[Articles of Interest] Iraq Bombs May Slow U.S. Pullout as Splits Fuel Fresh Violence

By Caroline Alexander and Daniel Williams

May 4 (Bloomberg) -- The recent spate of bombings in Iraq means U.S. officials may have to keep troops there longer than they planned, and Iraqis may have to live with a higher level of violence than they wish.

American military officials say they are now reconsidering plans to withdraw troops from all cities in Iraq by the end of June in the wake of car and suicide bombings that killed 191 people in Baghdad between April 23 and April 29.

And analysts say it is likely that violence will continue to plague many parts of Iraq still beset by insurgency and al- Qaeda terrorism, even if the level doesn’t return to its peak at the height of sectarian violence three years ago.

“What we have now is that we are going back to where things were in 2004,” said Liam Anderson, a professor of political science at Wright State University in Ohio. “This is the way things are going to go, but it is difficult to see a full-scale resumption of the insurgency.”

Persistent violence creates a dilemma for President Barack Obama, who is counting on troop reductions in Iraq to permit him to beef up forces in Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO troops are fighting al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies. Obama risks overseeing two unresolved wars with inadequate resources devoted to either.

The president has charged the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki with resolving conflicts between Sunni and Shiite Muslims over Sunni integration into the army and police, and between Kurds and Arabs over oil-rich land in the north.

Pressure

“Those are all issues that have not been settled the way they need to be settled,” Obama said in an April 29 press conference. “We’ve provided sufficient time for them to get that work done, but we’ve got to keep the pressure up, not just on the military side but on the diplomatic and development sides as well.”

Data compiled by Washington’s Brookings Institution from U.S. Defense Department reports show that the level of violence remains well below that of two years ago even with the recent attacks.

For example, Iraqi civilian deaths fell to 230 in February from a high of 3,500 in February 2007, then rose slightly to 260 in March, according to Brookings.

“Although you’ve seen some spectacular bombings in Iraq that are a legitimate cause of concern, civilian deaths, incidents of bombings, et cetera, remain very low relative to what was going on last year,” Obama said in the news conference.

Under an agreement struck last year between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government, U.S. forces are to leave cities by June 30 and the entire country by the end of 2011. Obama has said that he will withdraw all but 50,000 U.S. soldiers by Aug. 2010.

Mosul Delay

The agreement allows for the withdrawal schedule to be altered by mutual consent. U.S. officers have pinpointed Mosul as one city where troops might have to remain longer because it is a bastion of a Sunni Muslim insurgency and al-Qaeda, the global terror network led by Osama bin Laden.

“The only city I would consider that might require an extended stay would be Mosul,” General Ray T. Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, told the Dubai newspaper Khaleej Times in an interview published April 27.

Col. Gary Volesky, the senior commander in Mosul, said in an April 14 teleconference with Pentagon reporters that the city is “short” 5,000 police needed to occupy neighborhoods cleared of insurgents by combined American and Iraqi raids.

U.S. Troops Out

Some doubts have also been raised about the timing of a pullback from Baghdad, although Odierno told the newspaper that he “felt comfortable” for now with overall security in the capital even after the recent suicide bombings.

“If this continued over a longer period of time then we might have to take that into consideration,” he said.

So far Iraq has shown no public eagerness to delay withdrawals. “We believe that Iraqi security forces are more suited to this fight than foreign troops,” Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said in an April 30 interview.

He acknowledged that the security situation in Baghdad, Mosul and other places is being reviewed and that al-Qaeda hasn’t yet been “eradicated.”

Still, he wants U.S. troops out of Iraq. “There is a clear timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops and we would like to stick to the letter and spirit of the agreement,” he said, while attending an investment conference in London.

Obama plans to reduce the force in Iraq, currently at 135,000, by 12,000 within six months, Odierno told reporters in Baghdad on March 9.

‘Major Showdown’

Obama will need to keep enough troops in Iraq to exert some control over the situation as power struggles intensify during the course of the U.S. drawdown, Anderson said.

“I don’t see it is disintegrating rapidly, but a slow trend downwards as things become more and more fragmented,” he said. “We are heading for a major showdown for control of the state if the U.S. withdraws.”

Relations between Sunni Muslims and the central government, still dominated by representatives of the country’s Shiite Muslim majority, remain explosive.

Many Sunnis who initially fought the U.S. after the 2003 invasion have allied themselves with American forces against al- Qaeda in the past two years. Those Sunnis viewed al-Qaeda as excessively brutal and the Americans as a counterbalance to Shiite domination, said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at New York’s Council on Foreign Relations.

Sunni Signal

Al-Maliki’s government hasn’t kept its pledge to integrate Sunni forces grouped in militias known as the Sons of Iraq and the Awakening Councils into the army and police forces, Biddle said. As a result, he said, some Sunnis now simply look the other way as al-Qaeda launches new attacks.

