Just as we’re starting to ignore Iraq and refocus our attention on Afghanistan, things are getting very dicey again:

A series of explosions targeting government and commercial buildings struck Baghdad Wednesday, killing at least 75 people and wounding more than 300, Iraqi police and medical officials said.

The blasts in the capital followed a string of attacks in Iraq this month that have claimed hundreds of lives and raised concerns about the ability of Iraqi security forces to keep the lid on violence in advance of an American withdrawal.

The deadliest was a car bomb near the foreign ministry, which killed at least 59 people and wounded 250. Officials said the toll may climb as rescue workers continue to search through rubble and debris. The ministry is close to the fortified Green Zone. The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

Sadly, the terrorists will likely always have the capability to wreak havok in this manner.  That’s true even in very secure societies, with Israel being the most obvious example.

We’ll simply never be able to withdraw from Iraq if perfect security is the benchmark.  It’s in our interest to continue to provide logistical and technical support indefinitely; but we’ve past the point where a continued large scale military presence will provide additional benefits.

Tim Lambert linked some prewar Iraq War casualty predictions collected by John Hawkins in early 2003:

If we go into Iraq, how many casualties do you expect to see (on the side of the US and our allies)

John Hawkins: “Probably 300 or less”
Charles Johnson:“Very few”
Henry Hanks: “Less than 200″
Laurence Simon: “A Few hundred”
Rachael Lucas: “Less than three thousand”
Scott Ott: “Dozens”
Glenn Reynolds: “Fewer than 100″
Tim Blair: “Below 50″
Ken Layne: “a few hundred”
Steven Den Beste: “50-150″

Fester and Hilzoy have passed these on as well.  Good fun is had by all.

Having begun blogging only at the end of January 2003, I wasn’t surveyed.  I did, however, predict on February 24 that “victory in Iraq will be swift and relatively bloodless.”  I don’t recall whether I actually blogged my casualty predictions but my internal working estimate was the same as Hawkins’ – 300 or fewer American troops killed.  I figured, basically, that it would be “Desert Storm times two.”

We’re now at something like 4326 American troops dead.

Then again, I wasn’t counting on a multi-year occupation during which we fought against multiple insurgent groups while trying to democratize Iraq.  I presumed, as did Don Rumsfeld and others, that we would topple Saddam Hussein’s government, install an interim government, and elect a permanent government within some short period.

That’s the war I supported and still wish that’s what we’d done.

________________________________________

Digressions:

1. The more interesting finding in Hawkins’ poll is this:

Will a human baby be cloned in 2003?

Yes: John Hawkins, Charles Johnson, Henry Hanks, Laurence Simon, Rachael Lucas, Scott Ott
No: Glenn Reynolds, Tim Blair, Ken Layne
N/A: Steven Den Beste

So far as I’m aware, none was cloned in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, or the first half of 2009.  It’s remarkable how excited people were at this prospect.

2.  OTB was a decidedly different blog in the early days.  Few of my posts in February 2003, my first real month of blogging, were as long as the Digressions section of this post.

Barack Obama built his presidential campaign around being the candidate who opposed the Iraq War from the start and therefore had the most credibility in ending the war.  As the campaign went on and he got more advice from the experts, however, he began subtly hedging his promises, careful to always refer to “combat troops.”  Well, the other shoe has now dropped.

Because of the level of insurgent activity in the northern city of Mosul, American combat forces may be allowed to stay there past the June 30 withdrawal deadline. (Maya Alleruzzo/Associated Press)

The United States and Iraq will begin negotiating possible exceptions to the June 30 deadline for withdrawing American combat troops from Iraqi cities, focusing on the troubled northern city of Mosul, according to military officials. Some parts of Baghdad also will still have combat troops.

Everywhere else, the withdrawal of United States combat troops from all Iraqi cities and towns is on schedule to finish by the June 30 deadline, and in many cases even earlier. But because of the level of insurgent activity in Mosul, United States and Iraqi military officials will meet Monday to decide whether to consider the city an exception to the deadline in the Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, between the countries.

