Shi'ites begin push for Islamic constitution

February 2, 2005

By Thanassis Cambanis Boston Globe

NAJAF, Iraq - Top Shi'ite clerics, emboldened by what they perceive as a massive turnout by their followers for the coalition of Shi'ite religious parties, have already directed their attention to advocating for an Islamic constitution, several of them said in the aftermath of Sunday's election.

The turnout for the top-finishing electoral slate, a coalition of Islamist parties supported by the Shi'ite clerical establishment, has convinced leading clerics in Najaf that religious parties will have a majority in the Transitional National Assembly that will write Iraq's next constitution.

The clerics of Najaf who orchestrated the Shi'ite political party coalition say they expect a constitutional debate between hard-core Islamists, who want Koranic law to be the constitution's primary source, and moderate Islamists, who want a milder form of religious law. This debate, they say, will dwarf any challenge from secular parties.

US officials are counting on Islamists who oppose a direct role for clerics in government to prevail; otherwise, they fear, Iraq's Shi'ite majority could push the country in the direction of neighboring theocratic Iran. The officials say Iraq's Shi'ite clergy has supported democratic principles, including elections, and shown political restraint since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
www.timesargus.com.../20050202/NEWS/502020368/1002/NEWS01

Why the US will not leave Iraq
By Pepe Escobar

Shi'ites will be in power in the Arab world for the first time in 14 centuries. So Iraqi elections are indeed historic. But it's not for US President George W Bush to proclaim Sunday's elections "a success", even before the results are known: it's for the Iraqi people, those who did and also those who did not vote. The undisputable fact is that apart from the Kurds - who since the first Gulf War in 1991 have lived under American protection - most Iraqis, Sunni or Shi'ite, voter or non-voter, in public or in private, blame the United States for the current chaos and their "liberation" from electricity, water, jobs and security. History may still reveal the case that Sunday's elections under occupation, with rules established by the occupier, suit everyone except the long-suffering 27 million Iraqis.
www.atimes.com...

ON WAR # 10: The Duke Of Medina Sidonia

By William S. Lind
April 1, 2003

In planning a war, the most important task is to understand what can be planned and what cannot. In general, the initial disposition of forces can be planned, and it must be planned with great care. As Field Marshal von Moltke said, "A mistake in initial dispositions can seldom be put right." But Moltke also said, "No plan survives its first contact with the enemy." Once you cross the enemy's border, you have to adjust and improvise constantly. The conduct of war, as distinct from preparation for war, is (Moltke again) "a matter of expedients." Count von Schlieffen thought otherwise, and in the famous Schlieffen Plan he attempted to extend the logic of railway mobilization planning into the campaign itself. Not surprisingly, the result was failure and, for Germany, a lost war.
www.freecongress.org...

September 8, 2003

Army troops, budget stretched to the limit

By James Kitfield, National Journal

According to Army sources, the Army's own initial analysis of the Iraq war reflected much more ambivalence about the battle plan and its relevance for future wars. At senior civilians' insistence, for instance, the Army substituted Apache helicopters for heavy-artillery systems. Yet on the Apaches' first deep strike over Baghdad suburbs—the kind of urban environment that characterized much of the Iraqi campaign— virtually all of the helicopters were damaged by ground fire; one went down, and its crew was captured. Moreover, a later attack by Apaches using modified and more-cautious tactics hit relatively few enemy targets.

"We thought from the very beginning that the war plan was too heavy on Apaches," said a senior Army officer involved in developing and executing the Iraqi Freedom campaign. "We also conducted our own analysis because we knew that certain people would use this lessons-learned exercise to rewrite the history of this war in a way that would prove their personal agendas in terms of where the Army should be headed."

For Iraqi Freedom, Rumsfeld also decided to jettison the U.S. Central Command's carefully constructed and sequenced deployment plan, called the Time-Phased Force Deployment Data system, or "TipFid." Rumsfeld's office said it was too inflexible and would lead to "calcified" battle planning. Although Army officers concede that Rumsfeld's "rolling start" to the Iraq war arguably contributed to tactical surprise and increased agility, the move greatly complicated the Army's already-complex logistical challenge. Even as lead U.S. Army elements were fighting on the outskirts of Baghdad, for example, forces needed for the fight were still pouring off ships in the Kuwaiti port of Doha, and not necessarily in the order of first priority or with adequate support. The 101st Airborne Division arrived without its full complement of transport trucks, for instance, and initially had trouble moving around the battlefield, and the Corps Support Command in charge of supplying forces along a 186-mile logistics line was short of critical communications equipment. Rumsfeld's decision to slash Central Command's original request for forces roughly in half, meanwhile, kept the extended logistics line vulnerable to hit-and-run attacks throughout the war.
www.afge171.org...