one had offered help.

“Each day is worse than the day before, each year is worse than the year before,” said Sabah Abu Karrar, 45. He walked over bricks that were once his wall, and he quoted a saying cited often in calamity. “There is no power or strength except through God.”

    Qaeda in Iraq Says It Was Behind Latest Attacks, NYT, 28.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/world/middleeast/29iraq.html

Leaving Iraq

August 27, 2010
The New York Times

On Tuesday the American combat mission in Iraq — a war that should never have been fought — officially ends. President Obama deserves credit for promising the withdrawal and for sticking to it. But America’s responsibilities in Iraq will not end now.

Even with the departure of combat forces, 50,000 troops will remain as advisers through 2011. And American officials have plenty of work ahead — helping and goading Iraqi politicians to get on with building a reasonably democratic and stable country.

A White House spokesman said this week that Mr. Obama will use an Oval Office address on Tuesday — only the second of his presidency — to talk about Iraq and the “fact that more of our efforts and focus” are on Afghanistan. Americans are increasingly skeptical, indeed despairing, about that war. The president needs to do much more to explain the stakes and his strategy.

Does counterinsurgency still offer the best chance for driving back the Taliban? What are Americans supposed to think about President Hamid Karzai’s misbehaviors? How does Mr. Obama plan to get Pakistan to stop playing a double game, and take on the extremists?

Mr. Obama also needs to talk about Iraq and remind Americans that after seven years of fighting, this country still has a responsibility and a strategic interest in helping Iraq succeed. The Washington bureaucracy, which we fear is moving on, needs to hear that message loud and clear.

So do Iraqis. So much of Iraqi politics is a zero-sum game. Five months after national elections, Sunni and Shiite leaders still cannot agree on forming a government. And the list of unfinished business — an oil law, the future of Kirkuk — goes on. If they think Washington is disengaging, that will only get worse.

Iraq’s Kurds will be listening closely; the United States has been their defender since the gulf war. If they fear abandonment, they could do something foolish and dangerous — like making a grab for disputed territory. Mr. Obama needs to reaffirm a commitment to Iraq’s sovereignty to discourage Iran and other meddlers.

It may be decades before we have a full accounting of this disastrous war, but this milestone calls for an interim reckoning. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s murderous rule and the stirrings of democratic politics are all positive outcomes. But they are overshadowed by overwhelming negatives.

President George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 looking for weapons of mass destruction, and defended that rationale long after it was clear that those weapons were not there. America’s credibility has still not recovered. The war cost the lives of more than 4,400 Americans, as well as those of an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians, and hundreds of billions of dollars.

The Iraq war also, disastrously, shifted attention and resources away from the far more important fight in Afghanistan. The Taliban — routed by the United States and Afghan forces after 9/11 — quickly regained the battlefield momentum after the Pentagon and White House lost interest. The two wars have grievously overtaxed American forces.

Though the extreme violence in Iraq has abated, insurgents have increased attacks in recent months, challenging Iraq’s army and police as they assume more responsibility for security. (The Americans will help only if asked.) The political impasse is making Iraqis question whether democracy is worth the price. That is chilling.

Iraq’s future is now in Iraqis’ hands, as it should be. This country cannot afford to walk away.

    Leaving Iraq, NYT, 27.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/opinion/28sat1.html

Coordinated Attacks Strike 13 Towns and Cities in Iraq

August 25, 2010
The New York Times
By ANTHONY SHADID

BAGHDAD — In one of the broadest assaults on Iraq’s security forces, insurgents unleashed a wave of roadside mines and a more than a dozen car bombings across Iraq on Wednesday, killing dozens, toppling a police station in the capital and sowing chaos and confusion among the soldiers and police officers who responded.

The withering two-hour assault in 13 towns and cities, from southernmost Basra to restive Mosul in the north, was as symbolic as it was deadly, coming a week before the United States declares the end of combat operations here. Wednesday was seemingly the insurgents’ reply: Despite suggestions otherwise, they proved their ability to launch coordinated attacks virtually anywhere in Iraq, capitalizing on the government’s dysfunction and perceptions of American vulnerability.

For weeks, there had been sense of inevitability to the assaults, which killed at least 51 people, many of them police officers. From the American military to residents here, virtually everyone seemed to expect insurgents to seek to demonstrate their prowess as the United States brings its number of troops below 50,000 here. But the anticipation did little to prepare security forces for the breadth of the assault. Iraqi soldiers and police officers brawled at the site of the biggest bombing in Baghdad, and residents heckled them for their impotence in stopping a blast that cut like a scythe through the neighborhood.

“A bloody day,” Khalil Ahmed, a 30-year-old engineer, said simply, as he stared at the cranes and bulldozers trying to rescue victims buried under the police station.

“From the day of the fall of Saddam until now, this is what we have — explosions, killing and looting,” he said. “This is our destiny. It’s already written for us.”

The assaults began at 8:20 a.m. when a pickup truck packed with explosives detonated in a parking lot behind the police station in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Qahera. The police station collapsed, and the blast sheared off the top floors of nearby homes. Windows were shattered a half-mile away. One family was pulled out alive. Hours later, cranes and bulldozers tried to remove others trapped beneath the rubble.

Police officers kept angry residents from entering the scene.

“You get millions of dinars in salaries and you won’t let us help our families?” one youth shouted.

Another cried, “You just take money and don’t care about us!”

An Iraqi investigator walked by the scene.

“This is the state?” he muttered. “This is the government?”

Twice, soldiers and police officers brawled at the scene, and shots were fired in the air.

The rest of the capital was snarled with traffic, as police and army vehicles, sirens blaring, tried to break through the traffic jams. American soldiers in Humvees and armored vehicles, with a token Iraqi escort, drove through parts of the city.

For weeks, insurgents have carried out a daily campaign of bombings, hit-and-run attacks and assassinations against the security forces and officials, seeking to undermine confidence in their ability to secure the country. They remained the target Wednesday in attacks in Falluja, Ramadi, Tikrit, Kirkuk, Basra, Karbala, Mosul and elsewhere.

In one of the worst assaults, in the southern city of Kut, Iraqi officials said a car bomb detonated by its driver killed 19 people and wounded 87, most of them police, in an attack that destroyed the police station near the provincial headquarters.

In Diyala Province, five roadside bombs detonated in the morning in Buhriz, the first against a police patrol, a second against reinforcements who were heading to the scene and three others intended for houses belonging to policemen, officials said. They were followed by a car bombing that struck the provincial headquarters in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, killing three people. Another car bombing struck a hospital in nearby Muqdadiya.

“The beginning of the storm,” said Saleh Khamis, a 38-year-old teacher in Buhriz.

In Ramadi, a car bomb tore through a bus station, killing eight people.

Under a deadline set by the Obama administration, the United States has brought its number of troops here to a little below 50,000, a presence it intends to maintain through next summer. The administration and the American military have sought to portray the partial withdrawal as a turning point in the American presence here, insisting that Iraq’s army and police are ready to inherit sole control over security here.

Military officials have said they believe that insurgents only number in the hundreds, and the military has issued a daily drumbeat of announcements that leaders and cadres in the insurgency have been arrested in American-Iraqi operations.

“The message the insurgents want to deliver to the Iraqi people and the politicians is that we exist and we choose the time and the place,” said Wael Abdel-Latif, a judge and former lawmaker. “They are carrying out such attacks when the Americans are still here, so just imagine what they can do after the Americans leave.”

The attacks come amid deep popular frustration with the country’s politicians, who have failed to form a government more than five months after elections in March. Shoddy public services, namely electricity, have only sharpened the resentment.

At the scene of the bombing in Baghdad, residents grimly swept up glass from storefronts. Others milled among the dozens of police and army vehicles. No one seemed to express optimism; most said they were bracing for more of the same.

“The situation doesn’t let us live our lives here,” said Mahmoud Hussein, a 26-year-old mechanic. “No water, no electricity no security. Every day it gets worse.”


Stephen Farrell, Moises Saman and Khalid D. Ali contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad, Baquba, Hilla, Kirkuk and Basra.

    Coordinated Attacks Strike 13 Towns and Cities in Iraq, NYT, 25.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html

As Mission Shifts in Iraq, Risks Linger for Obama

August 21, 2010
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — The official end of America’s combat mission in Iraq next week will fulfill the campaign promise that helped vault President Obama to the White House, but it also presents profound risks as he seeks to claim credit without issuing a premature declaration of victory.

As columns of vehicles crossed the border and troops arrived to happy homecomings last week, Mr. Obama released a restrained written statement and made a one-sentence reference at a pair of fund-raisers. While some called it the end of the seven-year war, Mr. Obama sought to avoid the sort of “mission accomplished” moment that haunted his predecessor.

But the White House wants to find a way to mark the moment and remind voters just two months before midterm elections that he delivered on his vow to pull out combat forces. Mr. Obama plans to make a high-profile speech on the drawdown next week, and aides are discussing whether to have him meet with returning troops. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will address the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Indianapolis on Monday.

The symbolism of the departing troops that played out on network television masked the more complex reality on the ground. Even as the last designated combat forces leave and the mission formally changes on Aug. 31 to a support role, 50,000 American “advise and assist” troops will remain in the country for 16 months more, still in harm’s way and still armed for combat if necessary. What’s more, Iraq’s future remains fraught with challenges amid a stubborn political impasse and a continuing low-grade insurgency.

“Political posturing is the norm in Washington, and claiming victory and an end to a war is far more popular than bearing the burden of leadership and dealing with reality,” Anthony H. Cordesman, a military specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote on the center’s Web site on Friday. “The Iraq war is not over and it is not ‘won.’ In fact, it is at as critical a stage as at any time since 2003.”

Denis R. McDonough, chief of staff of the National Security Council, said the administration had no illusions.

“Does anybody believe the violence is going to stop entirely and the opponents to stability and progress in Iraq are going to stand down? No,” he said. “But we do know that the Iraqi security forces are in a position to take that role on themselves increasingly.”

The official transition from Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn is as much a change in labels as it is a change in mission. With violence far below its peak in 2006 and 2007, American forces have increasingly taken a back seat to the Iraqi security units they trained.

But after seven years of a war started by President George W. Bush on the basis of false intelligence, the desire for finality, and perhaps closure, has focused attention on this moment and provoked a fresh discussion in Washington about what it all has meant.

After hundreds of billions of dollars, more than 4,400 American military deaths and at least 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths and perhaps many more, was it worth it? Did toppling a dictator and nursing a fledgling if flawed democracy make a difference? And did the United States salvage credibility by sticking it out and finally stabilizing Iraq even if not winning the clear-cut victory originally envisioned?

“If we can’t have a victory parade, we at least ought to be able to make some definitive conclusions,” said Andrew J. Bacevich, a military specialist at Boston University who lost a son in Iraq and has written a new book, “Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.” “And it just doesn’t seem that we are going to do so. We want to just move on, sadly.”

In part, that owes to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, where Mr. Obama is sending more troops, as well as the fragile economy at home, where millions of Americans are looking for work. And so while his opposition to the Iraq war animated his early candidacy, it seems almost a secondary issue these days.

During a fund-raising speech in Ohio last week, for instance, Mr. Obama mentioned the Iraq transition only in passing. “We are keeping the promise I made when I began my campaign for the presidency: by the end of this month, we will have removed 100,000 troops from Iraq, and our combat mission will be over in Iraq,” he said, a line he later repeated at a fund-raiser in Miami.

As they mark the moment, Democrats generally make no mention of the troop buildup and strategy change ordered by Mr. Bush in 2007, which many credit with turning around the war and making it possible to end combat now. By the time Mr. Bush left office, he had sealed an agreement with Iraq to withdraw all American troops by the end of 2011. After taking office, Mr. Obama ordered an intermediary deadline of drawing down to 50,000 by the end of this month.

Mr. Bush showed up unannounced at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport earlier this month to greet troops returning from Iraq. While no news media were invited, video posted on YouTube by troop supporters showed him in casual clothes shaking hands and posing for pictures with troops as they entered the terminal one by one.

Mr. Bush has declined to discuss the mission change, but former advisers see it as a validation that after all the pain and the blood, Iraq may finally be in a better place, governed by a freer, more democratic system that could yet serve as a model in an otherwise largely authoritarian Middle East.

“We can take a certain measure of satisfaction from the success in Iraq,” L. Paul Bremer III, the former Iraqi occupation administrator, said in an interview. “It’s not a complete success yet, obviously, but building democracy takes time.”

He added that “a successful Arab-Muslim democracy basically puts the lie to the Islamic extremists” who maintain that democracy is anathema to Islam and advocate a harsh form of rule.

Stephen J. Hadley, who was Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, said the current transition was due to the surge ordered by the former president and opposed by Mr. Obama when he was a senator. But he said he was glad that Mr. Obama’s team “has gone through a transition” and that it seemed to be taking pride in accomplishments in Iraq. He said he hoped that the administration would see the task through.

“If they do, they can rightly claim some measure of credit, and I would be the first to give them credit,” Mr. Hadley said. “But they need to stay focused and stay engaged.”

For Mr. Obama, this moment is a reminder of the lesson his predecessor learned after declaring the end of major combat operations on an aircraft carrier in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner in 2003. Iraq was a messy war with no tidy end. “There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship,” Mr. Bush later concluded.

Mr. Obama has come to the same realization, in almost the exact same words.

“There will be no simple moment of surrender to mark the journey’s end,” he declared last spring.