“Mosul is the one area where you may see U.S. combat forces operating in the city” after June 30, the United States military’s top spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. David Perkins, said in an interview.

In Baghdad, however, there are no plans to close the Camp Victory base complex, consisting of five bases housing more than 20,000 soldiers, many of them combat troops. Although Victory is only a 15 minute drive from the center of Baghdad and sprawls over both sides of the city’s boundary, Iraqi officials say they have agreed to consider it outside the city.

In addition, Forward Operating Base Falcon, which can hold 5,000 combat troops, will also remain after June 30. It is just within Baghdad’s southern city limits. Again, Iraqi officials have classified it as effectively outside Baghdad, so no exception to the agreement needs to be granted, in their view.

Combat troops with the Seventh Field Artillery Regiment will remain in the heart of Baghdad at Camp Prosperity, located near the new American Embassy compound in the Green Zone. In addition to providing a quick reaction force, guarding the embassy and noncombat troops from attack, those soldiers will also continue to support Iraqi troops who are now in nominal charge of maintaining security in the Green Zone.

I continue to believe that we’ll have combat troops — and certainly American support troops — in Iraq when Obama leaves office, whether that’s four or eight years from now.

It appears that suicide bombings are back in a big way in Iraq:

At least 75 people were killed and 120 injured in two explosions in Iraq on Thursday that shook a quiet residential Baghdad neighborhood and a restive city north of the capital where Iranian tourists were targeted.

In the first attack, a woman wearing a suicide belt exploded herself in the Karada district of Baghdad as dozens of people lined up at a food giveaway, killing 28, including 12 police officers, and injuring 50, according to an official with the Interior Ministry.

In the second attack, in Muqdadiya in Diyala Province, a bomb went off inside a restaurant where a group of Iranian tourists were eating lunch, killing 47 and injuring 70, according to police officials. All but five of the dead and injured appeared to be Iranians. It was not immediately clear whether the explosion had been caused by a suicide bomber. Two of the dead and three of the wounded were Iraqis, officials said.

The attack in Baghdad came as food was being distributed by members of the Iraqi police and the Red Crescent charity in front of an apartment building. In the aftermath of the blast, the street was littered with bags of flour and red apples, and pieces of human flesh attracted masses of flies.

This is why progress is always so tentative in counterinsurgency/counterterrorism operations:  Well-targeted violence can send things in a downward spiral in a hurry, undoing months of progress in building public confidence.

It’s happened before.  In early 2006, things were looking up.  There were real signs of political progress in Iraq, with two reasonably successful elections, recognition of basic human rights and religious tolerance in the constitution, and numerous other indicators that civil society was taking hold.  Musab al-Zarqawi and AQI managed to turn an uncoordinated anti-Coalition insurgency into sectarian violence with the al-Askari Mosque bombing and other incidents. It took more than two years to get back to anything close to the status quo ante.

We can only hope that the latest wave of violence doesn’t do similar damage.

After several days of inflamed public debate following official confirmation that the United States government tortured suspected terrorists under specific authorization from the Bush administration, the inevitable pushback has begun.  Several reports now suggest that these extreme interrogation techniques had the desired effect, yielding valuable intelligence that saved lives.

The most interesting of these, alas, comes from CNS and is headlined “CIA Confirms: Waterboarding 9/11 Mastermind Led to Info that Aborted 9/11-Style Attack on Los Angeles.”

The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) — including the use of waterboarding — caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.

[...]

According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack — which KSM called the “Second Wave”– planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.”

Marc Thiessen, who “served in senior positions in the Pentagon and the White House from 2001 to 2009, most recently as chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush,” takes to WaPo’s editorial pages to proclaim “The CIA’s Questioning Worked.”

In releasing highly classified documents on the CIA interrogation program last week, President Obama declared that the techniques used to question captured terrorists “did not make us safer.” This is patently false. The proof is in the memos Obama made public — in sections that have gone virtually unreported in the media.

