Neo-Conned! Again

by D Liam O'Huallachain

  We were basically paying up to $10,000 a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq …. Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one.3

  Confirming General Abizaid's opinion, the agent additionally said that “[t]he overwhelming sense from the information we are now getting is that the number of foreign fighters does not exceed several hundred and is perhaps as low as 200.” Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, returning from his third trip to Iraqi in June 2005, offered a similar estimate, noting in a telephone interview with the Washington Times that there were only “maybe 1,000 to 2,000 foreign fighters”1 that needed to be dealt with by American forces. Anthony Cordesman, Pentagon consultant and Arleigh Burke Chair of Strategy at the CSIS, even criticized the President for misrepresenting this aspect of the situation in Iraq in his Ft. Bragg speech:

  [The President] totally failed to mention the thousands of native Iraqis that make up the core of the insurgency, the fact we have only some 600 foreign detainees out of a total of 14,000, the fact most intelligence estimates put foreign fighters at around 5% of the total ….2

  Why is it that credible military and intelligence reports from Iraq are being ignored in Washington? Probably because the idea that foreign fighters lead the fighting in Iraq is essential to the neocon plan to intervene in both Syria and Iran.3 Since the neocons have a priori decided the “guilt” of Iran and Syria on anything and everything, it follows that any “intelligence,” however vague or unconfirmed, will be seized upon. It is also difficult for the Bush administration to accept that Saddam's people are the very core of the resistance, for it strikes at the mythology of “Mission Accomplished,” which says that the Ba'athist government suffered a clear defeat, the Iraqi people are “grateful” for their “liberation,” and only misfits, “extremists,” and “terrorists” resent the imposition of U.S.-style “democracy.” Indeed, this was Bush's line when he spoke to the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., on May 24, 2004:

  Zarqawi … and other terrorists know that Iraq is now the central front in the war on terror. And we must understand that, as well. The return of tyranny to Iraq would be an unprecedented terrorist victory, and a cause for killers to rejoice.1

  It was still the line a year later when Bush addressed soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C., on June 28, 2005: “Many terrorists who kill … on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York, in Washington, and Pennsylvania.”2

  The fact is, however, there is another force behind the opposition to our troops, as the President grudgingly (and somewhat inconsistently) conceded when he said the “terrorists” had made common cause with “Iraqi insurgents, and remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime who want to restore the old order” (i.e., the order before they were illegally deposed). As both the facts and numerous first-hand reports attest, Saddam's government never surrendered, it simply melted away – and adopted a new approach to a war that it could not win head-on. If the majority of Iraqis are actually fighting for the Ba'ath Party and its return, and if the insurgency is intensifying – and everyone says that it is – then it becomes obvious that the Hussein government was far more popular than Bush would have the world believe, and certainly far more popular than the American occupation.

  Neatly summarizing the foregoing, the former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter wrote earlier this year:

  On the surface, the al-Zarqawi organization seems too good to be true. A single Jordanian male is suddenly running an organization that operates in sophisticated cells throughout Iraq. No one could logically accomplish this. But there is an organization that can – the Mukhabarat (Intelligence) of Saddam Hussein.1

  Ritter is on target here, for the kind of resistance which bogs down the world's “superpower” in only 18 months is not one that was thrown together after the fall of Baghdad by unemployed soldiers, patriotic shopkeepers, and a gang of “thugs.” It is the work of someone who foresaw what was coming and knew what would be needed to bring Ba'athism back to power. Only one person fits that bill: Saddam Hussein.

  The Facts Speak for Themselves

  The prescience of Saddam

  Towards the end of2004, the American government began to admit that much of what their troops were fighting was indeed a resistance supportive of Saddam and/or the Ba'ath Party. U.S. spokesmen have also tended to frame the planning of such a resistance in the few months leading up to the war. Yet, as Ritter's observation intimated, it's hard to imagine that such a resistance movement could be put in the field to the degree and with the depth that we see in Iraq in such a short period. All logic says no.