    As Mission Shifts in Iraq, Risks Linger for Obama, NYT, 21.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/us/politics/22obama.html

In Iraq War, Soldiers Say They Had a Job to Do

August 19, 2010
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

BAGHDAD — Staff Sgt. Lucas C. Trammell, a tank gunner with the Third Infantry Division, fought his way into Baghdad in 2003. He was back in 2005, abandoning the tank for foot patrols in a very unsafe Ramadi, and again in 2007 as bodyguard for a battalion commander in Baghdad.

He has killed the enemy and lost friends. He has sought treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. (“The Army’s gotten a lot better about letting you put your hand up,” he explained.)

He is back in Iraq for a fourth time, part of a force of only 50,000 no longer engaged in combat as of Aug. 31. He is one of thousands of soldiers and officers for whom the legacy of Iraq, like Afghanistan, has been a recalibration of what it means to be an American at war today.

The Third Infantry Division has spent more than four years in all in a war that has lasted seven and a half — and may not yet be over. These soldiers, far more than any other Americans, bear the personal and professional burdens of a conflict that has lost what popular support it had at home.

To those fighting it, the war in Iraq is not a glorious cause or, as the old advertisement put it, an adventure.

These days it is no longer even a divisive national argument like Vietnam. It is a job.

Even with the formal cessation of combat operations this month, it is a job that remains unfinished — tens of thousands of troops will stay here for at least another year — and one that, like many jobs, inspires great emotion only among those who do it.

“A lot of people at home are tired of this,” said Staff Sgt. Trevino D. Lewis, sitting outside a gym at Camp Liberty, the dusty rubble-strewn base near Baghdad’s airport and coming to a point many soldiers made. The people back home can tune out; they cannot.

“The way I look at it, it’s my job,” he said, recounting and dismissing the shifting rationales for the war, from the weapons of mass destruction that did not exist to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein to the establishment of democracy in the Arab world. “It’s my career.”

The sense of duty among those who serve here, still strong, is nonetheless tempered by the fact that the war is winding down slowly — or, as one officer put it, petering out — with mixed results.

The invasion has left behind a democracy in an autocratic part of the world, but a troubled young one with uncertain control over its security and destiny.

“Do I think the kids running around here have a better future?” Sergeant Trammell said one evening in Camp Karbala, just outside the holy Shiite city of the same name.

“To be honest, I don’t really care,” he said. “As a nation, was it the right thing to do? In the end of the day, when I look back on it, I haven’t lost a soldier in my squad. That’s what’s important to me.”

For the soldiers and officers of the Army’s Third Infantry Division, the war in Iraq has become something no one really envisioned when the division crossed the Kuwaiti border on the night of March 19, 2003: a routine.

In Vietnam, draftees served for a year and went home; the professional soldiers of the all-volunteer military fought in Grenada, Panama or the Persian Gulf war with the knowledge they would return quickly, hailed as heroes.

These soldiers in Iraq just kept coming back. They are veterans of not one war, but in essence four, each shadowing the shifting arc of Iraq itself: from the “shock and awe” invasion to the bloody sectarian conflict that followed, from President Bush’s “surge” in 2007 to President Obama’s denouement.

Of dozens of soldiers interviewed over the course of their deployments, many said the war was worth the personal sacrifices they made — or the far greater sacrifices of those wounded or killed — but not all did.

For some, the war over time lost the sense of national purpose, or national sacrifice, that might help assuage the hardships of those being asked to fight it.

“I missed the birth of my kid,” Sgt. Christopher L. Schirmer said matter-of-factly as he stood guard outside the fortified town hall in Ash Shura, a village in northern Iraq where the embers of insurgency never fully died. He also said his marriage broke up.

Inside, his company commander drank tea and listened to a local official complain about politics, security, the perfidious media and the need for a bank.

Soldiers like Sergeant Schirmer are volunteers, banking their tax-free salaries and enjoying the most lucrative benefits any military has ever offered.

Most don’t seek sympathy, and they complain no more than anyone would who lived and worked in gravel-strewn camps in dust and searing heat.

Sergeant Schirmer wears a remembrance of the greater price others have paid: a bracelet engraved with the name of Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith and the date he died, April 4, 2003, and earned the Medal of Honor. Sergeant Schirmer was there that day and spoke to him as he died.

“I want a normal life,” he said, “enjoy the things Iraq has paid for.”

From the intensity of combat during the invasion and the turbulent years that followed, the missions in Iraq today are far more peaceful, reflecting the shift from combat to the advisory role that 50,000 troops will still carry out until the end of 2011.

While soldiers still clear roads of improvised bombs and patrol rural areas in search of insurgents, today’s missions most often involve meetings with local officers or bureaucrats.

The military call them K.L.E.s, for “key leader engagements.”

“It’s almost not worth the trip,” said Staff Sgt. Rodney F. Martin, who is in Sergeant Schirmer’s squad, then based south of Mosul. “It’s more politics now.”

Sergeant Martin tried to leave the Army after his second tour in Iraq, but was forced to stay by the policy known as “stop loss.”

Third Infantry’s First Brigade was in fact the last unit in the Army to be exempted from the policy, which was rescinded as the personnel pressures on the military eased with the troop drawdown in Iraq, from a high of 170,000.

By the time Sergeant Martin could leave, though, he had re-enlisted — “The finances weren’t so good,” he explained — and now he’s back. “I think we’ve done all we can do now,” he said. “I’m a little burned out.”

Some of the younger soldiers complain, too. Roughly half of any of Third Infantry’s battalions are new recruits, coming to Iraq for the first time.

Some pine for the action of the invasion or the surge or Afghanistan, bored by the relative calm of today’s Iraq.

“I tell them, ‘How we got to this point wasn’t easy,’ ” Sergeant Martin said.

Even as the election gave way to a political stalemate that remains unresolved, the withdrawal proceeded apace.

By summer, Third Infantry’s First Brigade, the American force that seized Saddam Hussein International Airport in early April 2003, began to leave the bases that sprouted around Baghdad afterward and remain to this day.

The latest, in July, was Joint Security Station Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad in an area once known as the Triangle of Death.

Under strict orders, shaped by Congress, they had to inventory everything they took and everything they left behind: tents, generators, air-conditioners and even the blast walls.

“Four thousand nine hundred and eighteen,” Lt. Jonathan C. Baker said of the concrete barriers. He knew because he had to count them.

Among the things removed was a memorial to those sacrifices, which once stood outside the camp’s operations center, listing dozens of soldiers killed there since 2003.

The company’s orders were explicit: document all the memorials and ship home the ones that could be moved.

One unofficial memorial remained: fading paint on a blast wall commemorating two sergeants and four specialists from Troop E of the 108th Cavalry, part of the Georgia National Guard, who were killed there during the unit’s 2005-2006 deployment.

Time and the elements had worn the names all but illegible.

The wall could not be moved, but the orders were to erase any traces of the American military’s presence on what is now an Iraqi base.

Two days later a light blue patch covered it.

“From our vantage point, it’s a victory here,” Capt. Alex Zerio, a battalion staff officer overseeing the transfer, said, the base nearly deserted. “You can see. We’re out of here.”

For all the support of the nation’s leaders and the public for the uniform they wear, if not for the war itself, none of the soldiers who serve in Iraq have returned home to victory parades.

“It’s not going to be like V.E. Day or V.J. Day,” Master Sgt. Noel R. Sawyer said as he prepared to go on a patrol west of Mosul earlier this year.

“Rather than being a defining moment, it’s going to peter out,” he said of the end of the war. “In a way, it sucks, but it’s a good thing.”

As his armored vehicle rumbled out of the main American base in Mosul, Forward Operating Base Marez, a sign at the gate warned: “Complacency Kills. Stay Alert. Stay Alive.”

A blue sign on his MRAP, an armored vehicle designed to withstand improvised explosives planted on roadside — a vehicle that didn’t exist when the war began — said, “We’re on the road with the permission of the Iraqi police.”

Both signs were indications, symbols, of how much the war has changed, how much it has wound down already.

Iraq remains dangerous, with American soldiers at risk of attack every day, but since the fourth deployments began late last year, the Third Infantry has lost only 14 soldiers, mostly to accidents. Over all 44 American troops have died this year in Iraq, a fraction of the 4,415 killed since 2003.

With combat operations already largely over — with the exception of counterinsurgency raids by American and Iraqi special forces — the soldiers of the Third Infantry have served largely as trainers and advisers.

“It’s like, are you O.K.?” Sergeant Sawyer said, describing the gradual transition of passing authority to Iraq’s beleaguered security forces.

He stepped back, like a father taking his hands off a child’s bicycle, “Are you O.K.? Are you O.K.?”

He stepped back again, grinned widely and raised his thumbs.

The irony is that for many soldiers and officers, the end seems like a victory, if a subdued one, measured in the progress that has been made since the worst days of violence.

“We’re not doing this for a victory parade,” said Col. Roger Cloutier, commander of the First Brigade, which after the official end of combat will oversee security for much of Baghdad.

Even so, a parade of a sort was on his mind, his own sense of what has been accomplished after the worst bloodshed in 2006 and 2007.

“When I go to downtown Baghdad, and I’m stuck in traffic, and I’m not jumping curbs, and going against traffic, I’m driving in traffic like everyone else — and I’m looking to my left and right, and there’s a guy selling fish,” he said at Forward Operating Base Falcon, a base on Baghdad’s outskirts.

“He’s got a fish cart. He’s cooking fish. And there’s a watermelon stand and then there’s an electronic store right next to it, and people are everywhere. And I’m sitting in traffic and I’m going, ‘Man, this is unbelievable.’ That’s a victory parade for me.”

He then talked about his children, ages 9, 14 and 16, sounding very much like a father who had spent much of their young lives overseas.

“I want my family to be able to look at me and say, you know what — I’m getting emotional, guys — when America called, we as a family sacrificed,” he said.


Tim Arango contributed reporting.

    In Iraq War, Soldiers Say They Had a Job to Do, NYT, 19.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/world/middleeast/20legacy.html

V.A. Is Easing Rules to Cover Stress Disorder

July 7, 2010
The New York Times
By JAMES DAO

The government is preparing to issue new rules that will make it substantially easier for veterans who have been found to have post-traumatic stress disorder to receive disability benefits, a change that could affect hundreds of thousands of veterans from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.

The regulations from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which will take effect as early as Monday and cost as much as $5 billion over several years according to Congressional analysts, will essentially eliminate a requirement that veterans document specific events like bomb blasts, firefights or mortar attacks that might have caused P.T.S.D., an illness characterized by emotional numbness, irritability and flashbacks.

For decades, veterans have complained that finding such records was extremely time consuming and sometimes impossible. And in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, veterans groups assert that the current rules discriminate against tens of thousands of service members — many of them women — who did not serve in combat roles but nevertheless suffered traumatic experiences.

Under the new rule, which applies to veterans of all wars, the department will grant compensation to those with P.T.S.D. if they can simply show that they served in a war zone and in a job consistent with the events that they say caused their conditions. They would not have to prove, for instance, that they came under fire, served in a front-line unit or saw a friend killed.

The new rule would also allow compensation for service members who had good reason to fear traumatic events, known as stressors, even if they did not actually experience them.

There are concerns that the change will open the door to a flood of fraudulent claims. But supporters of the rule say the veterans department will still review all claims and thus be able to weed out the baseless ones.

“This nation has a solemn obligation to the men and women who have honorably served this country and suffer from the emotional and often devastating hidden wounds of war,” the secretary of veterans affairs, Eric K. Shinseki, said in a statement to The New York Times. “This final regulation goes a long way to ensure that veterans receive the benefits and services they need.”

Though widely applauded by veterans’ groups, the new rule is generating criticism from some quarters because of its cost. Some mental health experts also believe it will lead to economic dependency among younger veterans whose conditions might be treatable.

Disability benefits include free physical and mental health care and monthly checks ranging from a few hundred dollars to more than $2,000, depending on the severity of the condition.

“I can’t imagine anyone more worthy of public largess than a veteran,” said Dr. Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy group, who has written on P.T.S.D. “But as a clinician, it is destructive to give someone total and permanent disability when they are in fact capable of working, even if it is not at full capacity. A job is the most therapeutic thing there is.”

But Rick Weidman, executive director for policy and government affairs at Vietnam Veterans of America, said most veterans applied for disability not for the monthly checks but because they wanted access to free health care.

“I know guys who are rated 100 percent disabled who keep coming back for treatment not because they are worried about losing their compensation, but because they want their life back,” Mr. Weidman said.

Mr. Weidman and other veterans’ advocates said they were disappointed by one provision of the new rule: It will require a final determination on a veteran’s case to be made by a psychiatrist or psychologist who works for the veterans department.

The advocates assert that the rule will allow the department to sharply limit approvals. They argue that private physicians should be allowed to make those determinations as well.

But Tom Pamperin, associate deputy under secretary for policy and programs at the veterans department, said the agency wanted to ensure that standards were consistent for the assessments.

“V.A. and V.A.-contract clinicians go through a certification process,” Mr. Pamperin said. “They are well familiar with military life and can make an assessment of whether the stressor is consistent with the veterans’ duties and place of service.”

The new rule comes at a time when members of Congress and the veterans department itself are moving to expand health benefits and disability compensation for a variety of disorders linked to deployment. The projected costs of those actions are generating some opposition, though probably not enough to block any of the proposals.

The largest proposal would make it easier for Vietnam veterans with ischemic heart disease, Parkinson’s disease and hairy-cell leukemia to receive benefits.

The rule, proposed last fall by the veterans department, would presume those diseases were caused by exposure to Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant, if a veteran could simply demonstrate that he had set foot in Vietnam during the war.

The rule, still under review, is projected to cost more than $42 billion over a decade.

Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia and a Vietnam veteran, has asked that Congress review the proposal before it takes effect. “I take a back seat to no one in my concern for our veterans,” Mr. Webb said in a floor statement in May. “But I do think we need to have practical, proper procedures.”

