[progchat_action] Patrick Cockburn on Bob Woodward Iraq book
Steven L. Robinson
By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent - UK
Friday, 5 September 2008
The United States has spied extensively on Iraqi prime minister Nouri
al-Maliki and other Iraqi government leaders, the American investigative
journalist Bob Woodward has revealed.
"We know everything he says," the journalist quotes one source as saying, in
his fourth book on George Bush's presidency. The US administration's
decision to spy continually on Mr Maliki shows deep distrust of the Iraqi
leadership by the US. The surveillance took place even while Mr Maliki was
speaking to Mr Bush by video-phone once a week.
The Iraqi government reacted furiously today and said it would ask the
United States for an explanation, although Mr Maliki and other Iraqi leaders
are unlikely to be shocked or surprised that the US has been spying on
them.. "If it is true...it reflects that there is no trust," government
spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.
The prime aim of US espionage targeting Iraqi officials has been to find out
the true relations between the Baghdad government and Iran, though this
motive is not referred to in Mr Woodward's book. Washington has been deeply
suspicious of Mr Maliki and his predominantly Shia government for
maintaining close relations with Tehran even while the US was threatening to
go to war with Iran.
At one moment in 2006-7 US officials in Iraq were complaining privately that
they could not get enough information about more sophisticated and lethal
roadside bombs killing American troops because so much of the US
intelligence effort was focussed on the Iraqi government. "Hundreds of our
people were doing nothing but listening to Iraqi officials," said a source.
The American troop 'surge' of 2007 when 30,000 additional US troops were
sent to Iraq to pursue more aggressive tactics was not the main reason for
the fall in violence in Iraq over the last sixteen months says Mr Woodward
in 'The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008.'
Instead he claims that "ground breaking" new covert techniques enabled US
military and intelligence officials to find, target and kill insurgent
leaders in rebel groups, particularly in al-Qa'ida in Iraq. In its summary
of Mr Woodward's book, to be published on Monday, the Washington Post, of
which he is associate editor, says he does not reveal the code names of this
assassination campaign because of national security concerns.
The origin and degree of success of the 'surge' is politically important in
the US presidential election because the Republican candidate John McCain
says that he was an early advocate of the strategy and it has brought the US
close to military victory.
Denying this, Mr Woodward concludes that there were four factors leading to
the reduction in violence in Iraq: covert operations, troop reinforcements,
the decision by the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to restrain his Mehdi Army
militia, and the rise of the Awakening Movement in the Sunni community
opposing al-Qa'ida in Iraq.
There certainly was an increase in assassinations of Sunni rebel leaders in
early 2007 timed to coincide with the beginning of the 'surge'. But the
weakening of al-Qa'ida came primarily because al-Qa'ida alienated the Sunni
by trying to take full control of the anti-American resistance and also
provoked a sectarian war with the Shia in which the Sunni were largely
defeated.
Despite Mr McCain's claim that the surge has wholly altered the military
picture in Iraq, the Pentagon has recommended that the 146,000 US troops
currently in Iraq be reduced by only 8,000 men by next March, White House
officials said today. The number of American soldiers in Iraq at that time
will be slightly greater than before the surge began in January 2007.
Mr Bush and his military commanders regarded each other with mutual distrust
prior to the appointment of Gen David Petraeus, Gen George Casey's
successor, as US commander in Iraq. "Casey had long concluded that one big
problem with the war was the president himself," Mr Woodward writes. "He
later told a colleague in private that he had the impression that Bush
reflected 'the radical wing of the Republican Party that kept saying, "Kill
the bastard! Kill the bastards! And you'll succeed."
Mr Woodward writes very much from a Washington viewpoint even where he is
critical of the White House. He assumes that little happens in Iraq that is
not initiated by the US. In the summary of the book published so far there
is little mention of the central role of Iran and the Shia-Sunni conflict
inside Iraq in determining the level of violence.
The prime minister spent long years of exile in Syria and his most important
ally in Iraq is the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq which was founded on
Iran's initiative in Tehran in 1982. They will be used to Syrian and Iranian
security monitoring their activities.
Overall, the extent of US surveillance of its Shia and Kurdish allies in
Iraq reveals a deep anxiety in Washington that in supporting a government in
Baghdad dominated by Shia Islamic parties it has promoted a government that
is closer to Iran than the US.
************
Full at
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/bush-spies-monitored-ira
qi-allies-woodward-book-says-920602.html
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