  Interestingly, Seymour Hersh knew at the end of 2003 that the resistance was not, as one commentator put it early this year, “an incipient array of ill-organized holdovers from the ousted dictator's Ba'ath Party.”2 Hersh reveals this information in a few telling pages of his bestseller, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib”3 He relates that he met Ahmad Sadik, an Iraqi Air Force Brig. Gen. and a senior communications intelligence officer under Saddam, in Syria in December 2003.

  Sadik revealed that Saddam had not organized the resistance in the months leading up to the war. He had drawn up the plans for resistance in 2001! Astutely, he had understood that the officials brought into office by Bush were the same crew who had orchestrated the first Gulf War in 1991, and that they were intent on a sequel. Hersh continues:

  Huge amounts of small arms and other weapons were stockpiled around the country for use by the insurgents. In January 2003 … Saddam issued a four-page document ordering his secret police, the Mukhabarat, to respond to an attack by immediately breaking into key government offices and ministries, destroying documents, and setting buildings on fire. He also ordered the Mukhabarat to arrange for the penetration of the various Iraqi exile groups that would be brought into Iraq with U.S. help in the aftermath of the invasion.1

  With American troops massed on the outskirts of Baghdad on April 7, 2003, and with the world now expecting ferocious door-to-door resistance, the final coup de grace to Saddam's regime appeared imminent. Hersh says further:

  Instead, the [Iraqi] troops, who included members of the Ba'ath Party hierarchy, the Special Republican Guard, the Special Security Organization, and the Mukhabarat were ordered to return to their homes and initiate the resistance from there.2

  Hersh says he later received confirmation of this fact from a former high-level American intelligence official who said that Baghdad suddenly went quiet on the evening of April 7. Hersh writes: “Saddam loyalists had stopped chatting on satellite phones and other devices and simply melted away overnight.”3

  Sadik also revealed that in his 2001 directive, Saddam had ordered that the resistance be divided into three divisions made up of between two and four thousand people, working separately from one another, and organized into cells of only three or four members. The first division was headed by Izzat al-Douri and was composed of Ba'athists who were not publicly known as such. They were to remain in safe houses to be used later in operations. The second division was headed by Taha Yassin Ramadan, and was composed of Ba'ath Party members whose assignment was to back up the first division by providing operational instructions through a carefully constructed communications system, now commonly known in Iraq as “the thread.”4 Although Ramadan was captured in August 2003, it made no difference to the effectiveness of the division because it had been thoroughly broken down into cells. The third division's leader was not indicated, but its purpose was. It was the work of infiltration, and would involved the technocrats of the regime who had knowledge of the nation's infrastructure, such as power plants, water and sewage management, finance, and commerce. Finally, Sadik said that Saddam had given one final order: “They were never to come forwa
rd at the same time.”1

  This information was related to Hersh in December 2003, at a time when the U.S. government thought that it was only a question of mopping up remnants. Saddam's capture that month was also supposed to bring the resistance to an end, according to official wisdom. The facts tell another story.

  What was being reported in the mainstream media a year later confirmed what Hersh knew the year before, and what Hersh's sources knew years before that. In fact the scenario described by Hersh's sources found confirmation in an article by Brian Bender published on Christmas 2004 in the Boston Globe:

  Iraqi insurgents and their informants have been infiltrating U.S. and coalition organizations, Iraqi security units, and political parties in growing numbers, posing a daunting challenge to efforts to defeat the guerrillas and create a stable Iraqi state, according to U.S. military officials, Iraq specialists, and a new study of Iraqi security forces.2