More than two million service members have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001, and by some estimates 20 percent or more of them will develop P.T.S.D.

More than 150,000 cases of P.T.S.D. have been diagnosed by the veterans health system among veterans of the two wars, while thousands more have received diagnoses from private doctors, said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, an advocacy group.

But Mr. Sullivan said records showed that the veterans department had approved P.T.S.D. disability claims for only 78,000 veterans. That suggests, he said, that many veterans with the disorder are having their compensation claims rejected by claims processors. “Those statistics show a very serious problem in how V.A. handles P.T.S.D. claims,” Mr. Sullivan said.

Representative John Hall, Democrat of New York and sponsor of legislation similar to the new rule, said his office had handled dozens of cases involving veterans who had trouble receiving disability compensation for P.T.S.D., including a Navy veteran from World War II who twice served on ships that sank in the Pacific.

“It doesn’t matter whether you are an infantryman or a cook or a truck driver,” Mr. Hall said. “Anyone is potentially at risk for post-traumatic stress.”

    V.A. Is Easing Rules to Cover Stress Disorder, NYT, 7.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/us/08vets.html

Biden Visits Iraq, Offering Diplomacy Amid Impasse

July 3, 2010
The New York Times
By TIM ARANGO

BAGHDAD — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. landed here on Saturday evening for a visit that signaled a desire by the United States to step deeper into a four-month political stalemate that has become a backdrop to the drawdown of American forces this summer.

The visit is likely be seen by some through the prism of American reengagement in Iraq, and an answer to critics who say that the Obama administration has shown a lack of focus in setting policy for the United States’ future relationship with Iraq.

Mr. Biden, who arrived here with his wife, Jill, has scheduled a series of meetings with Iraq’s political leaders. Several political leaders welcomed his visit, expressing hope that more robust American diplomacy could resolve the country’s political paralysis.

“This visit is welcome at a time when politicians cannot find a solution themselves,” said Wael Abdul Latif, a newly elected member of Parliament from one of the two main Shiite blocs, the Iraqi National Alliance. “We have to take advantage of foreign help to find our solution, as we have since 2003 until now.”

As the war in Afghanistan escalates, America’s involvement here is winding down. The American military is reducing its forces, despite the lack of a new government almost four months after parliamentary elections on March 7.

That Iraqis surged to the polls that day, despite violence, raised hopes that America’s mission of establishing a democracy by force in a country accustomed to tyranny could yet be successful.

The aftermath of the vote, however, has emphasized that Iraq has not yet overcome its ethnic and sectarian divisions. Its newly elected political leaders — at times seemingly more divided than the populace — have been unable to form a government and choose a new prime minister.

After the election, Mr. Biden and other administration deliberately sought to remain out of the political and legal disputes that consumed weeks then months, even as other countries lobbied more openly for various outcomes. Many of Iraq’s leaders have travelled abroad seeking support, especially from Iran.

Mr. Biden, making his fourth trip to Iraq as vice president, oversees the administration’s Iraq policy, which has increasingly been overshadowed by the war in Afghanistan. President Obama, a critic of the war as a senator and a presidential candidate, has visited once as president.

Mr. Biden’s visit coincided with that of three prominent senators, John McCain, Joseph I. Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, signaling, intentionally or not, a diplomatic surge at what is viewed as a critical moment for Iraq’s fledgling democracy.

The visit over the July 4 weekend was billed by the White House as an opportunity for the Bidens to celebrate the holiday with American troops.

Mr. Biden is also scheduled to meet with the top American officials here, Gen. Ray Odierno and Ambassador Christopher R. Hill, as well the representative of the United Nations here, Ad Melkert.

The White House said he would also meet with Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and with Ayad Allawi, the leader of an opposition bloc who seeks to become the next prime minister.

Mr. Obama set an August deadline to end combat operations in Iraq and reduce the number of troops to 50,000. From 112,000 troops in the country at the beginning, the total has already dropped to about 80,000.


Steven Lee Myers and Omar al-Jawoshy contributed reporting.

    Biden Visits Iraq, Offering Diplomacy Amid Impasse, NYT, 3.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/world/middleeast/04iraq.html

U.S. Rushes to Complete Only Some Iraq Projects

July 3, 2010
The New York Times
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

FALLUJA, Iraq — After two devastating battles between American forces and Sunni insurgents in 2004, this city needed almost everything — new roads, clean water, electricity and health care, among them.

The American reconstruction authorities decided, however, that the first big rebuilding project to win hearts and minds would be a citywide sewage treatment system.

Now, after more than six years of work, $104 million spent, and without having connected a single house, American reconstruction officials have decided to leave the system unfinished, though they portray it as a success. It is just one element in a strategy to complete or abandon rebuilding projects before American troops leave in large numbers over the next year.

The push to complete reconstruction work as quickly as possible has been met with scorn by Iraqi officials, who say some of the projects are being finished with such haste that engineering standards have deteriorated to the point where workers are in danger and some of the work is at risk of collapse.

The Falluja sewage system, in particular, mirrors the extensive problems that have marked much of the American rebuilding effort: a grand plan to provide a modern facility that diverged from Iraq’s actual needs, and was further troubled by millions of wasted dollars, poor planning, construction flaws, ongoing violence and little attention to sustainability.

Despite efforts that have benefited the people, Iraqis also live with the failures and the shortcomings, like services dependent on a reliable electric supply, which does not exist.

In Dhi Qar and Babil Provinces, there are complaints that roads and buildings recently completed by the Americans do not meet basic construction standards. In Hilla, the capital of Babil Province, extensive cracking has been cited in a $7.4 million road built less than a year ago. Reconstruction officials, however, say the cracking is not out of the ordinary and presents no safety hazard.

“Since its opening, it has reduced congestion in the capital, made the roads safer by providing an alternative for large trucks to transit and spurred economic development along the new route,” Robert Wong, an American rebuilding official in the province, wrote in an e-mail message.

The work in Iraq has been of a consistently high quality, American officials say, adding that they have made worker safety a priority.

Additionally, the United States Embassy in Baghdad and American rebuilding officials say they are aware of only isolated concerns about the quality of reconstruction work now under way in the country or about projects’ being left undone.

Americans here also point out that thousands of projects, from bridges to honeybee farms, have been completed since the 2003 United States-led invasion without complaint about their quality, and that any recent complaints represent only a small percentage of the $53 billion American undertaking.

“I am not aware of the Iraqis having any sort of hard feelings that we will not finish current projects and award projects we said we would,” Col. Dionysios Anninos, head of the Army Corps of Engineers office in Iraq, wrote in an e-mail message. “We will finish strong!”

But some Iraqis have compared the current hurried reconstruction effort to the haphazard American withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975. United States officials acknowledge that the current effort to accelerate rebuilding projects in Iraq is based on plans to reduce the American military forces in the country to 50,000 by September from about 85,000 now, and to withdraw entirely by the end of 2011. Many reconstruction projects continue to require security provided by the American military.

In Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad, after American officials told local leaders that they intended to speed up projects because a nearby United States Army base was scheduled to close this summer, Iraqi officials said they found that construction standards had slipped so drastically that they ordered an immediate halt to all American-financed projects, even though American inspectors had deemed the work to be adequate.

Shaymaa Mohammad Ameen, who works with American reconstruction officials as a liaison for the Diyala Provincial Council, said American officials frequently threatened to leave when engineering standards and other safety issues were questioned by Iraqis.

“They constantly tell us that if we do not approve, they can always move the allocated funds to projects in other provinces,” she said.

In Baghdad and Salahuddin Provinces, local officials say Americans have simply walked away from partly completed police stations, schools, government buildings and water projects during the past several months without explanation.

Here in Falluja, in Anbar Province, the sewage treatment system has left some of the city’s busiest streets lined with open trenches for more than three years and engendered widespread resentment. The news that it will be left unfinished has provoked anger.

“I told the Americans if they want to leave a good impression on Falluja and to erase the bad feelings about the United States from the war that they should finish this project completely and properly,” said Hamed Hashim, president of the Falluja city council. “It was supposed to be finished in two years, then five years, and it still isn’t complete. There’s been no benefit to us.”

Reconstruction officials acknowledge that the project has been hindered by myriad problems including the area’s ongoing violence, which has interrupted work for periods of time.

The project was conceived to treat waste for all of Falluja’s 200,000 residents and to build in additional capacity for the city to grow by 50 percent.

But the new, diminished system will serve only 4,300 homes, or about one-sixth of Falluja’s population, according to American and Iraqi officials.

The cost will come to about $23,000 per house, although there are doubts whether any homes will be connected because of the expense for families.

Further, because both the project’s scope and efficiency have been reduced so dramatically, American officials acknowledge that the system may emit a foul odor if it ever does become functional.

For now, the situation that prompted American officials to give the sewage system top construction priority in 2004 continues to exist: Falluja remains dependent upon septic tanks that leak raw waste into streets and down storm drains and eventually into the Euphrates River, a main source of drinking water in Falluja and cities downstream.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing the project, said the scaled-down version of the system would include only pieces considered essential, including the treatment plant and three pump stations.

“I think the project was too ambitious — and then to transplant it to a war zone,” Colonel Anninos said. “It took awhile, but we are on the right track now, and we will leave behind a pretty good legacy once we get commitments from the government to provide fuel and chemicals.”

But after years of negotiations with the Americans, the Iraqi government has guaranteed neither. As an alternative, American planners said the system might need to rely heavily on backup generators for power, which creates its own set of problems — including that the treatment plant and pumps will require as much as 250 gallons of fuel each hour to operate in a country where fuel shortages remain commonplace.

The project is riddled with other unresolved questions as well, including whether the $3 million American officials had pledged for Iraq to link the system to houses was sufficient: American planners say it is; Iraqi engineers say it is not.

Both Iraqis and Americans acknowledge that the country has relatively few people with working sewage systems, and four Iraqis have died during construction, including at least one person overcome by toxic fumes, according to workers at the site. Iraqi engineers also say they have complained to Americans about the poor quality of some of the work, but have been ignored.

There are also concerns about the system’s sustainability once American engineers leave. American planners say training for Iraqi engineers to learn to operate and maintain the system would require at least several months, but a proposed yearlong training program has not been financed.

“This project was supposed to be a mercy,” said Ali Abed al-Karim, the owner of a store where an open trench out front prevents most customers from entering. “But it has been nothing but a curse.”


Duraid Adnan contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Anbar, Diyala and Babil Provinces.

    U.S. Rushes to Complete Only Some Iraq Projects, NYT, 3.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/world/middleeast/04reconstruct.html

Spirit Intact, Soldier Reclaims His Life

July 2, 2010
The New York Times
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

WASHINGTON

BRENDAN Marrocco and his brother, Michael, were constructing a summer bucket list, to get them out and about, trying new things. A Washington Nationals game versus their beloved Yankees — sure, since they were stuck here rather than home on Staten Island. Perhaps a ride on the Metro, with its reliable elevators. Pizza: definitely.

How about going to an amusement park? Michael suggested optimistically.

“Would that really be safe?” asked Brendan, a smirk crossing his lips.

The beach? “I don’t do beach anymore,” Brendan replied. Then what about the National Zoo, the one with the pandas? “They got pandas?” Brendan said, razzing his brother again. “Why didn’t you mention that?”

Clutching a pen firmly in his oversize rubber hand, Brendan Marrocco completed the lineup. A trip to Annapolis, Md. A ride on a boat. And, his personal favorite, firing guns. He drew a miniature picture of a handgun next to that one.

Each would be a major accomplishment for Brendan Marrocco, who a year before had come so close to death that doctors still marvel over how he dodged it. At 22, he was a spry, charming infantryman in the United States Army with a slicing wit and a stubborn streak. Then, on Easter Sunday 2009, a roadside bomb exploded under his vehicle, and he became the first veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to lose all four limbs in combat and survive.

In the nearly 15 months since, Specialist Marrocco has pushed past pain and exhaustion to learn to use his four prosthetics, though he can walk for only 15 minutes at a time. He has met sports stars like Jorge Posada and Tiger Woods — and become something of a star himself here at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where his moxie and humor are an inspiration to hundreds of other wounded service members. He has also met, fallen in love with and proposed marriage to a young woman who sees what is there rather than what is missing, though Specialist Marrocco has lately been questioning the relationship.

Now he is preparing for a rare and risky double arm transplant at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center that could profoundly improve his independence. One of the first things he will ask of his new arms is to drive a stick shift (the one time he got behind the wheel, in an empty parking lot, his rubber hand became unscrewed and was left dangling).

There have now been 988 service members who have lost limbs in combat since the first of the wars began in 2001, but Specialist Marrocco’s many wounds raised so many questions. Would he crumble mentally? Was his brain intact? How would he ever cope with daily needs like eating, bathing, even simply getting out of bed and putting on clothes?

“I would close my eyes and see a head and a torso,” his mother, Michelle Marrocco, 50, said of the early days. “How much worse could it be?”

But Specialist Marrocco, who was promoted from private in November, “has exceeded the expectations of everyone but himself,” said Maj. Benjamin Kyle Potter, 35, the orthopedic surgeon who has treated him since he arrived at Walter Reed last year, in April.

He can already write legibly (if left-handed), use a computer (but not play video games), work on a model car (with some help) and text furiously (a generational requirement).

He has not done it alone. His brother, Michael, 26, gave up a good-paying job at Citigroup to move into Walter Reed and, as he put it, “hang” with Brendan, shedding his tentative nature along the way. Their long-estranged parents, an engineer and a nurse, learned to communicate again as they kept vigil by Brendan’s bedside in the early months. And his indefatigable physical and occupational therapists take him out for Chinese food or watch ballgames with him on television long after their shifts end.