“The Sunni community shut al-Qaeda down,” Biddle said. “Now they have decided to send a signal about what could happen if the government doesn’t respect its promises and if the U.S. forces leave and abandon the Sunnis.”

A conflict is also looming between Kurds, who make up 20 percent of Iraq’s population, and Sunni Arabs, another 20 percent, over control of oil-rich parts of the north. The Kurds possess their own militia and have expanded control beyond their far northeastern autonomous zone into areas near the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.

A “heavy U.S. footprint” will be needed in at least Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk, which is the hub of northern oil production, said Michael Knights, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It will take lots of effort to prevent local flare-ups.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Williams in Cairo at dwilliams41@bloomberg.net; Caroline Alexander in London at calexander1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 3, 2009 17:48 EDT

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PC Socialism - Swine flu name change? Flu genes spell pig - Government Healthcare??

AP – A farmer wash pigs at a pig farm in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, Thursday, April 30, 2009. Indonesia, …

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – 58 mins ago

WASHINGTON – No matter what you call it, leading experts say the virus that is scaring the world is pretty much all pig. So while the U.S. government and now the World Health Organization are taking the swine out of "swine flu," the experts who track the genetic heritage of the virus say this: If it is genetically mostly porcine and its parents are pig viruses, it smells like swine flu to them.

Six of the eight genetic segments of this virus strain are purely swine flu and the other two segments are bird and human, but have lived in swine for the past decade, says Dr. Raul Rabadan, a professor of computational biology at Columbia University.

A preliminary analysis shows that the closest genetic parents are swine flu strains from North America and Eurasia, Rabadan wrote in a scientific posting in a European surveillance network.

"Scientifically this is a swine virus," said top virologist Dr. Richard Webby, a researcher at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. Webby is director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza Viruses in Lower Animals and Birds. He documented the spread a decade ago of one of the parent viruses of this strain in scientific papers.

"It's clearly swine," said Henry Niman, president of Recombinomics, a Pittsburgh company that tracks how viruses evolve. "It's a flu virus from a swine, there's no other name to call it."

Dr. Edwin D. Kilbourne, the father of the 1976 swine flu vaccine and a retired professor at New York Medical College in Valhalla, called the idea of changing the name an "absurd position."

The name swine flu has specific meaning when it comes to stimulating antibodies in the body and shouldn't be tinkered with, said Kilbourne, 88.

That's not what government health officials say.

"We have no idea where it came from," said Michael Shaw, associate director for laboratory science for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Everybody's calling it swine flu, but the better term is 'swine-like.' It's like viruses we have seen in pigs, it's not something we know was in pigs."

On Wednesday, U.S. officials not only started calling the virus 2009 H1N1 after two of its genetic markers, but Dr. Anthony Fauci the National Institutes of Health corrected reporters for calling it swine flu. Then on Thursday, the WHO said it would stop using the name swine flu because it was misleading and triggering the slaughter of pigs in some countries.

Another reason the U.S. government wants to ditch the swine label is that many people are afraid to eat pork, hurting the $97 billion U.S. pork industry. Even the experts who point to the swine genetic origins of the virus agree that people can't get the disease from food or handling pork, even raw.

"Calling this swine flu, when to date there has been no connection between animals and humans, has the potential to cause confusion," Chris Novak, chief executive officer of the National Pork Board, said in a news release.

One top flu expert, doesn't like the swine flu name either, but for a different reason. Traditional swine flu doesn't spread easily among people, although this one does now, said Dr. Paul Glezen, a flu epidemiologist at Baylor University.

Columbia's Rabadan said sometimes when he talks to other scientists, he uses the name "swine" or the name "Mexican flu." And that name only adds another case of political incorrectness.

Mexico Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said it's wrong to call it "North American flu" and flatly rejects the idea of calling it "Mexican flu." He pointed to WHO information that the swine genes in the virus are from Europe and Asia. Rabadan and others say four of the six pure swine genetic markers are North American.

"I don't think it's fair for someone to blame Mexico for this. You can't blame any country; you can't blame a person or an institution. The recombination of genes in the virus is something that happens naturally," Mexico's chief epidemiologist, Miguel Angel Lezana said Wednesday.

And while the U.S. government and WHO are dropping "swine flu" as the name, someone hasn't told their Webmasters.

On Thursday afternoon, the phrase "swine flu" was still in the Internet addresses for the WHO, Homeland Security and CDC pages on the disease and the question-and-answer page on the U.S. government's pandemic flu Web site.

___

Medical Writers Lauran Neergaard in Washington and Mike Stobbe in Atlanta and reporters Rita Beamish in San Mateo, Calif., and E. Eduardo Castillo in Mexico City contributed to this report.