[...]

Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques “led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the ‘Second Wave,’ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.” KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. The memo explains that “information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the ‘Second Wave.’ ” In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.

The memo notes that “[i]nterrogations of [Abu] Zubaydah — again, once enhanced techniques were employed — furnished detailed information regarding al Qaeda’s ‘organizational structure, key operatives, and modus operandi’ and identified KSM as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks.” This information helped the intelligence community plan the operation that captured KSM. It went on: “Zubaydah and KSM also supplied important information about al-Zarqawi and his network” in Iraq, which helped our operations against al-Qaeda in that country.

Peter Baker’s NYT report, “Banned Techniques Yielded ‘High Value Information,’ Memo Says,” is a bit less exciting.

President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists.  “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.

Admiral Blair sent his memo on the same day the administration publicly released secret Bush adminis

[...]

“I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past,” he wrote, “but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.”

[...]

“The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means,” Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”

The foiled LA attack has long been murmured about (Patrick Frey wrote about it in November 2007, for example).  It’s unclear from these reports how serious the plan was.  Certainly, we have seen reports of numerous “foiled” attacks that, upon closer scrutiny, appeared to be mere fantasies of incompetents.  Then again, we’re talking about the planner of the 9/11 attacks here.

But let’s take at face value that CIA interrogators managed to extract information that foiled a developed, 9/11 style attack, thereby saving, say, 3000 innocent American civilians.   Does that outweigh the moral and legal issues of waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times?   I’d say it does.  It’s as close to the “ticking time bomb” scenario as we’re ever likely to get.

[UPDATE: Via Andrew Sullivan, I see that Timothy Noah examines the timeline and demonstrates we likely foiled the LA Towers plot months before KSM was captured! This doesn't necessarily obviate any of the other "high value information" but it would undermine the most impressive of the examples offered.]

Blair correctly notes that we may well have gotten this information using legal techniques.  Then again, we might not have.  These guys didn’t break before they were tortured.   Of course, we didn’t try very long if we managed to get in 183 waterboarding sessions during KSM’s first month in U.S. custody.  The most reliable forms of interrogation require establishing trust and can take weeks, if not months.

What we also don’t know is how much damage the fact that the world, including our enemies, know that we were torturing terrorist suspects did.   Blair wrote, “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”   The first clause in that sentence is undeniable; the second is not.

In my recent interview with retired Ambassador Robert Oakley, he observed that, in Pakistan, “We’ve forgotten Rumsfeld’s question: ‘Are we creating more terrorists than we’re killing?’ And we probably are. The drones may be killing a lot of Taliban and al Qaeda but they’re alienating the tribesmen we need to win the war.”  Remember all the hostage beheadings, wherein the victims were dressed in Gitmo-style orange jumpsuits?  Would they have occurred had we not done this?  We don’t know.  How many people joined al Qaeda and the Taliban after these incidents became public, convinced that the United States really is as degenerate as the jihadists claimed we were?  We don’t know.

When I was being trained on this issue as a young cadet a quarter century ago, in addition to the legal and moral factors explaining why we must treat captured enemy combatants humanely — even risking our own lives and the accomplishment of our immediate mission to safeguard them — was a practical lesson:  The other guy was a hell of a lot more likely to surrender to you if he expected to be treated well.   Americans were more likely to keep fighting in Vietnam even against overwhelming odds because they knew they enemy would treat them as subhumans, whereas NVA and VC soldiers would surrender to us knowing they’d get three hots and a cot.   Certainly, that proved to be the case in both the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq; Saddam’s soldiers couldn’t throw their weapons down fast enough.

That’s not likely to be the case for some time now.

“South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker tell The Telegraph that they got a signed picture of Saddam Hussein from some Iraq Marines.

During his captivity, US marines forced Saddam, who was executed in 2006, to repeatedly watch the move South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut, which shows him as gay, as well as the boyfriend of Satan. He was also regularly depicted in a similar manner during the TV series.