A contrarian by nature, Specialist Marrocco has become a bit of a homebody, preferring the haven of Walter Reed — where he is a role model — to the awkwardness of the larger world. And despite 14 operations, he refuses to let a dentist’s needle near his mouth to replace the eight teeth he lost in the blast.

One sweltering day this spring, a Marine sat in a wheelchair outside while Specialist Marrocco practiced walking nearby. The Marine had arrived at Walter Reed in May and was waiting for a shuttle bus. He lost both his arms and legs in Afghanistan, and is the wars’ second quadruple amputee.

The Marine watched Specialist Marrocco amble up an incline, determined to tame his prosthetics. “I’m hoping to be just like you soon, man,” he shouted.

NOT quite six months into his combat tour, Private First Class Marrocco sat behind the wheel of an armored vehicle as it made its way back to Forward Operating Base Summerall in Baiji, a town in northern Iraq. His was the last truck in a four-vehicle convoy on a routine mission escorting a group of soldiers from one base to another. A machine gunner, Private Marrocco had become a driver a few days before.

“It was one of my first driving missions,” he remembered. “I wasn’t driving the truck I was supposed to drive.”

He had arrived in Iraq on Halloween 2008, eager to fight. But by then, there was little fight left in Iraq. Violence had diminished; American forces were dropping in number. His days were spent mostly on patrol, conducting occasional raids and lifting weights at the base’s makeshift gym.

Growing up in the Huguenot section of Staten Island, Brendan had been smart and outgoing, but preferred racing cars to taking tests. His parents enrolled him at Staten Island Academy, hoping the prep-school atmosphere would knock sense into him. It did not.

“He is a very headstrong individual,” explained his mother. “He has taken it to an art form at this point.”

College did not stick, either, so he enlisted in the Army. When he got to Fort Benning, Ga., in January 2008 for basic training, he felt grounded for the first time in his life. Here was a career he could love.

“You kept the danger in the back of your mind,” he said. “You didn’t want it to happen, but you had to train for it.”

It is difficult, though, to train for hidden bombs, which is what makes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so insidious. All he can recall of that Easter Sunday drive back to his base is the flash of light against the black of the early morning. “I hit a pressure wire,” he said. “It was across the road.”

The bomb, a particularly lethal one known as an explosively formed penetrator, shredded his armored vehicle. His best Army buddy, Specialist Michael J. Anaya, was killed. Another soldier was wounded; the fourth man in the truck walked away unharmed. Roadside bombs do that — choose the soldier on the right but not the left, the one from Florida but not Georgia.

Maj. Jayson Aydelotte, 38, the trauma surgeon on duty at nearby Camp Speicher, got the call before dawn. Incoming wounded. He shook the sleep from his eyes and got into his scrubs.

Private Marrocco was rushed in. Within eight minutes, his clothes were off and he was connected to a giant bag of intravenous fluid. Both arms and a leg had been sheared off. The other leg, the left, “was hanging literally by a thread,” Major Aydelotte recalled.

Doctors quickly began pumping blood into Private Marrocco’s body, but it sprayed straight onto the ceiling and walls. Aghast, Major Aydelotte looked more closely. One of the two carotid arteries, which carry blood from the heart to the brain, was severed, an injury so lethal it can kill within minutes. “When fragments fly, they make tons of holes in you,” the doctor explained. “He had a hole in his neck. But we didn’t suspect it to be a carotid injury because it wasn’t bleeding.”

It was not bleeding because there was so little blood left in his body — 80 percent of it had spilled out in the field. “Any one of his injuries was life-threatening,” Major Aydelotte said. “It’s incredible.”

The medical team cleaned out each amputation wound, took a vein from his groin to reconstruct the carotid, and sewed him up top to bottom. The same day, he was transferred 85 miles to a larger base in Balad, and then on to Germany. He had survived the initial trauma and surgery. But other serious threats loomed: Infection. Pneumonia. Brain injury.

One day a couple of months ago, Major Aydelotte happened to run into Specialist Marrocco at Walter Reed. “I didn’t tell him who I was,” said Major Aydelotte, who had quietly kept tabs on his patient’s progress. “I didn’t want any kind of accolades from him. His life was saved, but I didn’t do it. He was meant to be saved.”

BRENDAN’S father let the phone ring again and again. Nobody important ever called his home number. Plus, it was Easter Sunday. The ringing was so maddeningly persistent, though, he finally picked up.

“Mr. Alex Marrocco?” the official-sounding voice said. Mr. Marrocco hung up, assuming it was a telemarketer. Then the ringing started again. A houseguest answered. “It’s a major such-and-such from Hawaii,” she reported.

Mr. Marrocco blanched, his mind reeling back to what he had learned at basic training graduation back at Fort Benning: If you get a knock at the door, the soldier is dead. If you get a phone call, the soldier is wounded.

The official-sounding voice, hoping to cushion the blow, asked when he had last spoken to Brendan. The day before. They had talked about a motorcycle that the father was eyeing. The son, a motor head, was urging him to buy it; one day, they could ride side by side.

Not wishing to delay the inevitable, Mr. Marrocco demanded, “Tell me what happened and where it happened.” The voice paused, then said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Brendan was involved in an explosion and he lost both his legs and both his arms.”

Mr. Marrocco’s knees buckled. He fell on the kitchen floor.

His ex-wife was in her car that morning after church and checked the voice mail on her cellphone. There was an urgent message from the Army: “Brendan has been involved in an accident.”

The hours that followed were a blur. To stay focused, Mrs. Marrocco tucked her despair under her nurse’s cap and digested the facts from the doctors at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Her son’s legs were both amputated above the knee. His right arm was amputated above the elbow. The left arm retained its elbow; thank God for small favors, she thought.

His cheekbone had collapsed, and the retina in his left eye was badly damaged. The beefed-up body armor and helmet had fulfilled their missions. Private Marrocco’s torso — his internal organs — and his head were mostly intact. Then she heard about the carotid.

“How did he live?” Mrs. Marrocco asked.

“We don’t know how he lived,” the doctor said.

The parents, who separated seven years ago, flew together to Germany, where their son was in a medically induced coma. He was swollen and burnt and stitched, with a patch over one eye. His hair was the texture of a Brillo pad. His lips were puffed out of proportion.

“Had I not been told it was my son, I would not have recognized him,” Mr. Marrocco said. Mrs. Marrocco struggled to see beyond the wounds, the respirator and the missing arms and legs. Her son, who was small to begin with, had all but disappeared. “I could not accept it,” she said last month. “And I haven’t accepted it.”

By Wednesday night, about 90 hours after the blast, Private Marrocco was in Washington in Walter Reed’s intensive care unit. He drifted in and out of consciousness. In time, he began to realize something was wrong with his arms, though he could not see them well at first, in part because one eye was swollen shut.

“He looked up at me and lifted his arms up,” his father recalled. “He kind of looked at them and realized they were bandaged and they were different sizes. He couldn’t talk. He had a tube down his throat. But he mouthed the words, ‘I have no hands.’ I nodded to him. And that was it. He put his arms down. ‘O.K.’ ”

Mr. Marrocco did not have the heart to tell his son about his legs. “During that first week, Brendan kept pleading, ‘Dad, Dad, take my boots off. My feet are burning. My feet are burning.’ I would say, ‘Brendan, your boots are off.’ ”

SITTING by her son’s bedside the next week, shortly after he emerged from an operation, Mrs. Marrocco noticed that his left residual leg looked particularly bloody. The nurse on duty said a doctor would come by soon to take a look. Mrs. Marrocco demanded one immediately. Then her son’s blood pressure began to drop precipitously.

“That was one of the worst experiences of my life without a doubt,” she said. “I went back to my room and called one of my best friends, whose son is a youth minister, to get the children to pray. God hears children’s prayers better. I said, ‘Get the prayer chain going. I’m losing him. I’m losing him.’

“If I hadn’t been there,” she added, “I feel I would have lost him.”

In those early weeks, the worst of the pain often seized Private Marrocco in the middle of the night. On good nights, he slept 20 minutes and then wrestled with pain for three or four hours. He tossed and turned. He bobbed up and down. And his father sat watching, unable to do anything to alleviate the agony. It was, Mr. Marrocco said, “the hardest thing for me to bear.”

The family wondered about Brendan’s brain. Bomb blasts are notorious for shaking up the head so severely they leave tracks of destruction, despite the Kevlar helmets. Soldiers who return home with even moderate brain injuries can have trouble holding jobs or remembering to pick up a child at day care.

“You can’t rehab a brain-dead individual,” Mrs. Marrocco said. “How would you show him to do a situp if he doesn’t understand that?”

After Private Marrocco’s brain passed a battery of tests, his family then fretted about his mental health. Could he avoid the powerful punch of depression and post-traumatic stress, a one-two so harrowing it can cripple a soldier as easily as a bullet? Not long after Private Marrocco regained consciousness, Sgt. Justin Minisall, who had been wounded in the bombing, ducked in for a visit. Private Marrocco asked how Specialist Anaya, the gunner in the truck that day, was doing.

“The sergeant looked at me with wide eyes, and I looked at him,” the private’s father said. “The sergeant told him, ‘He didn’t survive.’ Brendan just laid there and, kind of like everything else, took it in and didn’t really say much.”

A week or two later, Brendan told his father, “I am really sorry that Mike died, but I am glad to be alive.” Mr. Marrocco, knowing how close the two were, saw that as a good omen for his mental health. Survivor guilt can sometimes cut too deeply. “That moment made me think, ‘He will be O.K.’ ”

As the weeks passed, the Marroccos were forced to look further down the road. The parents each considered quitting work, but each had a mortgage to pay. And the son, while grateful for his divorced parents’ dedication, was afraid they might suffocate him. He was a grown man. He had fought in a war.

Then his brother did something nobody expected: he volunteered to leave his friends, his social life and his job in information technology at Citigroup, and move to Washington.

The brothers were close, but they were opposites: Brendan the brash, outgoing, rule-defying joker; Michael, reserved and shy, the kind of guy who prefers melting into the background. Mrs. Marrocco worried that Michael, not a caregiver by nature, was not up to the painstaking job.

“It needed to be done, and I was best prepared to do it,” Michael explained in retrospect. “Instead of making a company a million dollars, I can see where my efforts are going.”

Since May 2009, the brothers have lived on the Walter Reed campus in connecting dormitory-style rooms, with a kitchen and maid service. The Army does not charge Michael rent and it gives him $64 a day for living expenses. The military also underwrites all of Brendan’s expenses, including the hand transplants, and pays him a $2,400 monthly salary.

“This tragedy has made Michael a better person,” Mrs. Marrocco said. “He is more talkative, more interactive than he’s ever been, more forthcoming, and he makes plans for himself and for the future, which is different from where Michael was.”

THE two brothers spend most waking hours together; Michael takes time for himself while Brendan has his daily nap. They watch television in the evenings, or at least argue about watching television. Michael wants “South Park.” Brendan wants “Law & Order” or “NCIS.” The older brother wakes the younger each morning, gives him his pills and a glass of water, and “that’s about it,” Michael said. Brendan has come a long way from when he struggled to put on his own T-shirt and brush his teeth. The two leave at 9 a.m. for physical therapy, a short wheelchair ride away.

Michael also keeps track of his brother’s many mechanical parts. “So many things to remember,” Specialist Marrocco joked. “Arms. Legs. We’ll get out the door and down the block and I’ll say, ‘Mike, you got my arm?’ ”

His left arm is a rubber myoelectric model, complete with a hand, that responds to muscle impulses; he wears it most of the time. The right is a primitive body-pressure hook that he puts on mainly for therapy sessions. He has the high-tech C-Leg X2, which has a knee joint sensor and is not yet available to the general public.

He mastered standing in his prostheses within two months, and walking a few steps shortly after that. But walking long stretches is infinitely more difficult, a bit like balancing on stilts, only without the benefit of knees or real arms for balance. He spends a lot of time doing situps and side body lifts to build up core strength, then transfers to the parallel bars to walk with support if he needs it. Unlike other soldiers, he does not listen to an iPod while exercising, so he can fully concentrate on the instructions of his therapist, Luis Garcia, a former medic in the Army Reserve.

Of all the leg amputees Mr. Garcia has worked with over five years at Walter Reed, Specialist Marrocco has been the quickest to adjust to his legs. “He has incredible balance, incredible drive,” Mr. Garcia said.

Before and after lunch in the cafeteria he has occupational therapy: writing, picking up small items like popcorn, positioning a pin on a beret, baking a cake, opening a can. In his wheelchair, a BlackBerry balanced on his thigh, Specialist Marrocco pecks furiously at the keys with his rubber hand or with his “fluffy finger,” an upside-down pencil contraption created just for this task.

Unlike using the prosthetic legs, using mechanical arms does not hurt physically. But the tasks are mentally taxing, and Specialist Marrocco occasionally nods off at the table.

“I want Brendan to be able to eat cereal,” his brother told Maj. Sarah Mitsch, the occupational therapist, one spring afternoon.

“We’ll have to get a swivel spoon,” Major Mitsch replied.

Around Walter Reed, Specialist Marrocco is a celebrity. Tour groups stop by to wish him well. Invitations pour in for sporting events. At the Military Advanced Training Center, where the wounded learn anew how to walk, run, box and climb, he inspires with his toughness and wit.

“It’s funny the complaining that goes on when Brendan’s not there,” Mr. Garcia said. “And then when he’s there, everybody shuts up. It puts things in perspective for them. It puts things in perspective for me, too.

