Saturday, December 23, 2006

Perhaps, we should leave...

Insurgents offer U.S. 30-day truce to get out of Iraq

Story Highlights•NEW: Iraq militant group leader wants U.S. out, offers to halt fighting
•Military reports five U.S. troop deaths, making 73 in December
•Iraqi troops, coalition forces launch separate raids in Diyala, Baghdad and Basra
•Gates prepares report for President Bush on findings from Iraq trip


BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The leader of an umbrella organization for Iraqi insurgent groups is offering the United States a one-month truce to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq and turn over its military bases "to the mujahedeen of the Islamic state."

In an audiotape posted on Islamic Web sites Friday, a speaker identified as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Mujahideen Shura Council, said that if U.S. forces begin withdrawing from Iraq immediately and leave their heavy weaponry behind, "we will allow your withdrawal to complete without anyone targeting you with any explosive or anything else."

"We say to Bush not to waste this historic opportunity that will guarantee you a safe withdrawal," al-Baghdadi said on the audiotape.

The United States was given two weeks to respond to the offer.

The Mujahideen Shura Council is an umbrella group formed in late 2005 that includes several terrorist and insurgent groups, including al Qaeda in Iraq.

On the audiotape, al-Baghdadi also called on officers from the former Iraqi army to join an "army of the Islamic state," promising them a house and a salary as long as they pass a "test of faith" intended to demonstrate the extent of their "hatred" for Saddam Hussein and his regime.

The U.S. military Friday reported five U.S. troop deaths, while Iraqi authorities reported the discovery of a dozen bodies and the kidnapping of a Sunni imam in Baghdad.

One soldier was killed and another wounded when attackers targeted a coalition patrol west of the capital, the U.S. military said. Three Marines and a sailor assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7 died Thursday from wounds suffered during combat in Anbar province, the military also said.

The deaths bring the December U.S. military death toll to 73 and the overall total during the war to 2,955; seven U.S. contractors also have been killed.

Other developments

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates concluded his three-day tour of Iraq to assess U.S. troop levels and Iraq's security situation. He was headed for Washington on Friday and was expected to issue a report of his consultations with U.S. troops, commanders and Iraqi officials to President Bush during the weekend. (Watch what insights Gates is getting from U.S. troops in Iraq)

Coalition forces in Baghdad killed an insurgent and detained 35 others Friday morning during raids aimed at al Qaeda in Iraq members, the U.S. military said. In Basra, about 1,000 British troops arrested four and seized weapons in a sweep to arrest police suspected of death squad activities. Iraqi troops in Diyala province also launched raids, detaining 13 people in a sweep that targeted "an illegal armed group cell."

The Shiite leadership says it will not exclude radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a statement that appeared to douse hopes for the emergence of a moderate political alliance that would include Sunni and Kurdish parties. (Full story)

President Bush and first lady Laura Bush made bedside visits to 38 American service members at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Friday, The Associated Press reported. They joined Girl Scouts and children of hospital staff to wrap presents for families and children of wounded military personnel and were to head for Camp David later Friday for the Christmas holiday, AP reported. (Full story)

Polish President Lech Kaczynski has approved a one-year extension through 2007 for his country's 900 troops to serve in Iraq, the AP cited his foreign policy adviser as saying Friday. They are mainly involved in training Iraqi security forces, AP reported.

Eight Marines have been charged in the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha last year, the Marine Corps announced Thursday. (Full story)
CNN's Jomana Karadsheh, Jamie McIntyre and Eileen Hsieh contributed to this report

Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

Neo-Cons brace for Hillary '08!

End of the neo-con dream
By Paul Reynolds
World Affairs correspondent


The neo-conservative dream faded in 2006.

The ambitions proclaimed when the neo-cons' mission statement "The Project for the New American Century" was declared in 1997 have turned into disappointment and recriminations as the crisis in Iraq has grown.

"The Project for the New American Century" has been reduced to a voice-mail box and a ghostly website. A single employee has been left to wrap things up.

The idea of the "Project" was to project American power and influence around the world.