Question: Does this constitute torture?

Yesterday, as was noted here and there, was the 6th anniversary of the United States invasion of Iraq.   That we’re still there after so many years is remarkable — depending on who’s counting, it’s the second longest war in American history — but the number 6 isn’t one we pay much attention to.  We like round numbers and multiples of 5.

Anyway, TPM has created an interesting photo gallery (”6 Years in Iraq: A Timeline in Images”) commemorating the milestones of our involvement there with images.  They’re worth a look.

In the early going, it sure looked like these would be the iconic photographs:

As time went on, these seemed more likely to be the images history remembered the war by:

Soon, though, this looked like a strong possibility:

I’m not so sure anymore.  The war-as-war has largely gone off the radar screen.  Indeed, while it was the issue that put OTB on the map, weeks go by now when I don’t write about it.  That’s the nature of it having gone from a mostly kinetic operation to a counterinsurgency/stability mission.

So what’s going to be the defining image of the war looking back from, say, 2020?

UPDATE:  Via Andrew Sullivan, I see that Peter Feaver has weighed in on a variant of this question:

I believe reasonable people can look at that ledger (or a more complete version of it) and conclude that the Iraq war was not worth it. I also believe reasonable people can look at that ledger and conclude that the Iraq war was a defensible gamble or even the right decision. However, I do not think that reasonable people can seriously look at that ledger and conclude, as so much of the angry-shout part of the commentariat does, that all of the evidence stacks up on only one side of the balance sheet.

Six years into this long war, it is high time we started having an honest debate about it, and that honesty requires a great deal more humility, on both sides of the debate, about the decisions that were made and the paths that were not taken.

Not likely, I’m afraid.

A new poll shows that Iraqis are decidedly happier and more optimistic than they were just a year ago but that they’re still unhappy with the United States invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime and put their lives into a state of chaos.

Iraqis are more upbeat about their future and less concerned about violence and insecurity, according to a poll released Monday. The survey conducted by broadcasters ABC, BBC and NHK shows that 21 percent of Iraqis feel their life is very good compared with 13 percent in March 2008. They also feel safer — 46 percent of respondents said they believe the security in their neighborhoods is very good compared with only 20 percent last year, according to the survey.

A statement by ABC said the results “represent a stunning reversal of the spiral of despair caused by Iraq’s sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007.”

The Kurdish community was the most optimistic — 32 percent said they thought their lives were very good, while 25 percent of respondents from the Shia community and 8 percent of Sunni respondents felt the same way.

Some perspective is in order:

The results show that while Iraqis are growing more optimistic, they are still more cautious than they were in the immediate aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003. The poll found that 56 percent of people believe their lives will be better a year from now, while 17 percent believe it will be worse. In 2004, 71 percent believed their lives would improve over the year, and only 6 percent thought it would get worse.

Iraqis are also still unhappy with the way the U.S. and coalition forces have carried out their responsibilities in Iraq, with 69 percent saying they have done quite a bad job or a very bad job — similar to the 70 percent last year. Only 30 percent thought they had done quite a good job or a very good job, from 29 percent last year. Looking ahead, 35 percent of those polled thought President Barack Obama’s government would make things better for Iraq, and 38 percent thought it would not make much of a difference.

The Iraqis surveyed said they are still unhappy with the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Just over half — 56 percent — think the invasion was somewhat or absolutely wrong, up from 50 percent last year.

Six years and counting of war is a heavy price to pay, so it’s not surprising that those who paid the bulk of it believe it wasn’t worth it.  Further, even those Iraqis who genuinely believe their lives are better than they would be if Saddam and his sons were still in power and believe the war will greatly improve their children’s futures might well nonetheless resent the foreign occupiers who made it possible.

If present trends continue, that may change.  But things will have to be markedly better than they were under Saddam for that to happen.  Not only will Iraqis naturally factor in the incredibly high price they’ve paid for whatever gains they achieve, they’ll weigh the benefits against what was promised to them in 2003.  And we promised a lot.