“I never catch him feeling sorry for himself. I’ve never heard him say, ‘I wish this had never happened.’ ”

There are times, though, when Specialist Marrocco’s optimism and confidence are no match for his discomfort and fatigue. He rarely sleeps more than four hours a night and still suffers phantom pain in his right arm. He can be cranky and not keen on visitors; one of his pet peeves is people who talk too much. He jokingly calls his comrades with below-the-knee amputations “the paper cuts.”

But he does not blame the military or curse the war. If he had his way, he said, he would be back in Iraq, behind a machine gun. “I have no idea why I’m so happy,” he said.

It did not take long after the bombing for his wry, dark humor to break through. “Look at all the legroom I got!” he announced after boarding a first-class flight to Hawaii in November 2009, to reunite with his unit as it returned from Iraq. And, he explained, being able to feel your arms and legs when they are not actually there — which happens after traumatized nerves go awry — has its advantages. “I can move my hand around and give someone the finger,” he said. “I can do these things, and no one can see.”

Once, when he asked for a glass of water, a startled woman responded, “but you don’t have any arms or legs!” His tart retort: “I have a mouth!”

But Specialist Marrocco does admit to “down days,” and acknowledged, “This does suck.”

“You know, Mama,” Mrs. Marrocco recalled him saying quietly one day, “it would have been really nice if they left me even one hand.”

KATE BARTO, a beautiful, grounded 23-year-old from Johnstown, Pa., who was an intern with a nonprofit group at Walter Reed last summer, could not help but notice Specialist Marrocco in his wheelchair. But it was his charming wisecracks that really got her attention.

“He had a great spirit about him,” said Ms. Barto, who now works for Hope for the Warriors, another organization that supports wounded service members. “And we became friends.”

The two talked on the phone constantly. “I would fall asleep on the phone with him,” she said. Her only hesitation in getting more involved was that she had just come out of a three-year relationship. The rest, she said, she could handle.

Her family and friends worried. They feared empathy was overriding common sense. But Ms. Barto has a gift: She can see clearly and comfortably past Specialist Marrocco’s disfigurement and disabilities.

“One of my mom’s concerns was that I was feeling sorry for him,” Ms. Barto said. “ ‘Do you really love him? Do you pity him?’ There is no reason to pity him. He had a horrible thing happen to him. But he is no less of a person.

“Our lives will be as difficult as we make them,” she added. “As long as he believes I am going to be around and I love him, we’re going to be O.K.”

On Thanksgiving, Ms. Barto and Specialist Marrocco were playing the question game in his room. She would ask a question and he would answer, then vice versa. “He suddenly asked, ‘Will you marry me?’ ” Ms. Barto recalled. “I said, ‘Is this for real?’ Yes, he replied, ‘Will you marry me?’ ” She said yes.

A couple of weeks later, he slipped the ring, with three diamonds, into his wheelchair pocket for her to find. “It completely blew me away,” she said.

But theirs is not a fairy tale. In April, Ms. Barto said, Specialist Marrocco grew increasingly stressed as the calendar ticked toward his “alive day” — the anniversary of the explosion that nearly killed him — and he broke off their relationship. They reconciled, but then last week decided to take another break.

“We still talk,” Ms. Barto said on Friday, her voice cracking with emotion. “We’re backing off, giving the relationship a rest, giving him the space I think he needs.” She still has the ring.

Despite his remarkable progress, Specialist Marrocco is still struggling to find his place in the wider world. His family tries to coax him out of his Walter Reed fortress for more trips to shopping malls, restaurants and sporting events. But he finds such outings draining and awkward. People stare, or look away. They ramble, not knowing what to say. “I just tell them I got blown up,” he shrugged. “I don’t like it, but I can’t do anything about it. I just pretend they are not looking.”

His mother was more direct: “He hates it. He absolutely hates it.”

He is, however, eagerly anticipating leaving Walter Reed to get a new pair of arms.

THE donor has to be a man. The blood and tissue types have to match, of course. But so do the skin tone and size. The call could come at any time, and the Marrocco brothers will jump into Michael’s black Monte Carlo and high-tail it 237 miles to the University of Pittsburgh to prepare for surgery. They have 10 hours to get there to give the doctors enough time to do their work.

Dr. W. P. Andrew Lee, the hospital’s chief of plastic surgery, will lead four teams of more than 20 surgeons to give Specialist Marrocco, as he put it, the chance to live “a normal life” (a fifth team will handle the donor). His legs would still be missing. But new, human arms would mean he could put on the prosthetics himself. And: hug tightly, drive, twist open pill containers, catch himself when he falls, fix an engine, play Modern Warfare 2 and greatly increase his chances of getting a job.

“It’s going to give me so much more independence to do more stuff on my own,” Specialist Marrocco noted.

Nine people in the United States and about 34 others around the world have received hand or arm transplants since the first successful one in France in 1998. Dr. Lee has performed three in the past 14 months; in May 2009, his team did the first double hand transplant in the United States, and in February, the nation’s first double transplant that extended above the elbow, like Specialist Marrocco’s.

The transplant is mind-boggling in its complexity. The doctors must attach nerves, blood vessels, muscles, tendons and elbow joints, all within about 11 hours. A new antirejection protocol that Dr. Lee formulated should reduce the risk of infection, organ damage and diabetes.

Specialist Marrocco’s nerves would begin regenerating one inch a month — it could be a year or two before he gains feeling in the fingertips. It will never be like before the blast, Dr. Lee said, but the new arms can be almost as good in terms of touch and motor skills.

Unlike a heart or liver transplant, “a hand transplant does not save lives,” Dr. Lee noted. “It improves the quality of life.” He added, “We have to be very careful to balance benefits versus the risk.”

Specialist Marrocco wonders whether he will be able to get tattoo artists to make house calls to decorate the new specimens; he wants something to memorialize Specialist Anaya.

“You’ve got to give them a reason to come,” said Mr. Garcia, the physical therapist.

How about, “I have no arms and no legs and I’m in a wheelchair,” Specialist Marrocco answered.

He expects to spend six months rehabilitating in Pittsburgh (his brother will move there with him). The time there may set back his leg progress, so he will likely return to Walter Reed for further therapy.

Back home in Staten Island, several charities — the Stephen Siller Children’s Foundation, Building Homes for Heroes and a fund dedicated to Specialist Marrocco — have been raising money to build him a wheelchair-accessible house. In August, the actor Gary Sinise, who played a combative double amputee Vietnam veteran in “Forrest Gump,” is scheduled, with his Lt. Dan Band, to support the effort.

Ms. Barto is still hoping to move to New York with him, after a wedding at the National World War II Memorial on the Mall here in Washington. She said they had talked about having children, and that Specialist Marrocco wanted a girl, if only so he could answer the door when a date arrived and say the words, “You should see what happened to the other guy.”

    Spirit Intact, Soldier Reclaims His Life, NYT, 2.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/nyregion/04soldier.html

War in Iraq Defies U.S. Timetable for End of Combat

July 2, 2010
The New York Times
By TIM ARANGO

NEAR TULUL AL-BAQ, Iraq — President Obama has set an August deadline for the end of the combat mission in Iraq. Here at this makeshift desert camp in the insurgent badlands of northern Iraq, a mission is under way that is not going to stop then: American soldiers hunting terrorists and covertly watching an Iraqi checkpoint staffed by police officers whom the soldiers say they do not trust.

“They’re not checking anybody, and they’re wondering why I.E.D.’s are getting in to town,” said Staff Sgt. Kelly E. Young, 39, from Albertville, Ala., as he watched the major roadway that connects Baghdad with Mosul, regarded as the country’s most dangerous city. He referred to improvised explosive devices, the military term for homemade bombs.

The August deadline might be seen back home as a milestone in the fulfillment of President Obama’s promise to end the war in Iraq, but here it is more complex. American soldiers still find and kill enemy fighters, on their own and in partnership with Iraqi security forces, and will continue to do so after the official end of combat operations. More Americans are certain to die, if significantly fewer than in the height of fighting here.

The withdrawal, which will reduce the number of American troops to 50,000 — from 112,000 earlier this year and close to 165,000 at the height of the surge — is a feat of logistics that has been called the biggest movement of matériel since World War II. It is also an exercise in semantics.

What soldiers today would call combat operations — hunting insurgents, joint raids between Iraqi security forces and United States Special Forces to kill or arrest militants — will be called “stability operations.” Post-reduction, the United States military says the focus will be on advising and training Iraqi soldiers, providing security for civilian reconstruction teams and joint counterterrorism missions.

“In practical terms, nothing will change,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, the top American military spokesman in Iraq. “We are already doing stability operations.” Americans ceased major combat in Iraq long ago, and that has been reflected in the number of casualties. So far this year, 14 soldiers have been killed by hostile fire, and 27 more from accidents, suicides and other noncombat causes, according to icasualties.org.

As fighting involving Americans tapered off, thousands of items of Iraq war matériel were packed and shipped to Afghanistan. The complex and flexible mission of cutting down forces while simultaneously keeping up the fight with a festering insurgency could prove a model for Afghanistan, where withdrawal is scheduled to begin next year. Next summer, the Americans will begin to leave Afghanistan, too, and they probably won’t be able to halt fighting completely as they do so.

Beyond August the next Iraq deadline is the end of 2011, when all American troops are supposed to be gone. But few believe that America’s military involvement in Iraq will end then. The conventional wisdom among military officers, diplomats and Iraqi officials is that after a new government is formed, talks will begin about a longer-term American troop presence.

“I like to say that in Iraq, the only thing Americans know for certain, is that we know nothing for certain,” said Brett H. McGurk, a former National Security Council official in Iraq and current fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The exception is what’s coming once there’s a new government: they will ask to amend the Security Agreement and extend the 2011 date. We should take that request seriously. ”

The mission here in the desert, a temporary base of armored vehicles and one tent for two platoons, provided a vivid example of what American forces still do on the ground and, military officers said, would be able to do after the reduction.

“They needed someone killed, so they sent us,” said Maj. Bryan L. Logan, squadron operations officer for the Third Squadron, Seventh Cavalry Regiment, referring to an insurgent cell that had been planting bombs near the highway.

Iraqi security forces were not present or informed of the mission, a seeming contravention of the emphasis from commanders that operations be conducted jointly, and at the request of the Iraqis. Lt. Col. Michael Jason, the brigade operations officer for the Third Infantry Division’s Second Brigade, said that the operation was unusual because it didn’t “have an Iraqi face.”

The operation was justified by a liberal interpretation of the security agreement that allows unilateral operations to protect American forces, or, in Colonel Jason’s words, to address “unique American problem sets.”

“That’s what they are doing,” he said, referring to his soldiers.

For the troops living in the desert, it was a return to the soldiering life many hadn’t experienced since earlier in the war or during training back home: eating Meals Ready to Eat, or M.R.E.’s; sleeping on top of vehicles or on the ground; firing artillery, albeit nonlethal, illuminated rounds to remind insurgents that Americans are still here.

The legacy of the United States’ seven-year war here will partly pivot on how well the Iraqi police and army secure the country after the Americans are gone. American military officers praise the rising capability of the Iraqi security forces — especially in securing the country for the parliamentary elections in March. But questions of loyalty that arose during the sectarian warfare of 2006 and 2007 remain.

So as some soldiers in the desert hunted for insurgents, others felt they needed make sure that Iraqis at the checkpoint to Mosul were actually doing their jobs and stopping and searching vehicles. In Mosul, suicide attacks still regularly inflict damage.

The unit did not find the insurgents. But another unit close by found three of them laying a bomb. Days later, officers watched a video taken from the gunsight of an attack helicopter that killed the insurgents with a Hellfire missile.

In the closing window of the American war here, commanders are still trying to kill as many militants as possible, because they say it keeps American forces and Iraqis safer. But in doing so, the United States military command sometimes plays down the American role in the killing.

Almost daily, press releases are issued that announce the killing or capture of terrorists by the Iraqi security forces, usually noting the involvement of “U.S. advisers.” Sometimes credit is not given when American soldiers kill militants.

In April, the third-ranking member of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was killed by Iraqi forces, according to a press release. But officers on the ground said he was killed by fire from an American Bradley Fighting Vehicle. And no press release has been issued about the three insurgents who were recently killed by the American Hellfire missile.

As the soldiers were packing up the desert camp, Major Logan, who saw combat in Iraq in 2003, stood watching and quoted Robert Duvall from a movie about another American war, Vietnam, one that ended badly: “Someday this war is going to end.”

    War in Iraq Defies U.S. Timetable for End of Combat, NYT, 2.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/03/world/middleeast/03iraq.html

Killers Stalk Politicians as Iraq Seeks Government

June 30, 2010
The New York Times
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and ZAID THAKER

MOSUL, Iraq — Since Iraq’s parliamentary elections in March, killers in this violent northern city have stalked members of the Iraqiya Party, which won the most seats, part of a nationwide outbreak of violence directed at officials and other civic leaders.

Some 150 politicians, civil servants, tribal chiefs, police officers, Sunni clerics and members of Awakening Councils have been assassinated throughout Iraq since the election — bloodshed apparently aimed at heightening turmoil in the power vacuum created by more than three months without a national government.

During the past 72 hours alone, at least eight Iraqi police officers, an Iraqi Army general, a government intelligence official, a member of an Awakening Council, a tribal sheik, and a high ranking staff member of Baghdad’s local government have all been assassinated in either Baghdad or Mosul.

The level of violence is low compared to the worst here over the last seven years, yet deeply unsettling because it seems so precisely focused.

It is certainly unsettling to Dildar Abdullah al-Zibari, the local leader here, who is fairly certain there are those who would like him and others dead.

