THERE ARE four ever widening gaps that are threatening a successful outcome of George W. Bush's war in Iraq. The first is between what Sunnis, Shi'ites, and Kurds want for Iraq's future, especially in the all-important matter of Sunni inclusion. Sunnis are under-represented in the Iraqi government because many boycotted the January elections. But the only hope for ending their blood-soaked insurrection is to bring them fully into the political process. The length of time it has taken to reach any compromise is discouraging.

Given the large number of Sunni-led attacks against Shia targets, the emerging Shia-led attacks against Sunnis, and the extralegal abductions of Arabs by Kurdish authorities in Kirkut, one has to wonder whether the long-feared Iraqi civil war hasn't already begun.

The hard truth is that most Iraqis feel more loyalty to their tribes, their ethnicities, and their confessions than they do to the concept of Iraq as an undivided nation, and that is not about to change any time soon.

The second gap is between what all of the above want and what the United States would like to see in Iraq. The most stunning defeat for the Bush administration's dreams came earlier this month when newly elected Iraqi leaders rebuffed American pressure to disband ethnic and religion-based militias. Democracy can function only if sectarian and tribal interests are subordinated into the whole. The state must have a monopoly on coercive power. But Iraqi leaders chose to keep their special-interest militias, demonstrating that the kind of trust and power-sharing necessary for a democracy is a long way away. As one member of Congress, who has visited Iraq often, says: The best we can hope for is a ''participatory republic. It won't be a democracy."

The third is the growing gap between the Bush administration and the American people. For the first time, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll, more than half of Americans don't feel that the Iraq war has made them safer. The truth is that the Iraq war has made them decidedly less safe, distracting us from the real war on Islamic extremism and creating a magnet for Jihadi fanatics. According to a Gallup poll, 57 percent now say Iraq was not worth invading.

Support in Congress is also weakening. A prowar Republican, Representative Walter Jones of North Carolina, the very man who wanted to change the name of french fries to freedom fries to protest French opposition to the war, is now introducing a bipartisan House resolution calling for an exit strategy. And Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, who has been critical of how the war has been handled but is for staying the course, said recently: ''I'm not sure I could in good faith, a year from now, if things aren't drastically different, continue to support American forces being in Iraq."

But the largest gap of all is the reality gap between what the Bush administration says and what is really happening on the ground in Iraq. Vice President Cheney, against all evidence to the contrary, famously said that the insurgency is in its ''last throes." To this Biden says: Go see for yourself.

Washington says it has enough troops in Iraq, but battle commanders on the ground are saying privately they need more men.

**A former Pentagon official, journalist, and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb, a man with considerable political and military knowledge, came back from a fact-finding trip in Iraq talking about the ''gap between those who work there, who were really careful of every word they uttered of prediction or analysis, and the expansive, sometimes, I think, totally unrealistic optimism you hear from people back in Washington."

In a report to the council, Gelb was scathing about America efforts to train an Iraqi army. ''If you ask any Iraqi leader, they will tell you these people can't fight. They just aren't trained. And yet we're cranking them out like rabbits." As for plans to train a 10 division Iraqi army by next year, Gelb was scathing. ''It became very apparent to me that these 10 divisions were to fight some future war against Iran. It had nothing to do, nothing to do," with taking Iraq over from the Americans and fighting the insurgents.**

Americans have statistics for everything in Iraq, yet little of it reflects reality. ''The information seeps in, and you wonder" about its reliability," Gelb said. " You wonder if you really know what's going on, because essentially what you have are the statistics. It reminds me so of the Vietnam days."

H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.
ÃÂ© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company [url]http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/06/17/facing_factsin_iraq?mode=PF[/url]

Howling Privateer

Iraq Realities Force Bush to Respond

By Jefferson Morley

washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 28, 2005; 10:00 AM

Once again, the Sunday Times scooped the U.S. press on a big Iraq war story. "U.S. in Talks with Iraq Rebels," the London newspaper reported this weekend.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quickly confirmed the story and downplayed it, suggesting it should not be surprising that U.S. officials were secretly negotiating with battlefield enemies. Rumsfeld and U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. George W. Casey Jr. made an important distinction: The U.S. was talking to Sunnis violently opposed to the occupation, not foreign fighters linked to Abu Musab Zarqawi.

An American soldier guards a place referred to as "oil associations," while across the street, there are no guards for "public services". (Iraqi Press Monitor)

But the Arab News in Saudi Arabia, among others, was surprised and didn't make the distinction. "U.S. Officials Held Talks With Terrorists" was their headline.

As with the Downing Street Memo, the Times was quicker than any American news organization to document the gap between rhetoric and reality of U.S. policy in Iraq.

The president will address the American people Tuesday night amid mounting questions about claims of progress in Iraq. Polls show once solid public support for the war has dissipated. Restive Republicans are increasingly critical. The coverage in the international online media highlights the administration's problem. While the White House complains that news organizations ignore signs of progress in Iraq, the Iraqi press itself is full of reports of chaos and corruption.

The secret negotiations, according to the Sunday Times, suggest how the United States may be trying to ease its predicament. "The talks appear to represent the first serious effort by Americans and Iraqi insurgents to find common ground since violence intensified in the spring," the paper said.

