Seymour Hersh - The New Yorker

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker

A STRATEGIC SHIFT

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

by Jon Flanders

Was it only two days ago that we read the exultant news stories and saw the frenzied TV news coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein? I know that I had to turn off CNN in revulsion as the evening progressed.

President Bush took time off from his chainsaw assaults on the underbrush of his Crawford Ranch to commend the Maliki government for its handling of the affair.

Counterpunch

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Iraq is rending itself apart. The signs of collapse are everywhere. In Baghdad the police often pick up over 100 tortured and mutilated bodies in a single day. Government ministries make war on each other. A new and ominous stage in the disintegration of the Iraqi state came earlier this month when police commandos from the Shia-controlled Interior Ministry kidnapped 150 people from the Sunni-run Higher Education Ministry in the heart of Baghdad.

Unity of the Iraqi people against US occupation is the only guarantee for solving the current political crisis
from Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation (www.idao.org)
26.2.06

The destruction of the Askariya Shrine, loved by Muslims of the Shiite and Sunni faiths alike was no sectarian action.

For 1200 years the Shrine was protected by the people of the historic city of Samurra, of the Sunni faith, and visited by millions of the Muslims of the Shia faith every year.

by Ewa Jasiewicz
from Left Turn Magazine

Beyond daily bombings, incursions, and illegitimate governance—there are spaces of resistance, social power, and reconciliation in Iraq. Ewa Jasiewicz explains how the US occupation has helped institute structures of repression, sectarianism, social violence and alienation that exist in occupied Iraq today; but she also explores the spaces of hope and self-determination.

U.S. Strategy in Iraq
By Rahul Mahajan

Bush's new "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" is, indeed, a sorry mess of bullet points. Bush's rhetorical strategy on the war most closely resembles that of the old-fashioned American tourist in a foreign land who says "Where is the bathroom?" and then, when nobody understands, repeats it LOUDER: "You know, BATHROOM?"

And yet, notwithstanding the derision of liberals, there is a U.S. strategy in Iraq that has already had some success and may well have more.

Even though Bush has said it repeatedly, it's still true: the strategy is to create an Iraqi security force that will fight the counterinsurgency so the United States won't have to.

By Michael Keefer

Does anyone remember the shock with which the British public greeted the revelation four years ago that one of the members of the Real IRA unit whose bombing attack in Omagh on August 15, 1998 killed twenty-nine civilians had been a double agent, a British army soldier?

That soldier was not Britain’s only terrorist double agent. A second British soldier planted within the IRA claimed he had given forty-eight hours advance notice of the Omagh car-bomb attack to his handlers within the Royal Ulster Constabulary, including “details of one of the bombing team and the man’s car registration.” Although the agent had made an audio tape of his tip-off call, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, chief constable of the RUC, declared that “no such information was received.”

Tens of thousands of supporters of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have marched in Baghdad to denounce the US presence in Iraq and call for a speedy trial of Saddam Hussein on the second anniversary of his overthrow.

Friday 08 April (al Jazeera, Agence France-Press)

Iraqi leaders have called for a mass demonstration against the US-led troop presence on the second anniversary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government.