Since March, he says, killers have stalked members of Iraqiya, which is now locked in a struggle with a coalition led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to form a government. Ayad Allawi, who heads the Iraqiya Party, has spoken in recent days about a foiled plot to kill him at Baghdad’s international airport. Mr. Maliki said that he, too, had been a target of assassination attempts and that it was a risk all Iraqi leaders had to come to terms with in the current unresolved political climate.

Here in Mosul, one of the last pockets of regular fighting in Iraq, political leaders believe that the continuing effort to form a government is driving the killing and the general sense of fear among politicians representing Iraqiya.

Four Iraqiya Party members have been gunned down in recent months, three of them in and around Mosul. There have been more than a dozen unsuccessful assassination attempts during the past several weeks, party officials said. They have responded by variously arming themselves and going into hiding.

Instead of the car bombs of the past, the current weapons of choice are hit squads equipped with guns fitted with homemade silencers, or “sticky bombs” — small but deadly explosives attached to vehicles with adhesives or magnets.

Iraqiya officials say they suspect that the Iraqi Army and police are involved in hunting them down and no longer bother to report murder attempts to the authorities.

“The security forces are controlled by politicians, and I don’t expect professionalism from the army because I don’t have political clout in Baghdad,” said Mr. Zibari, deputy chairman of the Nineveh Province provincial council. “Anything could happen at any time.”

Members of Mr. Zibari’s party speak darkly about the inevitability of more killings. “We’re afraid for our members in Parliament, and also for the candidates who didn’t win the election,” said Zuhair Muhsin Mohammed al-Araji, a newly elected Iraqiya member of Parliament from Mosul. “Some candidates have moved out of their houses, and some have temporarily left their jobs to protect themselves.”

The fear among Iraqiya officials in Mosul is not unusual in Iraq, where anyone in a position of influence is vulnerable to threats, kidnapping and worse. But while political leaders during Iraq’s recent violence typically knew who wanted them killed, party leaders in Mosul say politics in the city have become so tumultuous since the election that narrowing the possibilities down to a single group is no longer possible. The list is endlessly long and contradictory, vague to the point of including every possible enemy: Party leaders put near the top of their lists Iran and its Shiite militia allies in Iraq, which Iraqiya believes are bent on eliminating it because of the party’s popularity among Sunnis, and its criticisms of Iran’s influence in Iraqi politics.

On the other hand, party officials say, Sunni extremist groups like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia might be behind the slayings because of the groups’ history of trying to systematically eliminate Sunnis who cooperate in the democratic process.

Iraqiya says it also suspects Kurdish political parties, which are vying with Iraqiya for political predominance in the province.

Still another theory suggests that the Qaeda cell operating in Mosul is financed and operated by Iranians and Kurds as a way to cover their tracks.

But Iraqiya officials here save most of the conjecture for the government of Mr. Maliki, which they say has employed dirty tricks to keep them out of power.

Most of the victims, they point out, have belonged to the Iraqiyun political faction of Iraqiya, which they believe signals an orchestrated attempt to frighten Iraqiyun into breaking away and joining Mr. Maliki.

“The people in power want to keep their power,” Mr. Zibari said recently, in Mosul’s heavily guarded provincial council headquarters building. “I am more frightened of the central government than I am of Al Qaeda.”

Mr. Maliki’s government has denied any role in a campaign of violence against Iraqiya. They blame Al Qaeda, but acknowledge that it is far from clear whether Iraq’s army or police have played a role.

“Nobody can say with complete assurance that our security forces are not infiltrated or have not been compromised,” by insurgents, said Ali al-Moussawi, an adviser to the prime minister.

But Mr. Moussawi said Iraqiya was exploiting the killings to gain political leverage.

“It is a dangerous thing to use security as part of political bargaining,” he said. “No one should use it for their political benefit or to try to weaken the prime minister or his coalition.”

Instead of complaining, Mr. Moussawi said Iraqiya should be thankful for the security gains made in Iraq by Mr. Maliki. “Who settled down the security situation in the country — angels or the government?” he asked.

Despite those improvements, Mosul and Nineveh Provinces are combustible. They are divided among Sunni Arabs, many of whom hew to Baath Party principles; Kurds, who are seeking to integrate parts of the province into semi-autonomous Kurdistan; Christians, who continue to be killed and forced to flee; Turkmens, Yazidis, and others.

Atheel al-Nujaifi, the provincial governor and a member of Iraqiya, said the party’s members in Mosul were being killed because Iraqiya held both the governorship and a majority of seats on the provincial council, and therefore exercised a great deal of power.

“We are caught in the middle between Iran, Al Qaeda and the conflict with the Kurds,” Mr. Nujaifi said. “I don’t think there’s any way to run from it. This is the destiny of our country.”

The governor said he was unconvinced that Iraqiya members who were recently elected to Parliament and who are now staying at a highly secured Baghdad hotel would be any safer than they had been in Mosul.

“It might be even hotter at the Rashid Hotel,” he said.

    Killers Stalk Politicians as Iraq Seeks Government, NYT, 30.6.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/world/middleeast/01slay.html

In Iraq, Divvying Up the Spoils of Political War

June 25, 2010
The New York Times
By ANTHONY SHADID

BAGHDAD — In today’s telling, the description is as ageless as the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers: Iraq is a country of Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. To understand its politics is to begin and to end there, guided by its immutable truths.

It was, of course, never so simple.

The facile shorthand has always failed to appreciate the byzantine diversity of the place, where class, pedigree and even tribe often mean more than sect and ethnicity. Iraqis themselves still recoil at the notion of shaping their politics around the idea. American officials have never quite taken credit for their often decisive role in making that idea the axis around which politics here have regrettably revolved.

Perhaps that is why the negotiations these days over a new government are so pivotal to Iraq’s future, seven years after the United States overthrew the old order.

Even to Iraqis, those talks are often mind-numbing in their tendency to deadlock; three months after an election, there is hardly any progress toward forming a coalition. But in the broadest terms, the decisions eventually made may determine whether Iraq adopts a system of quotas for running a Middle Eastern state that has been tried only in Lebanon, where its record is spotty (having failed to prevent, and was perhaps responsible for, two civil wars, along with a slew of occupations, invasions, crises and run-of-the-mill gridlock).

Iraq is writ far larger, though, with the stakes far greater.

For four years now, a Shiite Arab has been prime minister, a Kurd president, a Sunni Arab speaker of the Parliament. The precedent of a second time may be difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. To a remarkable extent, the prospect underlies the negotiations, the bargaining, the horse-trading and the deal-making aimed so far at crafting a coalition.

“My dear,” said Rafie al-Issawi, the deputy prime minister and a leading negotiator in those talks, “we want to escape the model of Lebanon.”

Grimly, Izzat al-Shahbandar, a politician on the other side of the divide, wondered whether it wasn’t too late. “We’re headed in the wrong direction,” he lamented.

Where Iraq ends up has implications for the fate of its increasingly unpopular political order, unable to deliver even basic necessities. It has ramifications far beyond its borders as well, in a region always more diverse than its reputation, where relations between majorities and minorities remain unresolved. In short, can democracy exist in countries where not all citizens feel equal?

As with so much in Iraq, the present draws on 2003, when L. Paul Bremer, the American proconsul here, formed the Iraqi Governing Council. The body was a bit of a sham, even to some of its own members; no one really agreed on what it was supposed to do — provide a cover for the American occupation or help rule a collapsing state.

Far greater, though, was its legacy.

The United States was always simplistic in seeing Iraq, before the invasion, through the lens of sect and ethnicity. In that, it found like minds in members of Iraq’s formerly exiled opposition, which largely operated according to the same calculus. Mr. Bremer relied inordinately on them to choose the Governing Council, and they demanded numbers commensurate with what they saw as their demographic weight. Sect and ethnicity was thus a key determinant of who was chosen. In the end, with those decisions, the United States, aided by the exiles, helped bring to post-invasion reality its own pre-invasion preconceptions.

“I honestly believe that we all share responsibility,” said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, one of the members of the body. He blamed Saddam Hussein’s withering oppression of Shiites and Kurds for forcing the once-exiled opposition to coalesce the way it did; indeed, Mr. Hussein did much to reinforce Iraq’s divisions. But, Mr. Rubaie added, “I think we fell into a trap.”

In words at least, politicians have pledged to end the system of muhasisa, or quotas. The promise was a mainstay of the election campaign. (“Either quotas and corruption, or water, electricity and jobs,” one poster read.) Many politicians lament its emergence as the political arithmetic, even as they work strenuously to reinforce it.

The negotiations today are a window on the resilience of that arithmetic.

Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi has called for the presidency to go to a Sunni Arab. Why, he asked, should it be reserved for a Kurd? (For their part, the Kurds have insisted that their candidate, Jalal Talabani, should indeed return.) The post of Parliament speaker, now held by a Sunni, is seen as the least prestigious; no one really wants that.

And then there is the position of prime minister, which everyone expects to remain in the hands of the Shiite majority, although not just any Shiite. A list led by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, may have won the most number of seats. Yet he drew much of his support from Iraq’s Sunni regions; “the representative of the Sunnis,” Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, his friend and fellow contender for the post, called him.

“It’s not up to the Sunnis to decide who is prime minister,” said Mr. Shahbandar, an ally of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. “They know it’s not their position. They know the political game. Quotas — very, very regrettably — still prevail.”

A few years ago, a civil society group promoted an ad campaign in Lebanon, a country famously home to 18 sects, where the president is traditionally Maronite Catholic, the prime minister Sunni and the Parliament speaker Shiite. On billboards and in newspapers, the ads offered a dose of farce that didn’t seem too farcical: cooking lessons by Greek Orthodox, building for sale for Druze, hairstyling by an Armenian Catholic, a fashion agency looking for “a beautiful Shiite face.”

At bottom, the ads read in English, “Stop sectarianism before it stops us,” or, more bluntly in Arabic, “Citizenship is not sectarianism.”

Not everyone got the joke, in part because it struck so close to home.

Some defend the quotas as offering protection to minorities in a region with a poor record in treating its own. (Consider Shiites in Saudi Arabia, or Israel’s treatment of its Palestinian citizens, much less those under occupation.) And indeed, Sunnis will always be assured one of Iraq’s top positions, even though they are a minority. But others worry whether such a formula questions the very notion of citizenship, in which communal rather than national leaders represent their constituencies in bargaining that can become self-serving.

That is often the case in Lebanon. It could become the case here in an environment where leaders often seem most bent on dividing the sectarian and ethnic spoils, even as Baghdad endures a few hours of electricity in triple-digit heat.

No one speaks for the nation in Iraq. Perhaps there really isn’t one.

“There will be a little something for everybody, probably,” said Ryan C. Crocker, the former ambassador to Iraq. “It’s going to be fairly inclusive among the elites. But the promises that are made, the deals that are dealt are really not going to involve any promises or commitments to make life better for people in Iraq.

“That’s just not what the transaction is in Iraqi politics,” he said.

    In Iraq, Divvying Up the Spoils of Political War, NYT, 25.6.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/weekinreview/27shadid.html

Car Bombs Strike Second Major Iraq Bank

June 20, 2010
The New York Times
By KHALID D. ALI and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

BAGHDAD — A pair of car bombs detonated simultaneously outside Iraq’s Bank of Trade on Sunday morning, killing 26 people and wounding 52 others in the second attack on a major government financial institution in eight days.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, but the Islamic State of Iraq, an insurgent group with ties to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, has said it was responsible for a bloody raid at Iraq’s Central Bank in Baghdad last Sunday that killed 15 people and injured 50.

The bombings came during a period of political uncertainty, as negotiations to form a new government have stalled more than three months after parliamentary elections, which insurgents are seeking to exploit to further destabilize the country, American and Iraqi officials said.

“They are targeting financial institutions to try to harm the economic situation because they want to keep international companies from investing here,” said Dr. Jabir al-Jabiri, a newly elected member of Parliament.

The blasts near Nissour Square, which was crowded with people at the start of the work week here, were powerful enough to toss several cars onto nearby rooftops, witnesses said, and turned the area into a scene reminiscent of the worst days of the war, with white sheets covering the dead, body parts littering the ground and people bleeding from shrapnel wounds wandering dazed, asking for water.

Nissour Square is home to several government buildings, including a police station and the agency that issues national identification cards, but is perhaps best known outside Iraq as the place where Blackwater Worldwide guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007.

The trade bank was established after the United States-led invasion in 2003 to help finance reconstruction efforts and international trade.

The bank’s chairman, Hussein al-Uzri, said in a statement that the bombings had killed five bank guards and wounded six other employees.

The attack “was an act of cowardice by malevolent forces who wish to undermine the progress that Iraq is steadily making towards stability,” he said. He pledged that the bank would reopen for business on Monday.

The car bombs may have been directed at a convoy driving into the bank’s entrance at about 11 a.m., Iraqi Army officers at the scene said. It was not immediately clear who was in the convoy or whether they were injured.

The bank’s windows facing the street were blown out, but the extent of damage to the rest of the building, which is protected by a blast wall, was not known Sunday evening.

Abdul Rasul Kareem, a civil defense officer who responded to the attack, said he heard an explosion and immediately rushed to help.

“We were trying to put out the fire in a car and to rescue victims,” he said. “I was shouting for ambulances to help people. My team was searching roofs for people.”

A woman, who identified herself as Om Hussein, wept as she surveyed the wreckage. “My son, my son!” she said.

An Iraqi Army soldier came up to her and handed her a cellphone, saying her son had only been wounded and was in the hospital waiting to speak to her.

As she listened to the voice on the other end, her face lit up. But after a few moments, she began to cry again.

