Senate’s war budget vote signals no ‘reconciliation’ in Iraq

On June 25 the Iraqi puppet government presented a 24-point “national reconciliation” plan that purports to help end armed resistance to the U.S.-led occupation and bring stability to the country.

Does this plan, announced by Iraqi “Prime Minister” Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, herald the beginning of a new era of stability in Iraq and the prospect of a timely withdrawal of foreign occupation troops? Or is it a cynical ploy meant to divide and conquer the Iraqi resistance movement and revive the political fortunes of U.S. President George W. Bush and his Republican allies at home while obscuring the occupation’s ongoing crimes against Iraqi civilians?

The June 26 New York Times reported that the plan offers “neither a broad amnesty for insurgents nor any new options for members of Saddam Hussein’s long-ruling Baath Party, the two most heavily disputed items. … The decision appeared to have been influenced by religious Shiites who form his base and by the American military command.”

According to a June 25 British Broadcasting Corp. special report, the “reconciliation” plan “is part of a grand strategy by the Bush administration to stabilize Iraq—or to stabilize the perception of Iraq—in advance of the mid-term elections for Congress in November.

“Other parts of the plan are an insistence that democracy has arrived in Iraq and must be supported, [and] a refusal to set any date or timetable for a total withdrawal of U.S. troops,” the BBC concluded.

Conveniently, a proposal by Gen. George Casey, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, to dramatically reduce troop levels by the end of 2007 was leaked to reporters while Maliki’s plan was in the news. This gave Bush the opportunity to say Casey’s plan was one option being considered, while continuing to evade any actual commitment to withdraw.

During Bush’s surprise visit to Baghdad in mid-June, Maliki had promised “stability” in Iraq within 18 months.

At the Bush administration’s insistence, the pliable prime minister reportedly dropped a timetable for ending the occupation from his plan, and severely narrowed the amnesty offer at the last minute.

Democrats pro-war

Even though Maliki tailored his “reconciliation” plan to suit the Bush administration, it was too strong for some Democrats to take. In fact, some party leaders seem to be positioning themselves to the right of Bush on the issue of amnesty for the tens of thousands of Iraqi men rounded up in mass sweeps and imprisoned by U.S. troops, in some cases for over three years.

While the White House said, “Reconciliation must be an Iraqi process, led by Iraqis”—after the proper compliance with Washington’s colonial mandates, of course—Carl Levin, senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, denounced Maliki’s plan for daring to offer any kind of amnesty to “suspected terrorists” opposed to the U.S. occupation.

“That would just be unconscionable,” Levin told “Fox News Sunday” June 25. “For heaven’s sake, we liberated the country.”

Other high-ranking Democrats joined Levin’s jingoist tirade. They include Sen. Russ Feingold, who with John Kerry had sponsored a perfunctory bill to withdraw the troops by July 1, 2007. It was defeated 86-13 on June 23, as was a second vague proposal to begin withdrawing troops this year but with no definite date to end the occupation.

For all the bluster filling newspapers and airwaves about heated partisan debate on Iraq in the halls of Congress, the truth comes down to this: On June 23, the Senate voted unanimously to approve a $517.7 billion war budget for fiscal year 2007, including $50 billion designated to maintain the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

That’s right. Every senator, Republican and Democrat alike, voted to approve the war budget.

What’s more, they voted for nearly $100 billion more than the House of Representatives had approved earlier in the week.

Neither of the withdrawal proposals was taken seriously by the Democratic Party senators, as their unanimous vote for the war budget proves. No worker or other opponent of war and oppression should forget this unanimous vote on Election Day. The Democrats are as much a party of imperialism and war as the Republicans.

Ramadi under siege

Republican or Democrat, White House or Pentagon—Washington isn’t the least bit interested in “reconciliation.”

Lt. Gen. John F. Satler told the June 26 New York Times that no matter what, troop levels would not be reduced in Western Iraq’s Al-Anbar province, considered one of the strongholds of the resistance.

