Last week we got President Bush's Iraq War status report. True to form, Bush
evoked 9/11 and “terrorists” wherever he could. Ironically, neither petroleum
nor WMD was mentioned once.

It's little wonder that Bush clings to 9/11 and the War on Terrorism. Prior to
9/11, his court-decided presidency was floundering. Since that defining event
he has managed to sustain a highly successful across-the-board attack on civil
society shifting balances in wealth, health, education, intelligence, the
courts, information flow and civil liberties. From the perspective of analyzing
a situation by "cui bono", or who gains?, 9/11 might take on sinister overtones.

Let's start by filling in the boxes: The box Saddam Hussein was in back then,
was, of course, the boycott imposed by the UN and enforced by the US and UK air
forces. What most rankled the Neocons at that time was the failure of the
boycott to topple Hussein and in essence, put into play the huge oil reserves
that lie underneath Iraq's territory.

Ironically, one of the major problems US rebuilding efforts have faced in Iraq
is the sorry state of Iraqi infrastructure. From hospitals, to electric plants,
to water purification systems, Americans tasked right after the invasion with
getting things back to pre-war levels complained that Saddam had basically
jerry-rigged a system woefully lacking boycotted replacement parts. In other
words, the blockade had actually worked more efficiently than is given credit.
The boycott also hamstrung Saddam’s military and all of his WMD projects. No
wonder he was reduced to the lowly profession of writing fanciful novels to
occupy his time.

Another irony is that through Bush’s efforts, Saddam's Iraq, once anathema to al
Qaeda has now become a bono fide front in the War on Terror. According to a
recent CIA report, Iraq today is a center for terrorists who get daily real-life
training in waging an urban battle against the most modern equipment and
techniques developed for countering these types of insurgencies. This could have
dire consequences later on when the front moves to Saudi Arabia, bin Laden’s
stated target.

The box that Bush has put us in now, of course, is the “status quo” in Iraq.  In the most important way Iraq is not like Vietnam. A pullout from “Vietnam was traumatic for the United States, domestically, but Vietnam was not strategic then and is not strategic today. But the Persian Gulf is strategic. It’s where the oil is.

Bush was adamant the other night that he would not pull out of Iraq during his
presidency. Still, implicit in what he said about US troop levels –no measurable
increase in the footprint—is that the enterprise depends on getting something
called a united Iraqi nation in place that can command a loyal army of several
hundred thousand native soldiers, policemen and paramilitaries from various
regions of the country.

But that will be a Herculean task. People living within the Iraqi borders see
themselves primarily as members of tribes, sects and major religious and
nationalistic divisions. Beyond direct tribal affinities they are Sunnis,
Shiites and Kurds. And among these groups they break down into a wide spectrum
of Islamic religious affiliations that go from urban and rural fundamentalists
to secularists.

In such circumstances, something like a loyal all-Iraqi army will be extremely
hard to field. The true dynamic of the country is to spin apart into small well
defined, armed militias. The Sunnis and their pan-Arab allies are fighting the
insurgency. But the Kurds in the North have not disarmed nor have the various
Shiite militias, including the fundamentalist militias under al Sadr.

Another box is the political timetable. In a little over a month, Iraq is
supposed to have agreed upon a constitution that will define the country going
forward. In this vortex of colliding secular and political interests, a
committee that only recently got its final membership is supposed to agree on
the most fundamental aspects of the new country's shape and makeup . The August
15 deadline was part of the timetable Bush did offer in his speech. In reality,
it probably deserves as much merit as his list of the "coalition's 30 allies and
the pool of foreign financial contributors. It's as if saying it makes it true.

For our next box, let's follow the oil. It’s no coincidence that according to
the NYTIMES, people surrounding Ahmed Chalabi, former main supplier of ginned up
intelligence and Pentagon favorite to replace Saddam Hussein, have now moved
their activities into the oil rich southern Iraq area around Basra. They have
begun a political push to create a “state” with the same degree of autonomy that
the Kurds have established in the North, which also just happens to control the
Kirkuk oil fields.

And so it seems, in this box there already is a plan B in play. In this
“federation” scenario --something that could never be agreed to in the proposed
constitution--the bulk of the population in Sunni and religious-Shiite
controlled areas get the sand, heat and broken down infrastructure and the guys
most closely aligned to the US in the North, and who split the difference
between Iran and the US in the South, end up getting the oil. Chalabi's
abilities to work both ends against the middle successfully are not to be
underestimated.

So much for the spreading of democracy and freedom box. The fight for Iraqi oil
has only just begun.

4:12:37 PM