(Can't wait for government healthcare!!!)

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[In Theirown Words] Obama's Socialist Outrage

[From the CNN; The Communist News Network Transcripts]

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: People have a right to be angry. I'm angry.

CHETRY: Also, he is saying sorry this morning. We're talking about Senator Chris Dodd, doing an about-face and owning up to actually helping pave the way for those huge bonus payouts at AIG. The senator is making his confession only on CNN.

ROMANS: Kiran, we begin with big news breaking right now here on CNN. Our political unit getting answers about bailed out insurance giant AIG and how it got away with giving millions of dollars in executive bonuses. It turns out the company got a big hand from Washington, specifically the Obama administration, the democratic senator, Chris Dodd. And believe it or not, the political process that paved the way for those massive payouts started as an attempt to put the brakes on big corporate bonuses.

References;
1. http://library2.akadhmia.org/CNN-AmericanMorningMarch19.pdf
2. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0903/19/ltm.01.html

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[Articles of Interest] The audacity of help (aka "intervening to rebalance incomes")

By Chrystia Freeland

Published: March 11 2009 20:40 | Last updated: March 11 2009 20:40

On inauguration day, after the euphoric mass celebration on the Mall and before the black-tie balls that evening, leading Democrats gathered for dinner in Washington’s Park Hyatt Hotel. It was a crowd including Paul Volcker, former head of the Federal Reserve, Lawrence Summers, incoming head of the National Economic Council, and three future cabinet secretaries.

But the first person to speak was the last Democratic occupant of the Oval Office – Bill Clinton. And in his brief comments the former president sketched a passionately optimistic view of the political implications of the current crisis. “We are at a pivotal moment in this country,” the politician who taught the American left how to win elections in the age of Ronald Reagan exulted. “I think there will be a progressive majority in this country for the next 30 years.”

For the Main Street families losing their homes and their jobs, and for the Wall Street firms that have been facing collapse, the economic crisis has felt like a natural disaster. The economy, as the investor Warren Buffett put it this week, seems to have “fallen off a cliff”. But Mr Clinton urged his listeners to perceive in the cataclysm a once-in-a-lifetime chance. President Barack Obama and his administration have “an enormous opportunity”, he said with a note of wistfulness. “They will have more freedom to do it than any other team in a long time.”

EDITOR’S CHOICE

In depth: Future of capitalism - Mar-11

Analysis: Agitation as middle-class Europe struggles to cope - Mar-11

Obama signs ‘imperfect’ spending bill - Mar-12

Dimon calls for unity behind Obama - Mar-12

Editorial: Why the US needs a super-regulator - Mar-11

After barely 50 days in office, it is clear the administration perceives the watershed identified by Mr Clinton and intends to exploit it. This determination to turn the world’s deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression into the beginning of a new era of progressive politics in America is the most important political consequence – and the biggest political gamble – of the crisis of capitalism in capitalism’s homeland.

Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, likes to say that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Mr Obama, characteristically, provides a more stirring spin. Beginning with his inaugural address, he served notice that he intended to be a consequential president, rebutting future critics even as he laid out his plans: “There are some who question the scale of our ambitions – who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans ... What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them ... The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small but whether it works.”

The echo of Reagan – remember when government was the problem and not the solution? – is meaningful and intentional. Early in the primary fight, Mr Obama ruffled Clintonian feathers by naming Reagan as the most significant president of modern times. Mr Obama hopes to have a similar impact. According to former Reagan staffers, the Obama team has gone so far as to get in touch with detailed questions about the mechanics of the Gipper’s White House and how they choreographed his first 100 days.

Nor is it just the hope-drenched Obama-ites who see in the economic downturn a chance to change America’s political weather. Grizzled Democratic warriors see the opportunity, too. “I have been in government for 35 years and this is the most exciting time. You really feel you are making history,” says Charles Schumer, New York’s senior senator. “In every generation there are tectonic elections which redefine the role of government. Obama has a chance to create a new generation of Democrats.”

“I have never seen a shift in public opinion like the one we’ve had now,” agrees Barney Frank, the influential congressman. Mr Frank believes the long era of “Republican ascendancy”, which he dates to Richard Nixon’s election in 1968, has been replaced by a period of Democratic dominance.

Republicans, too, admit their era of setting the terms of the political debate has come to an end. “The only question is whether the Obama era lasts two years, four years, or eight years,” says Newt Gingrich, the former House of Representatives speaker who is re-emerging as powerful intellectual force in the party. “The question is whether this is a new era or an interregnum.”

The Obama era, if that is what it becomes, will be built on the two defining political and economic shifts of the past six months: the evident and acknowledged failure of “market fundamentalism” and the response by Hank Paulson as Treasury secretary.