The 1997 statement (written during the administration of President Bill Clinton) said:

"We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration's success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities."


Neo-conservatism has gone for a generation, if in fact it ever returns
David Rothkopf
Carnegie Endowment

Among the signatories were many of the senior officials who would later determine policy under President George W Bush - Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams and Lewis Libby - as well as thinkers including Francis Fukuyama, Norman Podheretz and Frank Gaffney.

The neo-conservatives were called that because they sought to re-establish what they felt were true conservative values in the Republican Party and the United States.

They wanted to stop what they felt were the isolationist tendencies that had developed under President Clinton, and even under the pragmatic President George Bush senior.

They saw the war in Iraq as their big chance of showing how the "New American Century" might work.

They predicted the development of democratic values in a region lacking in them and, in that way, the removal of any threat to the United States just as the democratisation of Germany and Japan after World War II had transformed Europe and the Pacific.

Attack

Since so much was pinned on Iraq, it is inevitable that the problems there should have undermined the whole idea.


George Bush is about the last neo-conservative standing
David Rothkopf
Carnegie Endowment

"Neo-conservatism has gone for a generation, if in fact it ever returns," says one of the movement's critics, David Rothkopf, currently at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, and a former official in the Clinton administration.
"Their signal enterprise was the invasion of Iraq and their failure to produce results is clear. Precisely the opposite has happened," he says.

"The US use of force has been seen as doing wrong and as inflaming a region that has been less than susceptible to democracy.

"Their plan has fallen on hard times. There were flaws in the conception and horrendously bad execution. The neo-cons have been undone by their own ideas and the incompetence of the Bush administration.

"George Bush is about the last neo-conservative standing, Cheney as well maybe. Bush is not an analytical person so he just adopted the neo-cons' philosophy.

"It fitted into his Manichean, his black and white view of the world. After all, he gave up his dissolute youth and was born again as a new man, so it appealed to his character."

In-fighting

The fading of the dream has led to a falling-out among the neo-conservatives themselves.


In particular, two leading neo-conservatives, Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman, attacked the Bush team in Vanity Fair magazine. Both had been on a Pentagon advisory board. Both had argued for war in Iraq.

In an article called "Neo Culpa", Richard Perle declared that had he known how it would turn out, he would have been against it: "I think now I probably would have said: 'No, let's consider other strategies'."

Kenneth Adelman said: "They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era.

"Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

Donald Rumsfeld "fooled me", he said.

He declared of neo-conservatism after Iraq: "It's not going to sell."

Defence and counter-attack

Other neo-conservatives defend their record, arguing strongly that the original idea had an effect, and pressing the point raised by Perle and Adelman that it was the execution of the idea not the idea itself that was wrong.


"Now I am not sure we can pick the bacon out of the fire
Gary Schmitt
American Enterprise Institute

Gary Schmitt used to be a senior figure at the "New American Century" project. Now he is director of strategic studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and he says the project has come to a natural end.

"When the project started, it was not intended to go forever. That is why we are shutting it down. We would have had to spend too much time raising money for it and it has already done its job.

"We felt at the time that there were flaws in American foreign policy, that it was neo-isolationist. We tried to resurrect a Reaganite policy.

"Our view has been adopted. Even during the Clinton administration we had an effect, with Madeleine Albright [then secretary of state] saying that the United States was 'the indispensable nation'.

"But our ideas have not necessarily dominated. We did not have anyone sitting on Bush's shoulder. So the work now is to see how they are implemented. Obviously it makes life difficult with the specific failure in Iraq, but I do not agree with Richard Perle that we should never have gone in.

"I do argue that the execution should have been better. In fact, I argued in late 2003 that we needed more troops and a proper counter-insurgency policy."

Indeed, not all neo-conservatives have given up all hope in Iraq.

The AEI, which has become the natural home for refugees from the American Project, is promoting an article entitled: "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq".

The article calls not for a withdrawal of US troops but for an increase. President Bush's decision is expected in early January.

Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6189793.stm

Published: 2006/12/21 11:23:52 GMT