The Know-Nothings Posted by Adam Blickstein

America has nearly 150,000 members of our armed forces on the ground in Iraq. There are thousands of other personnel—spanning the diplomatic, political and logistical world—scattered around the country.  We have ostensibly our largest intelligence operation in the region, narrowly focused on all aspects of the military and political situation in Iraq. And from the American perspective, Nouri al-Maliki—and his government—might be the most closely watched, either tacitly or overtly, political figure in the world.  So one would expect that when a dog scratches his ear on a corner in Baghdad, let alone the Iraqi Security Forces launch a major military offensive in Basra during which Maliki leaves Baghdad for the streets of Basra to personally oversee the operation, American officials in the Green Zone or Central Command or Washington might get a heads up.  Well, yesterday on Meet the Press, CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden basically admitted that he and our military leaders, including General David Petraeus, and our diplomatic and political officials, including U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and our intelligence officials, were in the dark with little to no foreknowledge of the most important test for the Iraqi Security Forces since the surge began and another "defining" moment for Maliki’s government:

GEN. HAYDEN:  I, I don't know what on--what went on on the ground in Baghdad prior to the operation.  I do know that this was a decision of the Iraqi government by the prime minister and personally by the prime minister, and that he's relying on Iraqi forces, by and large, to take this action.

MR. RUSSERT:  Were you aware of it?

GEN. HAYDEN:  I was--in terms of being prebriefed or, or having, you know, the, the normal planning process in which you build up to this days or weeks ahead of time, no.  No, I was not.

MR. RUSSERT:  You didn't know it was going to happen?

GEN. HAYDEN:  No more so than Dave Petraeus or Ambassador Crocker did.

Hayden is hedging to what extent that he knew prior to the operation that it was going to happen vis-a-vis leaving it ambiguous what Petraeus or Crocker knew when (a question for Petraeus and Crocker at next week’s Congressional hearings). But what he is admitting is that there was very little to no preparation for it on the American side.  Either way, if our apparatus in Iraq knew nothing of the planned offensive, it is a major structural failure and top-to-bottom breakdown of our military and intelligence ability there, one which further calls into question the legitimacy of our presence in Iraq. If we had even the smallest hint that Maliki was going after Sadr’s forces in Basra, then we did nothing to either stop it or worse, allowed Maliki to pursue what was going to be a losing venture from its inception.  If this was the case, we either underestimated the Mahdi Army’s ability to repel the ISF’s offensive or overestimated the ISF’s ability to quell Sadr’s forces in Basra. 

But it’s possible that either eventuality is irrelevant for the administration. Why?  Because Petraeus, Crocker, and Republican officials are going to use what happened in Basra—whether they had foreknowledge of the situation or not—as another excuse as to why a pause in troop reduction this summer is necessary.  It’s possible, perhaps conspiratorial, to presuppose the Administration threw Maliki and his authority under-the-bus knowing that any operation against Sadr’s forces would provide sufficient evidence that the U.S. still needs to maintain a high, pre-surge troop level in Iraq.  For them, it’s always been a zero-sum game. The Administration still holds its own political priorities above those that represent the best Iraq policy for Iraqi’s and Americans alike.

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

Again, these denials are really hard to believe. Everyone in the region claims to have known for months that a move on Basra was coming fairly soon. The US is, I suspect, just denying knowledge of the specific timing and planning to give the Iraqis the maximum credit for being in the lead, and also to stand off a bit from the Sadrist - Da'wa - SIIC background struggle. The US has been trying to adopt a more open, diplomatic stance toward Sadr later, while distinguishing the mainstream of his movement from its "criminal elements". The Sadrists recently got what they wanted with a compromise on on the provincial elections law, and the US seems to have helped.

Shahrastani and the Iraqi oil ministry recently opened up bidding on oil field development, and they are negotiating deals with foreign companies on Iraq's super-giants, even without the long-delayed oil law. It's 2002 again and the oil rush is back on. The French, the Russians, the British and the Americans are all back at the trough. However, recent news reports have said these deals were going to be delayed until the summer, amid concerns about security for oil company employees, and despite the Ministry's desire for a faster pace. It seems fairly obvious that at some point the government was going to have to try to demonstrate some greater control over Iraq's most economically important city, and its chief oil export spigot.

Cheney was just in Iraq less than two weeks ago to press for movement on national reconciliation, to press for compromise on the provincial elections law and to deal on a long term strategic pact for a permanent US presence in the country. Is it really plausible to think that the government's plans for Basra weren't part of the chats he had while there? With the US on the verge of a possibly severe recession driven in large part by very high oil prices, and with the Saudis unable and unwilling to boost production to help out, is it really plausible to think that Iraqi oil production - which recently returned to prewar Saddam era levels - was not a major item on Cheney's agenda? Where Cheney goes, oil issues and interests always follow.

It's hard to evaluate the outcome of this fighting, because it is unclear what the government's aims were. It certainly doesn't look like there was any real effort here to do anything so grand as to crush the entire Sadrist movement. Perhaps the attacks were directed on rogue offshoots of that movement and militias that were taking a more aggressive role than Sadr had directed: the gangs, smugglers, extortionists etc. who seem loosely affiliated with the Sadrist "tendency", but that Sadr doesn't entirely control. It looks like Sadr demonstrated strength, and is the winner here. But maybe both camps got a little bit of what they were after.

Anyway, there is no doubt that whatever the outcome, it will be interpreted by the administration, as Adam says, as further motive for prolonged US engagement in Iraq. Here's what Cheney said at a presser with Barzani during his trip:

We think it's important to lay the foundation for the kind of relationship that will bind our people together for the future as we build on the experiences and shared sacrifice that we've been -- that we've worked on together in the past.

The US isn't going anywhere; we're in it for the long haul. The next president is going to be presented by the Bush administration with too many faits accomplis to be able to find the political room to extricate the imperial machinery from Iraq.

[Don Bacon]

The next president is going to be presented by the Bush administration with too many faits accomplis to be able to find the political room to extricate the imperial machinery from Iraq.

So he or she will claim, anyhow, in extending the Bush legacy. No presidential candidate has had the courage to disown the misguided "global war on terror," or the 14 mega-bases, or the mega-embassy, or executive privilege, and the troops must be supported while incidentally not making Bush look too bad because despite some slight differences in plumage they are all birds of a feather.

[Dan Kervick]

A Gareth Porter column this morning contains reporting that blows the "know-nothing" story completely out of the water. US forces were involved in both the planning and execution of this operation.