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Cheney Again Links Iraq Invasion to 9/11 Attacks    â€¢

    Here we are in the final throes of the Bush administration and someone has foolishly let Darth Cheney off his leash again.

    He immediately set off on a celebratory visit to Baghdad to praise the "huge accomplishment" of increased security wrought by the now-ending surge in the number of American troops. A large "BOOM" or two marked his pronouncements and another 40 Iraqi civilians died at the hands of a suicide bomber.

    The vice president swiftly got down to repeating one of the old lies he loves so well, telling us how Iraq and the late dictator Saddam Hussein were connected to the events of 9/11.

    Next door in Jordan the putative Republican nominee for president, Sen. John McCain, on his way home from his own personal tour of Baghdad, repeated for the second day in a row a charge that Iran was training al Qaida terrorists and then sending them back to Iraq. At the urging of fellow senator Joe Lieberman he quickly corrected that to say that Iran was training Iraqi insurgents.

    But for the traveling politicians and this week's fifth anniversary of our invasion and occupation of Iraq the war would have continued to be missing in action from network and cable television and the front pages of our newspapers, as well as from the attention of most Americans.

    After all, who has time to think about our wars when we have the ongoing road show as the last two Democrats still standing in their party's nomination process do personal battle, the state of New York struggles to find a governor who can keep his zipper closed and the nation's economy is melting down quicker than Chernobyl's reactors.

    Everyone seems content to think about anything but Iraq until Gen. David Petraeus journeys back to Washington in April to give a report on the surge's successes and how they must be guarded by keeping 130,000 U.S. troops on the ground indefinitely - an idea embraced by President George W. Bush, Cheney and McCain.

    None of those worthies took note, in their praise of the surge, about the failure of its main purpose. The surge was intended as a short-term escalation of troop strength to buy a bubble of better security so the Iraqi government and parliament could make progress toward reconciliation among its own warring, revenge-minded communities.

    They got their improvements in the Baghdad security environment thanks in part to the surge, but also thanks to the completion of ethnic cleansing in some of the worst neighborhoods in the capital and tactical decisions taken by Sunni tribal insurgents and Shiite cleric Moktada al Sadr and his murderous Mahdi militia.

    The weak central government of Prime Minister Nour al Maliki has achieved little or nothing in reassuring the Sunni minority - newly and temporarily aligned with the American forces they once attacked and killed - that they will have a future and a fair shake in the new Iraq.

    For the Shiite majority and their various factions running the government it's been business as usual, siphoning off billions of dollars of domestic oil earnings and American aid intended to pay for rebuilding basic services like clean water and electricity for more than a few hours each day.

    In the Shiite south of the country, with its vital oilfields and oil shipment facilities, an internecine struggle for control quietly rages and agents of the Iranian ayatollahs expand their influence and capacity for making real trouble.

    In the north, where the country's other oilfields and refinery are located, Kurds maneuver for control of the city of Mosul and those oil facilities while keeping a nervous eye on neighboring Turkey which recently mounted large cross-border raids against Kurdish guerrillas.

    Meantime, some in our military worry that the Iraqi insurgents may use Gen. Petraeus' high profile visit to Washington next month to launch coordinated attacks timed for maximum damage, maximum embarrassment and maximum impact on the American election campaign.

    Some may find cause for celebration in the partial successes achieved in Iraq but I have a nervous feeling that those celebrating are the same people who are comforted by the knowledge that President Bush and his appointees are working overtime to contain the damage done by that little setback in our economy.

    Go to Original

    Cheney Again Links Iraq Invasion to 9/11 Attacks as Bombing Victims Are Buried
    By Hannah Allam and Laith Hammoudi
    McClatchy Newspapers

    Tuesday 18 March 2008

    Baghdad - Amid tears and wails, mourners in the southern city of Najaf on Tuesday began burying victims from a suicide bombing that killed nearly 50 worshipers and injured dozens of others just before evening prayers Monday in nearby Karbala .

    In Baghdad , a long-anticipated Iraqi national reconciliation conference began with great fanfare, then quickly dissolved into the usual sectarian and political stalemates that have marred several similar gatherings in recent years.

    But Vice President Dick Cheney gave an upbeat view of conditions in Iraq as he concluded his unannounced trip to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion. Cheney also defended the toppling of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as part of the struggle against terrorism following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

    This month, an exhaustive Pentagon-sponsored review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents captured during the 2003 U.S. invasion found no evidence that Saddam's regime had any operational links with the al Qaida terrorist network.

    But Cheney, who spent the night at a sprawling U.S. base in the northern town of Balad, told soldiers they were defending future generations of Americans from a global terror threat.

    "This long-term struggle became urgent on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 . That day we clearly saw that dangers can gather far from our own shores and find us right there at home," said Cheney, who was accompanied by his wife, Lynne, and their daughter, Elizabeth.

    "So the United States made a decision: to hunt down the evil of terrorism and kill it where it grows, to hold the supporters of terror to account and to confront regimes that harbor terrorists and threaten the peace," Cheney said. "Understanding all the dangers of this new era, we have no intention of abandoning our friends or allowing this country of 170,000 square miles to become a staging area for further attacks against Americans."

    Cheney later traveled to Irbil , the capital of the mostly autonomous Kurdish region, for a meeting with Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani , before flying to Oman .

    Meanwhile, at the graveyard in Najaf, police restricted funerals to eight family members, out of fears that the funerals would become a target for further attacks. Emotions ran high among mourners of the bombing victims. One man draped himself over a coffin and sobbed, "My father, my father."

    "Security forces have been negligent in securing the city and the pilgrims," said Mohamed Hassan Ali , who buried his cousin, a policeman who was killed in the blast. "This area should have had camera monitoring, searches and equipment to detect explosives."

    The devastating security breach at one of Iraq's most sacred places added to the pressure on Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to make recent security gains stick and to keep the country on track for October elections.

    The Baghdad reconciliation conference was intended to bring the country's warring factions to the negotiating table.

    But only half of the 700 invited guests showed up, and any real chance for negotiations dissolved when both the leading Sunni Muslim bloc and the powerful faction loyal to the rebel Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr announced boycotts.

    "We entered the conference to reaffirm our support for national reconciliation, and we left to show our rejection of all these fake conferences," Nassar al Rubaiye , a Sadr-allied lawmaker, said of his group's walkout. Most Sunnis and Sadrists didn't participate, and Shiite lawmakers in attendance hinted that the groups weren't missed.

    Sunni lawmakers boycotted because they believe Maliki hasn't made good on pledges to disband Shiite militias, release detainees not charged with crimes and include Sunni legislators in security decisions.

    Members of Sadr's militant Shiite movement said they walked out of the conference because of the lack of dialogue in preparations, a crackdown on Sadr's forces in the south and to protest thousands of Iraqi detainees in U.S. custody.

    Across the board, there were complaints of late invitations, snubs and general disarray. Even Wathab Shaker, head of the parliament's national reconciliation committee, said he was left out of all planning for the conference. He is a Sunni.

    "No contact had been made between the preparation committee for the conference and the parliament's reconciliation committee. Absolutely no contact," Shaker said. "I wish them good luck."

    Tuesday's roster of attacks included two roadside bombs in Baghdad - one targeting civilians at a market in Shaab, the other at a busy intersection in al Bunook- that killed four Iraqis and wounded at least 13, authorities said. A car bomb outside an electronics store in Mosul killed three and wounded 40, the U.S. military said.

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    Laith Hammoudi is a special correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers. Mohammed al Dulaimy contributed from Baghdad; Qassim Zein reported from Najaf. Both are special correspondents.

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