Category Archives: Iraq

The Herald’s Jim Morin is frequently predictable, but now and then he hits one out of the park:

rc3 asks, Anyone have any light to shed on the US arrest of Iranian “diplomats” in the Kurdish area of Iraq on Wednesday?

I think I have a hypothesis, but it sort of fits the facts. From what I can gather, the so-called “consulate” at which these Iranian officials worked was not accredited to the national Iraqi government headquartered in Baghdad. Rather, they were there at the invitation of the Kurdish authorities. While the Kurdish authorities operate what is almost a defacto state, and indeed have invited diplomats from their nearby neighbors to come and set up ‘consulates’ neither the US nor Iraq-in-Baghdad nor most of the world recognizes the independence of Kurdistan and thus those governments also do not recognize the validity of any diplomatic credentials or immunities issued by what they see as a mere provincial government.

Thus, from the US point of view, the building in question had no special legal status, regardless of whether it was flying (as reported) an Iranian flag.

As to what motivated the US action, I still have no more idea than I did yesterday, when I worried that this might be a deliberate provocation of Iran in the wake of Bush’s bellicose speech. And I don’t see why the US forces would be willing to act in a way that would doubtlessly anger (and did anger) the local Kurdish authorities.

But I’m starting to think that I understand the US legal position — and that if the facts are as I hypothesize, even to agree with it as regards the non-diplomatic status of the building and its occupants. (None of this of course speaks to whether there was justification for the raid, its motives, or how the persons detained may be being treated.)

Bush looked scared.

The so-called new tactics are not new, the escalation while large in human terms is too small to matter in strategic terms, the troops being sent over will not in the main have proper equipment (the armor hasn’t been built yet), and they will not “win” the conflict — whatever “win” means in this context.

Rattling the saber against Iran and Syria is sort of new — it’s been policy for a while, but this is more open.

Overall, I see this as a bookend to Bush’s post-9/11 speech, about a week after the attack. I cried at that one — I saw it as making an open-ended commitment to an endless, formless, armed conflict against vague enemies, a conflict so prolonged it would eat my children, then quite young. I didn’t cry today, I’m too numbed by all that’s led up to this.

Best case: Today is the day that Bush started to lose his base, at least as much on body language as on bankrupt policy. But will the loss come quickly enough to slow or stop the carnage?

Worst case: We’re all seriously f***ed.

Update: image via Gen. JC Christian, Patriot.

Cosmic Iguana – Voice of the Evil Doers says,

US SPENT $1 MIL FOR EVERY DEAD IRAQI – CIVILIANS INCLUDED:
GUARDIAN:

Early this year the Bush administration is to ask Congress to approve an additional $100bn for the onerous task of making life intolerable for the Iraqis. This will bring the total spent on the White House’s current obsession with war to almost $500bn – enough to have given every US citizen $1,600 each… with over half a million dead, it means that the world’s greatest military superpower has spent a million dollars for every Iraqi killed… [*]

Last year I posted that the US had shot 250,000 bullets per dead insurgent [*]. I suggested sarcastically that our kill ratio was not that bad when you consider how many civilians we have knocked off. Now it appears that even taking that into account we’re not dreadfully efficient.

But I especially liked this:

One commenter suggested it would be cheaper to kill people by dropping the bundles of money we’re spending directly on their heads.