UPDATE: See here for analysis by ABC News’ Gary Langer.  Click here for PDF of analysis with charts and full questionnaire.  Click here for charts on the results.

Some commenters are dubious of the question wording.  Here are the questions asked, many which have been kept the same in numerous polls conducted going back to February 2004.  There are 50 questions, many in multiple choice format, and copying them all from PDF is more trouble than it’s worth.  I’ve place a long sampling below the fold, though, which should dispel any notion that these are intentionally leading questions designed to elicit an ideological response.

1. Overall, how would you say things are going in your life these days – very good, quite good, quite bad, or very bad?

2. What is your expectation for how things overall in your life will be in a year from now – will things be much better, somewhat worse or much worse?

3. What is the single biggest problem you are facing in your life these days?

4. Do you think your children will have a better life than you, worse, or about the same?

5. Now thinking about how things are going, not for you personally, but for Iraq as a whole, how would you say things are going in our country overall these days? Are they very good, quite good, quite bad, or very bad?

6. What is your expectation for how things will be for Iraq as a country overall a year from now? Will they be much better, somewhat better, about the
same, somewhat worse or much worse?

7. Not personally, but in terms of Iraq, what in your opinion is the single biggest problem facing Iraq as a whole?  [Open ended]

8. From today’s perspective and all things considered, was it absolutely right, somewhat right, somewhat wrong or absolutely wrong that U.S.-led coalition
forces invaded Iraq in spring 2003?

9. I would like to ask you about today’s conditions in the village/neighborhood where you live. Would you rate the following as very good, quite good, quite
bad or very bad?

a. The security situation
b. The availability of jobs
c. The supply of electricity
d. The availability of clean water
e. The availability of medical care
f. Local schools
g. Local government
h. The availability of basic things you need for your household
j. Your family’s economic situation
k. The availability of fuel for cooking or driving
l. Your freedom of movement – the ability to go where you wish safely
m. Your freedom to live where you wish without persecution

10. For each group I name, please tell me how much that group is doing to
provide services in your community – a great deal, some, a little or nothing at
all?

a. The national government
b. The provincial government
c. Any of the groups known as Awakening Councils, Sons of Iraq or Concerned Local Citizens
d. Militia groups that are not aligned with the government
e. Your mosque or huisainiya or other religious-based associations
f. Foreign aid organizations
g. Joint security stations

11. In the past six months, has [INSERT] become better, become worse, or stayed
about the same?

a. The security situation in this neighborhood/village
b. Your family’s economic situation
c. The availability of jobs

12. What about the country as a whole – in the past six months, has the security situation in Iraq become better, become worse, or stayed about the
same?

13. (IF BETTER) How confident are you that this improved security will continue in the future?

14. Which of the following structures do you believe Iraq should have in the future: one unified Iraq with central government in Baghdad, a group of
regional states with their own regional governments and a federal government in Baghdad, or a country divided into separate independent states?

15. There can be differences between the way government is set up in a country, called the political system. From the three options I am going to read to you, which one do you think would be best for Iraq now – strong leader, a government headed by one man for life; Islamic state, where politicians rule according to religious principles; or democracy, a government with a chance for the leader to be replaced from time to time?

16. I am going to name a number of organizations. For each one, please tell me if you have a great deal of confidence, quite a lot of confidence, not very
much confidence, or none at all.

a. The Iraqi Army
b. The police
c. U.S. occupation forces
d. Local leaders in your community
e. National government of Iraq
f. The local militia in this area
h. Awakening Councils
i. Judges and the court system

17. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Nouri Kamel al-Maliki is handling his job as prime minister?

Photo by Flickr user Chuck Holton, used under Creative Commons license.

You remember that pullout of American combat troops from Iraq?  Not so fast.

A U.S. military spokesman says American forces will still conduct combat operations even after they pull back to bases outside Baghdad and other cities as part of the U.S.-Iraqi security agreement.