The Times story, based on unidentified Iraqi sources, described two meetings earlier this month between an American team that "included senior military and intelligence officers, a civilian staffer from Congress and a representative of the US embassy in Baghdad." Representatives for insurgent groups included members of Ansar al-Sunna, "which has carried out numerous suicide bombings and killed 22 people in the dining hall of an American base at Mosul last Christmas," the story said.

"Washington seems to be gingerly probing for ways of defusing home-grown Iraqi opposition and of isolating the foreign Islamic militants who have flooded into Iraq to wage holy war against America under the command of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq," said the Sunday Times.

The United States has also been talking to leaders of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party, according to al-Mutamar, a Baghdad daily.

"The interim leadership of the dissolved Ba'ath party is holding negotiations with the Americans but not with the Iraqi government," said a summary of the June 21 story translated by the Iraqi Press Monitor.

"A party leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the negotiators have presented a list of conditions issued by the party, including freeing arrested members and ending the hunt for its members. "

Several analysts told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that they doubted the talks would help. David Hartwell, a Middle East expert with the London-based "Jane's Sentinel Security Assessment," says negotiating with insurgents is a difficult task for an occupying power .

"The problem that the Americans have is legitimacy and credibility," Hartwell was quoted as saying. "I think if the Iraqi government [itself] was trying to carry out this sort of contacts, I think they would achieve [more] as they have their own contacts with the insurgent groups, they might stand more chances to success. I think the American problem is that they're not just wanted and anything that is done by them is immediately counterproductive."

But Yahia Said, a researcher on Iraq at the London School of Economics, said the current Shiite-led government also "suffers from 'a profound lack of legitimacy' and is seen by some as an American stooge. Many in Iraq are unhappy that the government did not ask the coalition forces to present a plan for the withdrawal of foreign troops as it has promised during the election campaign."

No small reason for the government's lack of credibility, says the Baghdad daily Azzaman, is that "almost everyday there is a new plan to combat corruption and a new military operation to restore security and order but the situation gets worse and worse. "

"Iraq is in the midst of what is internationally now being described as ' the biggest corruption scandal in history ,'" says another recent story in Azzaman.

"Iraqis wonder where the billions they hear about are going and whether the billions more their government is asking for will improve conditions in the violence-hit country."

The story blames the United States for the corruption.

"Corruption spiraled in the months the United States administered the country and went beyond control with the establishing of the Governing Council and the first interim government and there is no sign it will be ever contained."

Such stories are rife in the Iraqi press. A scathing commentary in the Baghdad daily Al-Mashriq says the country's oil ministry is incapable of halting "thieves" who sell petroleum on the black market. Al Bayan reports that the Baghdad provincial council, "heavily criticized for poor services," has fired four director generals as part of its anti-corruption drive. The BBC concludes that " There is massive corruption in most Iraqi government ministries."

The result, says another BBC story, is that "despite billions of dollars spent in Iraq, there is very little to show for it."

With persistent criticism in Iraq, ongoing violence and talks with insurgents so far yielding little results, President Bush has some explaining to do.

--- ### Angeleyes *2005-07-02 17:15* | [User Profile](/od/user/1513) [QUOTE=Howling Privateer]Here is a quite good and recent set of links. [/QUOTE]Nice links. I think negotiating with some of the guerilla factions is a good idea. Work a deal. I hope the Administration will listen to the local clan and family, or tribe, leaders. These people are not stupid. They want their country back, and they'd like to see the American leave. [QUOTE]As one member of Congress, who has visited Iraq often, says: The best we can hope for is a ''participatory republic. It won't be a democracy." [/QUOTE] That meets the "good enough" standard. Our nation started similarly. The Jacksonian 'one man one' vote style was a development, an outgrowth. Someone once said "Democracy only grows from the ground up." I think that is true. --- ### Sertorius *2005-07-02 17:24* | [User Profile](/od/user/26) AE, I believe the idea should be to "fold them over into themselves". --- ### Ponce *2005-07-02 17:30* | [User Profile](/od/user/901) The ocupation of Iraq by the US has the object of dividing the country into four or five self ruling states with the state of Israel "helping" by "protecting" those states with oil from those with no oil. As you know there are now two 36 inch oil pipe lines going into the state of Israel with the stolen oil from Iraq and at this time they are going full blast. :furious: --- ### Angeleyes *2005-07-02 17:43* | [User Profile](/od/user/1513) [QUOTE=Ponce]The ocupation of Iraq by the US has the object of dividing the country into four or five self ruling states with the state of Israel "helping" by "protecting" those states with oil from those with no oil. As you know there are now two 36 inch oil pipe lines going into the state of Israel with the stolen oil from Iraq and at this time they are going full blast. :furious:[/QUOTE] Ponce 1. If the aim were to divide Iraq, it would have been easy to run in, get rid of Saddam and blow a lot of stuff up, then leave. The country would have divided itself rather easily in the power vacuum left behind. 2. Do you have a reference with a map for those pipelines? I'd like to see what you are talking about. Not implausible, given Israel's dearth of domestic oil production that we talked about elsewhere. --- ### Sertorius *2005-07-02 18:46* | [User Profile](/od/user/26) [url]http://www.iags.org/iraqpipelinewatch.htm[/url] ---

Facing facts in Iraq

Sertorius [OP]

Howling Privateer

Iraq Realities Force Bush to Respond