Ideologically, the manifest failure of market fundamentalism is the starting point. There are, to be sure, some hardcore Republican hold-outs: Mr Gingrich argues that the current crisis “is a government problem, not a market problem”. But the consensus view is that, as Alan Greenspan, former Fed chairman, confessed in his influential congressional testimony in October, there was a “flaw” in the model.

Mr Summers, a strong defender of free markets, likewise has concluded: “The view that the market economy is inherently self-stabilising, always, has been dealt a fatal blow ... This notion that the economy is self-stabilising is usually right, but it is wrong a few times a century and this is one of those times.”

The central political consequence of this market failure, Mr Summers says, is that there “is a need for extraordinary public action at those times”. As he put its: “The debate over whether you can love your country and hate your government has been settled with a negative answer.” This rehabilitation of intervention in the economy as not just acceptable but essential is the second foundation for Mr Obama’s new progressive agenda.

Usefully for the Democrats, it was the outgoing administration that brought the state back in with a vengeance. “Paulson is the champion nationaliser of all times. He managed more nationalisation than any man on the planet,” says Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “It is maybe a bit of protection for Obama.”

Mr Paulson said his purpose was to save capitalism. Mr Obama wants to do much more than that. Over the past few weeks, he has unveiled a sweeping progressive agenda aimed not merely at sorting out the market economy’s travails but addressing a deeper failing in the current manifestation of American capitalism. That flaw, in his view, is the rising income inequality and median wage stagnation of the past three decades – it is this central idea that unites his ambitious project.

. . .

Education, one of Mr Obama’s three main initiatives, is all about fixing what economists identify as a leading cause of income inequality. Healthcare reform, the president’s second big initiative, would lighten one of the main burdens on the falling-behind middle class.

Only energy and environmental reform, his third mission, is not directly connected to income inequality – but, as with the other two, its proposed financing is built on the view that income inequality is a central fact of America today. Mr Obama unapologetically advocates a shift to a more redistributive tax system: he wants the very rich to pay for the programmes that he hopes will alleviate the stagnation of wages of those in the middle.

Campaigning on class has long been political poison for the Democrats. As recently as the Democratic primaries, economic inequality did not seem to work as a central campaign theme. Americans’ reluctance to vote according to their apparent class interests became a truism of politics and a source of considerable hand-wringing on the left. In What’s the Matter with Kansas? Thomas Frank attributed it to the right’s skill at playing up cultural issues. George Soros, the hedge fund manager and active Democrat, says it was because Americans, unlike Europeans, did not envy the super-rich – they hoped to emulate them.

The credit crunch exposed a more hard-nosed reason for the political quiescence of the stagnant middle class. As is now being discovered, the era of cheap money allowed families to consume far more than they produced. All of those home equity loans, vendor-financed car deals and credit card purchases may have masked the reality that real incomes were falling behind.

The financial crisis has turned that old political logic upside down. As the recession deepens, cultural issues pale in significance next to economic ones. Public anger towards Wall Street – late-night comedians have taken to calling for Chinese-style public executions – has transformed the Masters of the Universe from heroes to villains. The end of cheap credit seems meanwhile to have shattered middle America’s illusion that it too was partaking in the prosperity of the second Gilded Age.

The result is that class and redistribution are no longer dirty words in American politics. “John Kerry [the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate] was intimidated out of talking about economic redistribution because it was class warfare,” says congressman Frank. Now, by contrast, “people are very aware that in the good times they weren’t getting any, that income maldistribution greatly increased”.

This shift may be why the right’s most strident criticisms of the new president – that Mr Obama is a “socialist” or even a “Manchurian candidate” with a secret plot to destroy capitalism – are making little headway with the public. Instead, the accusations underscore an important and little-noted aspect of the American left’s reaction to the crisis: for all the bold reach of the progressive agenda Mr Obama has laid out, neither the president nor anyone in the Democratic mainstream is challenging the tenets of the market economy. Indeed, the Democratic White House has been more allergic to the idea of nationalising banks than have some leading Republicans.

At a time when historical analogies are popular, one anniversary is not much talked about in the US: the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. But even as it goes largely unacknowledged, the collapse of communism is helping to define the debate about the most significant crisis of capitalism in 80 years. During the Great Depression it was possible for some American progressives to look to the Soviets and wonder whether they had it right. Today, that option does not even get a hearing.

Mr Obama, the most ambitious president since Reagan, is determined to use this pivotal moment to advance an agenda on income inequality he began to talk about before the credit crunch began. But even as he lays out bold – many would say too bold – plans for the long term, he and his team recognise that their first and necessary step is to patch up America’s faltering capitalist engine. According to Mr Summers: “It is periodically the task of progressives to, ironically, save the market system from its own excesses.”

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