Brig. Gen. Frederick Rudesheim says the redeployment to the periphery will actually help improve security in the capital because U.S. troops can help stop militants from using bases in rural areas to stage urban attacks.

Rudesheim told reporters Sunday that there will be “no cessation of combat operations” after the June 30 deadline to pull back most American forces from cities.

He also says U.S. military transition teams will remain in Baghdad and other cities to help train Iraqi security forces there.

My strong guess is that there will be “no cessation of combat operations” for quite some time.  So long as American troops are in harm’s way in Iraq — which we already know will be through 2011 as a minimum — they’re going to be drawn into combat.

YahooNews’ juxtaposition of this story with the above photo struck me as unusual.  The original is captioned “A U.S. soldier takes part in a celebration of St. Patrick REUTERS/Saad Shalash (IRAQ CONFLICT POLITICS SOCIETY).”

President Barack Obama (R) walks with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (L) from the Oval Office to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House February 27, 2009 in Washington, DC. President Obama is traveling to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to announce his plans for eventual removal of troops from Iraq. (Getty Images)

Given that OTB got started during the run-up to the Iraq War and that my commentary on that subject was what first got me noticed by some major blogs, it’s perhaps ironic that I’ve hardly written about the subject lately.  Partly, it’s a function of my now doing most of my foreign policy blogging at New Atlanticist, where Iraq discussion doesn’t really fit.  Mostly, though, it’s because the war has been in status quo mode since shortly after the Surge and there’s not much going on that I’m interested in writing about.

Yesterday, of course, President Obama announced his Iraq withdrawal plan.

For the most part, I agree with Christian Brose ’s analysis.  I especially want to emphasize this:

Obama can say all he wants that he’s “ending the war” by August 2010, but believing that is nutty, and being surprised that by then we’ll still have 30-50,000 troops in Iraq, as some on the left are, is even nuttier. We knew this was coming. From the moment he said during the campaign that he’d pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 16 months, Obama has backtracked — first drawing a false distinction between “combat” and “non-combat” troops, and now pretending that a “residual force” of 30-50,000 Americans under arms, many of whom will be fighting al Qaeda, constitutes “ending the war.”

We knew this was coming and, frankly, it was coming in much the same way regardless of whether Obama or McCain won.  Despite all the cute talk about “100 years of war,” the Surge was going to end and a drawdown of forces was going to commence.  Hell, George W. Bush had already signed a status of forces agreement requiring it.

And we’re going to keep a sizable force in theater for the foreseeable future which will be in harm’s way.   Bruce McQuain is right:  That’s not exactly “ending this war.”

But we’ve known since the primaries that Obama wasn’t going to totally remove forces from Iraq and he’s always left wiggle room for “events on the ground” and “the advice of military commanders.”  He appears, in fact, to actually be taking said advice.  And that’s a good thing.

Obama started the process that led to his becoming president as a novice — a bright, charismatic fellow who could inspire progressives hungry for change.  He said some imprudent things in his naive enthusiasm.  Thankfully, since he was elected and will serve as president for at least four years, he demonstrated that he could learn and that his positions could quickly evolve in light of new understanding.

On the matter of Iraq, he started off sounding like one of the Kos Kids but quickly became much more nuanced and thoughtful.  Because he had been an early, forceful opponent of the war, he retained strong credibility on the left.  Because his policy statements evolved, centrists’ fears that he would be rash were mollified.  And because he’s such a disciplined communicator, quite a few people managed to hear what they wanted to hear, emphasizing the parts of his speeches they liked and discounting caveats as “just politics.”

Beyond that, all presidents change upon taking office, adapting to the role of commander-in-chief.  Those who take over ongoing wars tend not to want to “lose” them on their watch.  So, Obama will naturally play out the string carefully.

As to the outcome of the war, quite a few of the blogs on the Right are proclaiming victory.  That’s right only if we define winning as “this is turning out better than anyone would have guessed two years ago.”  Even if we go for something less than “a model Arab democracy that will create a wave of democratic movements in the region,” settling for, say, “a stable, democratic government capable of providing for its own security,” we ain’t there yet.  And, so long as we have tens thousands of American troops there engaged in counter-terrorist operations, it ain’t over.