There the city of Ramadi is bracing for a siege by U.S. forces like “Operation Phantom Fury,” which leveled 70 percent of neighboring Falluja in November 2004.

Maurizio Mascia, program manager of the Italian Consortium of Solidarity, which provides relief to refugees in Western Iraq, told Inter Press Service: “The Americans, instead of attacking the city [Ramadi] all at once like they’ve done in their previous operations in cities like Falluja and Al-Qa’im, are using helicopters and ground troops to attack one district at a time.

“The main dangers for the population are the [U.S.-controlled] checkpoints and the snipers; both usually shoot at any movement that they consider dangerous—causing many victims among civilians.”

U.S. troops are setting up loudspeakers and blasting messages calling on residents to flee the city or turn in suspected resistance fighters. This is after weeks of cordoning off the city of 400,000.

Imad Al-Muhammadi of the Iraqi Red Crescent said: “There is no positive sign on the American side that shows a different solution from those of Falluja and other cities which have been ‘deleted’ in order to be ‘liberated.’ Civilians, as usual, are the ones living the hardships of the occupation and definitely the ones dying in vain.”

Families face “horrible living conditions in tents, abandoned schools and are staying under any roof that protects them from the burning summer sun,” he said.

According to the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, “People in Ramadi ... estimate that 70 percent of the city’s population have fled in the last week, many holding white flags for fear of being shot at by Marine snipers.”

Meanwhile, U.S. troops in Tikrit provocatively seized a respected Sunni cleric, Sheik Jamal Abdul Karim al-Dabban, and four others as “suspected terrorists” in an early-morning raid June 24. Within hours, outraged crowds gathered in Baghdad and other cities to protest Sheik Dabban’s arrest. While the military released al-Dabban later that day, claiming it was a mistake, the firestorm of anger hasn’t abated. (CNN, June 24)

What’s behind Baghdad ‘emergency’?

In Baghdad, Iraq’s capital city of 6 million people, a state of emergency and curfew were imposed on June 23. But the crackdown had already begun June 13, with tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops flooding the streets.

The southern city of Basra has been under a similar state of emergency since early June.

Maliki ordered the state of emergency with just two hours’ notice, while Friday prayers were still in progress. It included a shoot-on-site authorization for anyone suspected of carrying a weapon or displaying “threatening” behavior.

“Aren’t they supposed to give us a day’s notice?” asked taxi driver Muhammed Saleh. “How are people who went to work or to pray supposed to get home? This is a decision by someone who is not wise, not reasonable.” (Washington Post, June 24)

The Associated Press reported that workers and worshipers scrambled to get home or find shelter before the deadline, since vehicular traffic had already been banned on Friday afternoons. “U.S. soldiers frisked men also dashing home against a backdrop of thick, black smoke rising above the white high-rise buildings of Haifa Street. Helicopters flitted back and forth overhead.”

Most reports vaguely chalked up the sudden state of emergency to “insurgent attacks.” However, the Washington Post, in the most detailed account published in the United States, reported that the unrest began when members of the Shiite Mahdi Army were attacked by an alleged “Sunni militia” on their way to Friday prayers.

While the U.S./Iraqi Army forces were supposedly coming to their rescue, the Mahdi Army fighters exchanged fire with them at checkpoints, and “later set up checkpoints of their own on roads leading toward the mosque.” (Washington Post, June 24)

The provocative attack on the Mahdi Army is suspicious, since that group has strongly opposed the U.S. occupation. Who actually attacked the Mahdi forces, and why? The U.S. big-business media have ignored this question, but it should be asked.

What is behind the spread of so-called sectarian militias, particularly in Baghdad, where the U.S. forces are headquartered? The rise in bombings and other violent acts directed at religious groups and civilians, rather than at occupation troops and Iraqi collaborators, is strikingly similar to the work of U.S.-sponsored death squads in Central America during the 1980s.

John Negroponte, Bush’s director of national intelligence, was a key figure in the creation of right-wing death squads in the 1980s. Now the so-called sectarian militias emerged on a large scale in after Negroponte’s 2004 appointment as U.S. ambassador to Iraq.