  The study Bender referred to was by Anthony Cordesman of CSIS, who maintained that “penetration of Iraqi security and military forces may be the rule, not the exception.” The reason for this penetration was lack of information as to who should and who shouldn't be allowed to become a member of the U.S.-backed Iraqi army. As noted by Army Colonel Paul Hughes, who served as a political adviser to U.S. occupation authorities, “[T]o vet properly [in Iraq], you have to have some sort of institution to keep track of Iraqis …. There is none of that over there.”3 And there was no information because, Hughes said, a memo that coalition forces found indicated that Saddam ordered the Mukhabarat to destroy all its files in the event of an American invasion. The Boston Globe journalist commented: “[T]he loss of that intelligence material was a major setback for the U.S.-led coalition as it began the process of weeding out individuals with ties to the former government or its security services.”4 American forces thus confirmed what was said to Hersh earlier: Saddam's orders were followed in great detail. That they were is in part responsible for the intelligence troubles the U.S. has had, as well as the problems with infiltration of the new “Iraqi” security forces. We were forced to try weeding out “the bad guys” without knowing who they were. The situation has not shown any signs of improving, either. According to a New York Times piece that appeared five months after Bender's, American officials “acknowledge that they [still] have little understanding of who the leaders [of the insurgency] are ”1

  Also confirming the accuracy of Hersh's narrative is a comment of Dr. Rosemary Hollis of Chatham House, the renowned British think tank known formally as the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

  The idea that [the resistance] was organized before the war is beginning to reassert itself. There is a thesis that is gaining some currency with Arab nationalists that this definitely required a lot of preparation. There is also an increasingly long-term view, that they are playing a long game and, with a properly managed resistance, this is a conflict that can be won and that the Americans can be forced to go home.2

  This comment dovetails with remarks made by Saddam Hussein himself to his lawyer, Khalil al-Dolaimi, during their December 2004 meeting, and published later that month by Mustapha Bakri, editor of the Egyptian Al-Ousboua. Appearing in a rough English translation on a Tunisian website, Babnet Tunisie, Saddam told al-Dolaimi:

  [Bush] will leave Iraq by the small door because the Iraqi resistance is well prepared. It was prepared well ahead of the war. I had joined the military and political commands, and we prepared this new page of the war against the Americans. What arrives today is not the fruit of chance.3

  An interesting event of May 2005, reported by Tom Lasseter of Knight Ridder, confirmed that Saddam's remark was not merely the boasting of a fallen leader. Lasseter detailed that an enormous bunker used by Iraqi militants was discovered just 16 miles from Fallujah4 – a stone's throw from the city whose violent siege and destruction was supposed to have been “a turning point” in the struggle against the rebels in November 2004. Its discovery revealed “a sophisticated organization with a vast supply of weapons and enough confidence to operate near a major Marine base.” Lasseter's report described “well-equipped, air-conditioned bunkers … [that measured] 558 feet by 902 feet, the underground system of rooms featured four fully furnished living spaces, showers, and a kitchen with fresh food.” The square footage of the complex was roughly equivalent to a quarter of the office space in the Empire State Building! According to Lasseter's article,

  [T]he weapons and high-tech equipment found inside the bunker was impressive: mortars, rockets, machine guns, night-vision goggles, compasses, ski masks and cell phones. Marines also found at least 59 surface-to-air missiles, some 29,000 AK-47 rounds, more than 350 pounds of plastic explosives and an unspecified amount of TNT in a five-mile area around the bunkers.

  It is unlikely that this bunker is the only one of its kind, for there was no suggestion from military sources that it contained equipment that would have indicated it was the primary command and control facility. The odds have to be that there are more, especially in view of a comment made by a Marine Corps spokeswoman, who said that the bunker was “the largest underground system discovered in at least the last year” (emphasis mine).1Perhaps the comment Saddam made to al-Dolaimi – that “the Americans have seen nothing yet” – is worth considering seriously after all.