The Iraqi government has indicated that it is ready to assume security over the country in the event that U.S. troops are withdrawn prior to the 2011 date agreed to by the Bush Administration.

Obama promised during the campaign to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. The new president said in his inaugural address Tuesday that he would “begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people.”

The government-owned newspaper Al-Sabah reported Wednesday that Iraqi authorities have drafted contingency plans in case Obama orders a “sudden” withdrawal of all forces and not just combat troops.

Al-Dabbagh told Associated Press Television News that Iraqis had been worried about a quick U.S. departure.

But with the emphasis on a responsible withdrawal, al-Dabbagh said the Iraqi government was willing for the U.S. to leave “even before the end of 2011.” The Bush administration agreed in a security agreement signed in November to remove all U.S. troops by the end of 2011.

The chairman of parliament’s defense committee, Abbas al-Bayati, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the Iraqis hoped Obama would stick by the timeline laid the agreement.

“Nevertheless, we already have a ‘Plan B,’ which is that we have the ability to deploy any needed troops to any hot area in Iraq,” al-Bayati said. “We are capable of controlling the situation in the country and we believe we have passed the worst” despite a lack of air and artillery power.”

Despite this, I’m willing to wager that the actual withdrawal date will be closer to Bush’s 2011 date than Obama’s early 2010 date.

I see that Elizabeth Bumiller, writing in the New York Times

Even though the agreement with the Iraqi government calls for all American combat troops to be out of the cities by the end of June, military planners are now quietly acknowledging that many will stay behind as renamed “trainers” and “advisers” in what are effectively combat roles. In other words, they will still be engaged in combat, just called something else.

“Trainers sometimes do get shot at, and they do sometimes have to shoot back,” said John A. Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel who is one of the authors of the Army’s new counterinsurgency field manual.

The issue is a difficult one for Mr. Obama, whose campaign pledge to “end the war” ignited his supporters and helped catapult him into the White House. But as Mr. Obama has begun meeting with his new military advisers — the top two, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are holdovers from the Bush administration — it has become clear that his definition of ending the war means leaving behind many thousands of American troops.

has reached the conclusion that I reached nearly a year ago: that now President-Elect Obama’s statements on ending the war in Iraq were self-contradicting. On the one hand he spoke of removing combat troops but on the other he spoke of continuing to pursue objectives, e.g. training, going after terrorists, that could only be achieved with combat troops. It made sense politically but little sense logistically.

You square the circle by changing the names. Even having ended the war in Iraq we’re likely to have no fewer than 30,000 and as many as 80,000 U. S. soldiers in Iraq for the foreseeable future. While still painful, particularly to the families of our troops stationed in Iraq, since Iraq has vanished from our front pages, except for rare cases like the shoe-throwing incident, staying in Iraq at that level is likely to remain politically possible. This month the the number of deaths among U. S. forces is proceeding at the lowest rate since the 2003 invasion, one third what it was a year ago, less than one tenth of what it was in 2006.

Ezra Klein applies the headline “Doing Her Job” to this infamous photo of Lyndie England.

Lynndie England with dog at Abu Ghraib

It was not a few bad apples. It was not the chaos of war. It was official U.S. government policy. The release of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Report on Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody makes that perfectly clear.

No. No. No. No.

The Report is damning in its causality argument.  Basically, the entire nature of interrogation training in the military — which precedes not only George W. Bush’s administration but his father’s as well — is based on abusing our own soldiers to teach them to cope with torture and abusive treatment such as our POWs, especially downed pilots, endured in Vietnam.  Further, the administration made a series of decisions that allowed procedures that were arguably torture to be used in isolated cases against accused terrorists and other unprivileged belligerents.  These exceptions were hazily carved out and the lines were sufficiently blurry that it wasn’t surprising that abuses occurred.   Carveouts at Gitmo naturally migrated to Iraq and Abu Ghraib, even though this wasn’t authorized.

