Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

Iraq Death Squads Amidst “Low-Level” Civil War

BILL KRISTOL has CRACKED. It's been “stay the course” for almost 3 years. Getting out has never had anything to do with it. That's the problem.

Hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to
death or summarily executed every month in Baghdad alone by death squads working
from the Ministry of the Interior, the United Nations' outgoing human rights
chief in Iraq has revealed. John Pace, who left Baghdad two weeks ago, told
The Independent on Sunday that up to three-quarters of the corpses stacked in
the city's mortuary show evidence of gunshot wounds to the head or injuries
caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes. Much of the killing, he said, was
carried out by Shia Muslim groups under the control of the Ministry of the Interior.
Iraq's
death squads: On the brink of civil war

The Iraqi government is certainly busy, but not doing anything
that will help the Iraqis stand up so we can get out.

But Bill Kristol's comment this morning was uttered by a man who's
gotten lost in his own message. Terror Guy and Rummy have done nothing but “stay
the course” for almost 3 years. His talk about “preconditions for
getting out” is either a preemptive cya strategy for the civil war many
think has begun, or a way to taunt Bush into doing more to get “victory”
in the end. It also is Mr. Kristol's view that getting out should not be the
goal, having permanent military bases from which to move around the Middle East
and eventually launch their next best hope, an attack on Iran. Oh, this is Sunday, so
it must be Syria today.

The issue that confounds,
Kevin
Drum illuminates further.

“We've got 17 more level 2 battalions
than we did in October, so why isn't anyone talking about cutting back on U.S.
troops? Either “level 2″ doesn't mean much, or else events on the
ground have gotten so much worse that we need all the extra troops we can get.
Neither of these thoughts is very comforting. And
given the fact that Iraqi troops appear to be mostly private armies run by local
theocrats anyway, you have to half wonder if all this training is even doing
any good. Are we just guaranteeing a more efficient civil war?”

How are they formulating the level 1, 2 and 3 troops levels of the Iraqis?
Frankly, no one seems to have a definitive answer. Folks, this is really important.

In the meantime, news comes that there's been a peace deal struck, a “pact
of honor” agreed upon. Did Iraqis see what a civil war would look like
and back off, or is this just a pause in the carnage, with more to come? We
don't know, but let's pray it's real, binding and lasting.

“You can be sure that Al Qaeda will set up shop
in the Sunni areas, just like they did in the Afghan civil war,” said
Kenneth M. Pollack, director of research at the Saban Center at the Brookings
Institution.

Mr. Pollack cautions that a civil war could prove especially
painful for the Shiites. There is no reason, he says, to assume that they
won't fight among themselves. The three major Shiite movements each have militias.
Sometimes they have clashed. Iran, he said, would just as soon avoid a violent
fragmentation along those lines.

“The first thing you would see in an Iraq civil
war is an intra-Shia civil war,” Mr. Pollack said. “There are a
thousand Shiite militias that could do battle against each other, splintering
even the southern part of Iraq.”

What
Civil War Could Look Like

The Iraqi troop level readiness is worrisome at best and flat
out frightening at worst. We could be headed for a very bloody spring, because
I think this issue is much bigger than the casual reference it's getting in
the traditional media.

Bush has tied our leaving to Iraqis standing up, while some believe
a “low level” civil
war, complete with ethnic
cleansing, has begun. Interim peace deals are not a panacea because it's obvious that something else is roiling underneath.