“No,” she said. “This is not my son.” She collapsed onto the ground a few feet from a dead body.

Also Sunday, Iraqi authorities said they found the decomposing bodies of seven people inside a house in central Baghdad. All had been shot in the head and were believed to have been dead for at least a week.

The authorities said four of the women had been found naked and that the victims included a 10-year boy and a 12-year-old girl.

Neighbors said they thought the women may have been prostitutes.


Omar al-Jawoshy and Zaid Thaker contributed reporting.

    Car Bombs Strike Second Major Iraq Bank, NYT, 20.6.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/world/middleeast/21iraq.html

Iraq’s Psyche, Through a Green Zone Prism

May 31, 2010
The New York Times
By ANTHONY SHADID

BAGHDAD — The term was coined by the American military. But unlike some others — say, entry control points — the name managed to stick in the popular imagination. Green Zone always seemed to say so much, here and abroad. It was the imperial outpost of an occupation, or the citadel of a government never quite sovereign — bulwark or bubble, refuge or unreality.

Muwafaq al-Taei, an architect and a former denizen there, thought about the description before settling on his own. “A state of mind,” Mr. Taei judged it.

On Tuesday, the American military will formally withdraw from the last nine checkpoints it staffed in this disheveled stretch of territory that it demarcated after overthrowing Saddam Hussein in April 2003. The largely symbolic move is another in a year filled with them as the United States pulls out all but 50,000 troops by summer’s end.

“Another chapter,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen Lanza, the American military spokesman.

But the changing mood about the Green Zone says something about Iraq these days, too, where the summer heat soars as high as people’s frustrations. The country is still without a government nearly three months after voters went to the polls to choose one. People sweat as politicians speak (and speak and speak), and the Green Zone — so long an idea as much as a place — becomes yet another symbol in a country not quite yet a state.

“It has always been a place of someone’s power,” Mr. Taei said.

The stretch along the Tigris has represented authority since King Ghazi sought support by speaking to his subjects from his radio station in Al Zuhour Palace, which he built there in 1936. Far more palaces are there now, though the old names have fallen away. Some still refer to the zone as Karradat Mariam, named for a local saint buried behind its concrete barricades. Fewer remember the name Legislative Neighborhood, one of its earlier incarnations.

Nearly everyone knows it by the name the Americans brought.

“Welcome to the Green Zone,” a sign reads, in English and Arabic translation.

There remains an American texture to the place, where C.I.A. operatives once drank at their own rattan-furnished bar and young Iraqi kids with a knack for memorabilia marketed Saddam Hussein trinkets. (Watches emblazoned with his portrait were a favorite.)

Empty cans of energy drinks like Wild Tiger and TNT Liquid Dynamite litter the streets. Rusted shipping containers vie for space with sand-filled barricades draped in tattered canvas. Signs are still in English; “Strictly No Stopping,” the ubiquitous cement barriers read.

Green is still the preferred shorthand for the place, even in Arabic. That sometimes creates confusion since another Baghdad neighborhood bears the same name.

An inevitable question often follows: “Their Green or our Green?”

But as Mr. Taei noted, driving through the Green Zone on a recent day, past some of the palaces he had a hand in helping construct, “The history of Iraq is here.”

“Every single building has a story,” he said, as symbol or otherwise.

Mr. Taei pointed out where a fallen prime minister tried to elude his captors dressed as a woman in 1958. He cast a glance at the site where the remnants of the monarchy were executed a day earlier. He gestured toward the theater where Mr. Hussein, consolidating power in 1979, had the names of supposed fifth columnists read out to an assembly. The suspected conspirators were removed one by one from their seats.

Through the window, he stared at the palaces — Bayraq, Salam and others — still wrecked by American bombing, then and now emblems of a government’s remove.

“What Saddam built,” Mr. Taei said.

The Green Zone will indelibly be an American artifact of the occupation, but even today, it still bears the mark of Mr. Hussein. His initials in Arabic remain a relief on stone walls, the engraving of tiles on majestic arched entrances or the curves of wrought-iron gates. The monumental swords of the Victory Arch, gripped by hands cast from his own, are only now being taken down. The eight-sided minaret he considered his own style still stands next to a mosque built in the shapes of a child’s geometry lesson.

In that, the Green Zone is perhaps another metaphor, beyond that legacy of American power. The United States managed to smash Mr. Hussein’s government. But what it helped build in its place remains inchoate, littered with the ruins of the past.

“The street there is dark, and only God is your guide,” said a shopkeeper who gave his name as Abu Hussein, at a shop across the street from a Green Zone entrance.

He meant that no one knows what goes on inside there.

“They haven’t heard a single complaint from the people,” he said, sitting before a fan blowing hot air. “No official has paid a single iota of attention to any citizen here.”

He had more complaints. So did Mr. Taei. So did most everyone along the street — from the traffic snarled by checkpoints along the Green Zone’s entrances to the demands for badges, or badjat, to enter streets inside that are wide enough for a military parade.

Some of the same grievances were heard in 2003, when the summer came and American officials clumsily tried to sort through blackouts, water shortages, crime and violence, all the while reminding Iraqis that they now had a semblance of freedom.

This time, the complaints were against Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and other officials residing in the Green Zone. Selfish was a typical insult; others were sharper. No one expected them to form a government soon. Smart money lately suggested it might wait till October.

“If you’re a neighbor of Maliki over there, then maybe you can find a job,” quipped Farouk Talal, a 27-year-old employee at a cellphone store. “You won’t otherwise.”

Down the street, Haider Kadhem called the area “another country.”

“We’re one Iraq; you can say that the Green Zone is another Iraq,” he said. “A badge is a passport, and if you don’t have a passport, you can’t enter that country.”

    Iraq’s Psyche, Through a Green Zone Prism, NYT, 31.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/middleeast/01iraq.html

Mr. Gates and the Pentagon Budget

May 16, 2010
The New York Times

There has been a feeding frenzy at the Pentagon budget trough since the 9/11 attacks. Pretty much anything the military chiefs and industry lobbyists pitched, Congress approved — no matter the cost and no matter if the weapons or programs were over budget, underperforming or no longer needed in a post-cold-war world.

Annual defense spending has nearly doubled in the last decade to $549 billion. That does not include the cost of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, which this year will add $159 billion.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has now vowed to do things differently. In two recent speeches, he declared that the nation cannot keep spending at this rate and that the defense budget “gusher” has been “turned off and will stay off for a good period of time.” He vowed that going forward all current programs and future spending requests will receive “unsparing” scrutiny.

Mr. Gates isn’t proposing cutting his budget. He’s talking about 2 percent to 3 percent real growth after inflation, compared with 4 percent a year in 2000 to 2009. Given the nation’s dire financial state, it’s still a lot.

The Obama administration has already chopped some big-ticket, anachronistic weapons. (It stood up to the lobbyists and Congressional boosters to kill the F-22 fighter jet.) There has been more investment in needed new weapons, most notably unmanned drones. The Quadrennial Defense Review talked sternly about the need for “future trade-offs,” although it failed to start making the hard choices.

Mr. Gates said he wants to trim the bloated civilian and military bureaucracy (including excess admirals and generals) for a modest savings of $10 billion to $15 billion annually. He wants more cuts in weapons spending, and he deserves credit for naming specific systems.

Why should the Navy have 11 aircraft carriers (at $11 billion a copy) for the next 30 years when no other country has more than one, he asked at the Navy League exposition in Maryland. He questioned the need for the Marines’ beach-storming Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (vulnerable to advances in anti-ship systems) and $7 billion ballistic missile submarines for the Navy.

We’re sure the irate calls from Capitol Hill and K Street haven’t stopped since. It must be noted that Mr. Gates didn’t say for sure whether he would slash any of these systems — or how deeply.

Perhaps the most politically volatile issue is military health care costs, which rose from $19 billion to $50 billion in a decade. Active-duty military and their families rightly do not pay for health care. But what retirees pay — $460 annually per family — has not risen in 15 years.

Mr. Gates said that many retirees earn full-time salaries on top of their military retirement pay and could get coverage through their employer. We owe our fighting forces excellent care, but this is a time when everyone must share the burden.

Even if Mr. Gates begins to get a real handle on other costs, budget experts warn that exploding personnel costs — wages, health care, housing, pensions — will increasingly crowd out financing for new weapons. Once the United States commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, Washington will have to consider trimming troop strength, beginning with the Navy and Air Force.

Mr. Gates is an old Washington hand and we’re sure he is going into this fight with his eyes wide open. Still, if there was any doubt about what he’s up against, a House Armed Services subcommittee gave him a reminder last week. It added nearly $400 million to the Pentagon’s $9.9 billion 2011 request for missile defenses. That included $50 million for an airborne laser that experts agree doesn’t work and Mr. Gates largely canceled last year.

    Mr. Gates and the Pentagon Budget, NYT, 16.5.2010? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/opinion/17mon1.html

G.I.’s Find Bullets Still Flying at Outpost in Iraq

May 14, 2010
The New York Times
By TIM ARANGO

ASH SHURA, Iraq — Technically, American soldiers have stopped fighting in Iraq. But they can fire back when attacked, which happens frequently in this village of wheat and barley farmers, as well as an uncomfortable number of Baathist insurgents.

So much so that, while United States troops in nearly all other parts of the nation are quietly preparing to withdraw, soldiers stationed here are fighting what looks, for now, like the last American combat in the seven-year war in Iraq.

“They only attack Americans,” said Capt. Russell B. Thomas, the commander of Alpha Company of the First Battalion of the Third Infantry Division’s Second Brigade.

They may only attack Americans now, but with all combat troops scheduled to leave Iraq by the end of August, military commanders worry that this area in northern Iraq offers a glimpse of a post-American Sunni insurgency, led by former Saddam Hussein loyalists intent on overthrowing the Shiite-dominated central government.

Some in the American military view the insurgents in this area, a group called the Men of the Army of Al Naqshbandia Order, as a greater long-term threat to stability here than Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, whose top leadership was recently killed by American and Iraqi forces not far from this village.

Lt. Col. Michael A. Marti, an intelligence officer with Task Force Marne, Third Infantry Division, said the group had a more cohesive militarylike structure than Al Qaeda — many were military officers under Mr. Hussein— and the worry among American military officers is that once the Americans leave they will turn toward attacking Iraqis. Many experts say the probability goes up if the nation’s Shiite majority does not give Sunnis a meaningful role in the new government being formed now in Baghdad. Under Mr. Hussein’s government, Sunnis, while a minority in Iraq, were in power.

“There’s a longing to return to that,” Colonel Marti said.

In most of the country, the Iraqi Army and the police are the visible face of security, with Americans largely out of public view. Not here. When American units left city centers last June, they largely took on advisory roles, training Iraqi security forces and responding to attacks only rarely and only at the request of the Iraqis.

In this village, the Iraqi security forces are more thinly staffed than elsewhere in the country, and a liberal interpretation of the security agreement that binds Iraq and the United States has Americans playing a more active role on the streets and in the scrublands of this village, than in many places in Iraq.

“There is no battalion right now in Iraq that has this lethal fight,” said Lt. Col. Richard R. Coffman, commander of the First Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, of the Third Infantry Division’s Second Brigade.

In recent weeks the United States military announced that several of the top Qaeda figures were killed in northern Iraq, the result of joint operations between Iraqis and Americans. The military announced that one of those leaders, Abu Suhaib, was killed by Iraqi security forces. In fact, according to Lt. Col. Michael Jason, the brigade operations officer for the Third Infantry Division’s Second Brigade near Mosul, it was an American unit firing from a Bradley Fighting Vehicle that killed Mr. Suhaib.

In an e-mail message, a representative of the United States military wrote, “While Bradley fighting vehicles were at the scene and did provide cover fire, it does appear that direct fire from I.S.F. is what ultimately lead to the death of Abu Suhaib.”

Either way, the operations make clear that Americans are involved in combat operations here more than elsewhere in Iraq. Under the security agreement, Americans can act unilaterally only to protect themselves. Otherwise they are required to work with Iraqi security forces and at their request.

Here, where the danger is still high, the lines of the agreement blur a bit. “I thought we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without an Iraqi vehicle with us,” said Captain Thomas, 28, from Eagle Lake, Tex. “In the spirit of the agreement I always have an I.S.F. personnel with us.” He was using the military abbreviation for Iraqi security forces.

Often, a group of American soldiers heading on patrol will stop and pick up an Iraqi soldier from an adjacent base to accompany them, or will link up with a police officer in the village.

After seven years of war, this is what the final days of the combat mission looks like for these American soldiers, a complex mix of fighting and rebuilding, preparing to leave while not losing sight of the still active threat.

In the darkness, marksmen crouch in tall reeds near a berm alongside the railroad tracks, watching spots where militants have been laying bombs. In daylight, soldiers visit Iraqi police checkpoints, questioning and frisking drivers and searching trunks, hoping their presence disrupts militants who have been shooting mortars at their outpost.

“We’re the battalion that never sleeps,” Colonel Coffman said.

On one recent patrol they handed out small grants to local businesses — $1,000 or so to a bakery or shop. On another, they walked through the village, stopping at the home of someone suspected of being an insurgent. During the same patrol, they visited metal workers about building soccer bleachers.

Their presence in the village, though, had a more urgent purpose. “We’ve been getting mortared at night,” Captain Thomas said. “I think they’re going to switch to daytime. This will let them know that daytime isn’t good to go.”

Since arriving in November, the company here has faced attack — from mortars, roadside bombs or rifles — once every two or three days. No soldiers have died. One is being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for wounds. Two soldiers from the same battalion, but from a different company at a base east of here, were killed last month when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device.