But Lynndie England and her cohorts in the 372d MP company were not interrogators carrying out administration policy.  They were simply bullies and criminals. They were demented, poorly trained, prison guards who were abusing the prisoners in their care for personal enjoyment.

UPDATE:  To provide some context for new readers, I’ve written dozens of posts on Abu Ghraib over the years that can be found under the Iraq Prison Scandal category archives.  I’ve said over and again that the senior officers, up to at least National Guard BG Janis Karpinski, should have been held accountable for dereliction of duty.   I’ve been critical of the use of torture (waterboarding) and abusive treatment (sleep deprivation, stress positions, dogs to induce fear, etc.) as an interrogation technique in dozens of posts.

My point here is a narrow one:  England and her cohorts, the ones whose photos are the main thing the public knows about Abu Ghraib, were not carrying out official duties or in any way attempting to help break prisoners to extract information.  They were merely sadistic criminals.

President Bush made a surprise farewell visit to Iraq and Afghanistan, suffering the indignity of having an Iraqi journalist hurl his shoes at him but being greeted warmly by American troops.

Sudarsan Raghavan and Dan Eggen for WaPo:

In Iraq, Bush said the conflict “has not been easy” but was necessary for U.S. security, Iraqi stability and “world peace.” He hailed a recently signed but still controversial security pact as a sign of impending victory. “There is still more work to be done. The war is not over,” Bush said, with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki next to him. “But with the conclusion of this agreement . . . it is decidedly on its way to being won.”

Just after Bush finished his remarks and said “Thank you” in Arabic, an Iraqi journalist took off his shoes and threw them at Bush, one after the other. Throwing a shoe at someone is considered the worst possible insult in Iraq and is meant to show extreme disrespect and contempt. When U.S. forces helped topple a statue of Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein after rolling into Baghdad in April 2003, jubilant Iraqis beat the statue’s face with their shoes.

[...]

Bush was not injured and joked about the incident minutes later: “If you want the facts, it’s a size 10 shoe that he threw. Thank you for your concern; do not worry about it.”

He fared a bit better in his visit to the 18th Airborne Corps (via Jim Hoft):

It’s an odd juxtaposition. The shoe thrower, “identified as Muntadar al-Zaidi, a reporter with the Cairo-based al-Baghdadia television network” was, according to colleagues, “kidnapped by Shiite militiamen last year and later released.” His resentment over the war, then, is understandable; the degree to which it’s representative of Iraqi public opinion is unclear.

American troops, especially those deployed into a hostile fire zone, are going to be thrilled to see their commander-in-chief and their enthusiasm is to be expected. Their unanimity is also, of course, a function of the chain of command, so one shouldn’t read too much into their vote of approval.

It’ll be interesting to see which attitude is more prevalent, say, ten years from now. While falling far short of its original objectives of creating a shining Arab democracy that would create a chain reaction throughout the region, we’re on a path to pull back much of our troop presence and turn security over to the Iraqis. It’s not inconceivable that Bush will be considered a heroic figure at some point in time, despite an invasion which spawned a bloody conflict.

It’s much less likely that Bush’s image will be rehabilitated at home. It’s quite likely that, contrary to what most of us expected even a few months ago, that Iraq will be a footnote to his legacy and the financial crisis — which happened on his watch even if it’s not his fault — will be what he’s remembered for.

U.S. Army military police and Iraqi police play with children in Sab al Bor, Iraq, Dec. 22, 2007. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. William Greer)

A forthcoming government history on Iraq War reconstruction depicts an inept process marred by politics and bureaucratic infighting, NYT reports.

An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

[...]

It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ”

[...]

Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.

That sounds about right. Of course, the Marshall Plan involved giving the money to leaders of advanced countries to rebuild war-ravaged infrastructure after the conflict had ended, whereas this effort had outsiders with virtually no knowledge of the area trying to create a modern state out of an underdeveloped one while terrorists were trying to undermine the effort at every turn.