  Looking at the resistance: the Ba'ath returns

  On September 6, 2004, the Knight Ridder news service published a remarkable story called “Saddam's Ba'ath Party Is Back in Business.” It begins:

  By day, Iraqis loyal to Saddam Hussein's much-feared Ba'ath Party recite their oath in clandestine meetings, solicit donations from former members and talk politics over sugary tea at a Baghdad café known simply as “The Party.” By night, cells of these same men stage attacks on American and Iraqi forces, host soirées for Saddam's birthday and other former regime holidays, and debrief informants still dressed in suits and ties from their jobs in the new, U.S.-backed Iraqi government. Even with Saddam under lock and key, the Ba'ath Party is back in business.2

  All this confirms what Sadik told Hersh, as does a piece from May 2005 by London-based Kurd Hiwa Osman. He wrote of the resistance that

  [t]hey have also infiltrated government institutions, facilitating assassination attempts in Baghdad and other cities of the Sunni triangle. Many government ministers and public officials have been stuck in their houses for weeks, even months. Some do not even visit their ministries.1

  So while the rebels have both access to a whole slew of information about their enemies and evident ease of movement, the occupation forces have almost none. As put prosaically by Mark Mooney: “After two years, reliable intelligence about the enemy remains the Americans' glaring weakness.”2

  Hannah Allam's piece for KR continues:

  The Pan-Arab Socialist movement is going strong with sophisticated computer technology, high-level infiltration of the new government, and plenty of recruits in thousands of disenchanted, impoverished Sunni Muslims, according to interviews with current and former members, Iraqi government officials, and groups trying to root out former Ba'athists.3

  Even the director general of the Supreme National Commission for De-Ba'athification (whose scope of authority barely extends beyond the Green Zone, despite its impressive name), Mithal al-Alusi, concurs that the Ba'ath is resurgent: “There are two governments in Iraq. The Ba'athists are like thieves, stealing the power of the new government. Their work is organized and strong.”4 Allam points out, too, that Ba'athists openly distribute price lists: burn a Humvee or detonate an IED and earn a couple of hundred dollars, kill an American soldier and earn $1000.

  One interesting fact indicates that evidence for what Allam narrates is more than purely circumstantial. On April 7, 2004 – the 57th anniversary of the Ba'ath's foundation – a statement proclaimed via the Internet that the party intended to take back Iraq's Anbar province from the occupation forces: “The Ba'ath Party and resistance are to implement a series of military operations
against U.S. Marines newly situated in western Iraq.”5 That same week the first clashes between Fallujah fighters and American troops erupted into a full-scale uprising, leading to the first U.S. assault on the city. Some postings on the Internet are to be believed, because they are born out by events.

  Only a Sunni insurgency?

  According to the media the resistance is almost exclusively confined to the Sunni heartlands – the famous “Sunni Triangle.” Even if that's the case, it is worth noting that 45 percent of the total population of Iraq is living in this “Triangle.” If only 20 percent of all Iraqis are Sunnis – as is popularly accepted – and all of these Sunnis were in the Sunni triangle, there would still be fully another 25 percent of the total Iraqi population in this area. Meaning that if the Sunni Triangle is the “headquarters” of the resistance, the resistance is headquartered in an area where more than half of the people there are not Sunni. Food for thought, at least.

  Intelligent journalists are now referring to the “mainly Sunni resistance” because it has become evident that it goes well beyond that particular branch of Islam.1 An illustration of this is in the boycott of the January 2005 election, composed of widely varying ethnic and religious groups: according to a correspondent at IslamOnline.net, 47 different groups, Sunni, Shiite, Turkoman, and Christian, “declared their boycott” of the election.2 Now it is likely that the ethnic or “sectarian” makeup of the boycott would correspond to the makeup of the resistance, which again suggests that support for the resistance goes well beyond Iraq's Sunnis. Indeed, statements of solidarity for the resistance – though mostly unreported – from numerous Islamic scholars in Saudi Arabia and around the globe also indicate a wide and substantial base of support throughout worldwide Islam.3 Most telling, perhaps, is a June 2005 report by the Boston Globe that a “recent internal poll conducted for the U.S.-led coalition found that nearly 45 percent of the population supported the insurgent attacks, making accurate intelligence difficult to obtain.”4 Unless assertions that Sunnis make up only about 20 percent of the population of Iraq are substantially in error (and they might be), the broad base of support for the resistance is almost uncontestable.5