The soldiers say they have seen more action than they expected — in contrast to elsewhere in Iraq, where young soldiers have been disappointed that they have not been tested in combat. Some were awarded Bronze Stars for a night-time operation in which they killed insurgents laying roadside bombs. Purple Hearts have been awarded, and many have qualified for Combat Action Badges.

For almost 40 percent of the company, it is the first time in Iraq. For one, it is the fifth.

“When we were briefed it was almost like a peacekeeping mission,” said Sgt. Mark L. Norfleet, 30, from Uniontown, Ala., referring to the briefing before his current deployment. But, he said, “There’s no peace in Iraq.”

    G.I.’s Find Bullets Still Flying at Outpost in Iraq, NYT, 14.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/world/middleeast/15base.html

Toll for Devastating Iraq Attacks Rises to 119

May 11, 2010
Filed at 3:24 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD (AP) -- The death toll for a devastating day of attacks across Iraq rose to 119 on Tuesday as the worst hit cities of Basra and Hilla south of Baghdad reported new deaths from bombings the previous day, the country's deadliest so far this year.

The medical official at the Basra morgue said 30 people died, nearly twice as many as were originally reported, in the string of three bombings that ripped through the city on Monday, part of a series of attacks that convulsed the country.

In Hillah, which saw Monday's worst attack, police spokesman Maj. Muthana Khalid said five more people had died, raising the toll there to 50 dead. A pair of car bombs near a factory lured rescuers and onlookers to the scene where a suicide bomber detonated himself in their midst.

The relentless cascade of bombings and shootings -- hitting at least 10 cities and towns as the day unfolded -- raised questions about whether Iraqi security forces can protect the country as the U.S. prepares to withdraw half of its remaining 92,000 troops in Iraq over the next four months.

Officials were quick to blame insurgents linked to al-Qaida in Iraq for the shootings in the capital, saying the militants were redoubling efforts to destabilize the country at a time of political uncertainty over who will control the next government.

The bombings came as Iraq's political factions were still bogged down in negotiations to form a new government more than two months after inconclusive parliamentary elections were held.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite bloc has tried to squeeze out election front-runner Ayad Allawi -- a secular Shiite heavily backed by Sunni Arabs -- by forging an alliance last week with another religious Shiite coalition that would dominate any new government.

Sunni anger at Shiite domination of successive governments since Saddam Hussein's 2003 ouster was a key reason behind the insurgency that sparked sectarian warfare in 2006 and 2007. If Allawi is perceived as not getting his fair share of power, that could outrage the Sunnis who supported him and lead some to restore their backing to the insurgency.

Aside from Hillah, the worst of Monday's violence hit Basra, Iraq's second largest city, where three bombs exploded in the city, including one that targeted a marketplace. Basra has been relatively quiet since Shiite militias were routed in 2008 by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces.

    Toll for Devastating Iraq Attacks Rises to 119, NYT, 11.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/11/world/AP-ML-Iraq.html

Wave of Fatal Bombs in Iraq After Killing of Qaeda Chiefs

April 23, 2010
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

BAGHDAD — A series of bombings on Friday struck mosques, a market and a shop in Baghdad, as well as the homes of a prosecutor and police officers in western Iraq, killing dozens, only five days after a joint Iraqi-American raid killed the top two leaders of the insurgency.

Iraq’s leaders had hailed the killings and arrests of insurgent leaders this week as a devastating blow to the group known as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia but warned that retaliation was almost certain to come. It was not clear that the group, also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, was behind the latest jolt of violence.

The attacks were the worst of an intermittent wave of bombings since the parliamentary election on March 7, providing a violent backdrop to stalled efforts to finalize the results of the vote and form a new government.

According to preliminary accounts by the Ministry of the Interior, 12 bombs — including car bombs and improvised explosive devices, but not suicide bombers, an insurgent hallmark — killed at least 50 people in Baghdad and wounded more than 100. In Anbar, the sprawling mostly Sunni province to the west, seven people died when a series of explosions struck houses in a small village.

The deadliest attacks struck near three mosques in Sadr City, the Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, just as worshipers departed Friday afternoon prayers. Those attacks, involving car bombs, occurred near the headquarters of the political movement led by the cleric Moktada al-Sadr. The movement’s candidates did well in last month’s election, giving them increased leverage in forming a government its leaders say should not include the incumbent prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

The attacks came a day after senior Iraqi officials said that the previously undisclosed arrest of a senior insurgent leader in Baghdad last month had provided a breakthrough that has allowed Iraqi and American security forces to kill or arrests dozens of the group’s leaders and fighters.

The deaths of the two leaders and the killings and arrests that followed — with 12 more suspects seized in raids in Baghdad and Mosul, in the north, on Thursday — may be the most significant blow yet to a deadly movement that only a few months ago appeared to be regrouping, the officials said.

The officials asserted that the series of raids, and the apparent cooperation of the leader arrested last month, had devastated the group’s leadership ranks, its financing and possibly its links to Al Qaeda’s international leaders on the borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“The map of the entire insurgency in Iraq is now clear to us,” Sharwan al-Waili, the minister of national security affairs, said Thursday.

The lasting impact on Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia remains to be seen, given the group’s resilience and previous overstatements by American and Iraqi officials of its imminent demise. Many details of the recent raids remain secret, and thus impossible to verify. Mr. Maliki’s government is also eager to portray itself as strong on security as negotiations continue to form a coalition after the March 7 election. Any significant weakening of the group could help smooth the Obama administration’s primary goal in Iraq: the steady withdrawal of combat forces by the end of the summer. The withdrawal has appeared increasingly uncertain because of the political impasse over the election.

Mr. Waili and the senior Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, said that the intelligence trove resulted from the arrest on March 11 of a man who was called Al Qaeda’s “governor” of Baghdad, Manaf Abdul Rahim al-Rawi.

His arrest had not been previously announced, as Iraqi security officials quietly gathered what General Atta called “a huge quantity of important documents and information that were and are useful for the security agencies.”

Mr. Waili said Mr. Rawi’s arrest had led to the “dismantling of the entire network” over the month that followed, culminating in Sunday’s raid and another in Mosul on Tuesday that killed Ahmed al-Obeidi, said to be the group’s leader in three provinces in northern Iraq.

With the arrest of the Baghdad governor, it appeared that the group’s principal leadership had been sundered. “We have reliable information indicating that there is a state of confusion among Al Qaeda now,” General Atta said at a news conference.

In the past, however, new leaders have sprung up to replace those killed. General Atta also warned that retaliatory attacks were possible.

General Atta said that Mr. Rawi had planned and supervised a series of catastrophic attacks in Baghdad that began last August on government buildings, universities, hotels and, before the election, polling stations.

Those bombings killed hundreds, disrupted government functions and heightened anxiety across the capital.

The successes in striking Al Qaeda’s leadership appeared to reflect improved coordination between the American military and Iraqi forces.

The senior American military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, said the raid on Sunday reflected a deepening marriage between American technical superiority and Iraq’s “ability to do human intelligence.”

“This is something you build on over time,” he said.

Sunday’s raid, conducted at night by Iraqi and American Special Forces backed by American airpower, resulted in the deaths of Al Qaeda’s military commander, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, an Egyptian known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and its top religious and ideological leader, Hamid Dawud Muhammad Khalil al-Zawi.

Mr. Zawi, an Iraqi, went by the nom de guerre Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, and was long thought to be a largely fictional character, or a role played by several people, though as General Lanza put it, “As time went on we believed he was no longer fictitious.”

Sixteen associates — aides, bodyguards and relatives — were also arrested in Sunday’s raid. Perhaps more important, the Iraqis and Americans seized computers and other documents that detailed their communications with the group’s leaders, all now being culled for intelligence on the group’s activities here, and presumably abroad. Mr. Maliki claimed that they proved contacts with Osama bin Laden.

On Thursday night, Iraq’s interior minister, Jawad Bolani, issued a letter calling on the remaining members of Al Qaeda — estimated to number in the hundreds — to turn themselves in, promising them humane treatment and a fair trial.

Senior American commanders have increasingly portrayed Al Qaeda as a diminished, if still deadly, organization. It once controlled cities and entire regions in Iraq, only to have the local population and tribal leaders ultimately turn against its strict, violent ideology, especially in Sunni Muslim areas. The resistance became known as the Awakening, and was an important factor in the significant drop in violence after 2007.

Mr. Muhajir had succeeded the group’s previous leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, who was killed in 2006 and quickly replaced. Since 2007 the group’s leadership has increasingly operated underground, struggling, officials said, to maintain sources of revenue and networks of operatives. Mr. Waili said that Al Qaeda once relied on profits of businesses on the territory it controlled, even oil fields and cellphone companies.

“They lost all that,” he said.

In recent months, the group’s spectacular attacks have been followed by ebbs, suggesting difficulties in sustaining the onslaught. Mr. Waili said that the group’s leaders had stopped using telephones and the Internet, adding that communication with Al Qaeda abroad was done through couriers. The leaders moved frequently and furtively, settling in a farmhouse in a rural area southwest of Tikrit days before they were tracked and killed there.

Despite chatter on extremist Web sites, some of it skeptical of American and Iraqi claims, there has been no apparent reaction from the group itself about the killings of its top leaders and, so far, no announcement of who might replace them, if anyone.


Tim Arango contributed reporting from Forward Operating Base Speicher, Iraq, and Sam Dagher from Baghdad.

    Wave of Fatal Bombs in Iraq After Killing of Qaeda Chiefs, NYT, 23.4.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/world/middleeast/24iraq.html

Marine's Murder Conviction of Iraqi Dismissed

April 23, 2010
Filed at 2:52 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- It was the only murder conviction the U.S. government had gotten in one of the highest-profile criminal cases against U.S. troops to arise out of the war in Iraq.

A military appeals court on Thursday overturned the murder conviction of Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III. The Camp Pendleton Marine led a squad that included six Marines and one Navy corpsman who were also charged in connection with the April 2006 murder of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, 52, in the village of Hamdania.

The court said it based its decision on the fact that a military defense attorney assigned to Hutchins was improperly dismissed before his trial in 2007.

The ruling by the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Appeals in Washington sets the stage for the release of Hutchins.

The case is now back with the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps, which will decide whether to appeal the decision or order a retrial.

Thad Coakley, a former Marine Corps judge advocate, said he believes the government will appeal.

''When you have a serious allegation that at least was substantiated at one point that this squad leader of Marines and a Navy corpsman kidnapped and executed an Iraqi detainee -- which is essentially murder -- if you don't purse that, how do you show that you're holding Marines to a standard of accountability?'' he said.

Coakley added that the court's ''opinion makes no comment and therefore no judgment on the validity of the facts associated with this case. This opinion is focused upon a procedural error and a failure to maintain an attorney-client relationship.''

Prosecutors said Hutchins led a squad that was on a mission to find an insurgent and when they failed to find the suspect at his home, the military men went to a nearby house and pulled out Awad, killed him and then planted an AK-47 and shovel to make Awad look like an insurgent planting a bomb.

Hutchins has been serving an 11-year sentence in a military prison in Leavenworth, Kan.

''Let's hope Larry can come home,'' his mother Kathy Hutchins said in a phone interview from Plymouth, Mass. ''It's not like the charges can be dropped, there still can be a retrial, but we hope that he can come home and hold his daughter.''

Hutchins, 26, has a five-year-old daughter, Kylie. He learned of the court decision from his attorney, Marine Capt. S. Babu Kaza.

''He was surprised to get good news because it's really the first time it's happened since he got put in confinement,'' Kaza told the North County Times.

Hutchins -- the leader of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment squad -- was reduced in rank to private after his conviction. Thursday's ruling could restore that.

Navy corpsman Petty Officer 3rd Class Melson J. Bacos of Franklin, Wis., pleaded guilty to kidnapping, conspiracy to kidnap and making false official statements. Marine Lance Cpl. John J. Jodka III, of Encinitas, Calif., pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Marine Lance Cpl. Tyler A. Jackson, of Tracy, Calif., pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Marine Lance Cpl. Jerry E. Shumate Jr., of Matlock, Wash., pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

All will get either an honorable or general discharge. They have no recourse to appeal.

Three other defendants left the military after their prison terms ended.

    Marine's Murder Conviction of Iraqi Dismissed, NYT, 23.4.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/23/us/AP-US-Marines-Iraq-Shootings.html

Top Qaeda Leaders in Iraq Killed in Raid

April 19, 2010
The New York Times
By REUTERS

BAGHDAD (Reuters) — Iraqi intelligence officers have located and killed Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced on Monday.

Mr. Maliki said the intelligence team also killed Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of an affiliated group, the Islamic State of Iraq, in an operation that was backed by American forces.

United States military officials confirmed that Iraqi security forces had killed the two men. “The death of these two terrorists is a potentially devastating blow to Al Qaeda in Iraq,” the American command said in a statement.

The announcement comes at a time when Iraqi leaders are negotiating to form a new coalition government after elections on March 7 that produced no clear winner. The deal-making, which could take weeks if not months, is occurring against a backdrop of attacks and threats by Sunni-led insurgents.

Mr. Maliki said that Mr. Baghdadi and Mr. Masri, who is also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir and is thought to be an Egyptian, were killed at a house in Thar-Thar, a rural area 50 miles west of Baghdad that is regarded as a hotbed of Qaeda activity. The operation took place over the last few days.

“The attack was carried out by ground forces, which surrounded the house, and also through the use of missiles,” Mr. Maliki told a news conference. “U.S. forces also participated.”

He said the house was destroyed, and the two bodies were found in a hole in the ground where they had apparently been hiding.

    Top Qaeda Leaders in Iraq Killed in Raid, NYT, 19.4.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/world/middleeast/20baghdad.html