Iraq Catchall

I ran across a whole bunch of odd Iraq bits this morning so I'm going to throw them all together.

First, US military spokesman in Iraq says that Iraq's violence is limited.

In a rundown of recent military activity, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the U.S. military spokesman, said most violence was focused in three central provinces, including Baghdad.

"There is not widespread violence across Iraq. There is not. Seventy-five percent of the attacks still take place in Baghdad, al-Anbar or Salaheddin (provinces). And in the other 15 provinces, they all averaged less than six attacks a day, and 12 of those provinces averaged less than two attacks a day."

So, leaving aside that those three hot provinces represent over 30% of the population, it is the military's contention that those other provinces are quiet if they "average less" than 60-180 attacks a month or 480-1,440 terror attacks per province since August. I hate to quibble, but that doesn't sound quiet to me.

(jiggering the numbers again, the quiet portion of the country of 18 million people suffered 5,760 attacks that were reported or recognized by the US military since August. Maybe we should move there.)

And, I don't know if it's actually being there amidst the negotiations, but Zalmay Khalilzad seems to be the only US/adminsitration figure who really has any idea of how bad it is.

Speaking to the Washington Post, he also noted that despite a suicide car bombing on Thursday that killed at least 25 people at a police headquarters, more people died in death squad-style sectarian killings in recent weeks than in bombings.

In the same article, the US is still trying to use Allawi who took a small percent of the vote(14% maybe?) as their standard bearer in this extraconstitutional Iraqi Security Council construct.

Allawi, with powerful backers in Washington, is widely tipped among senior political sources to play a leading role in the new Security Council, which some portray as a powerful parallel administration whose creation could sidestep deadlock among Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds on forming a unity government.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it sounds like this Security Council is indeed going to sidestep the constitutional process by creating a temporary appointed government.

And from Juan Cole, Iraq's Interior Minister announced that there are only a few hundred foreign fighters left in Iraq.

Low scale ethnic cleansing seems to be gathering steam.

Juan Cole also has a Salon piece on the administration's efforts to redefine Iraq as anything but a civil war.

Finally, amidst the UN negotiations on Iran's nuclear program which the Russians are rejecting, ABCNews investigative unit (see Brian Ross, the new Judy Miller) just happens to run across some documentation that shows the Russians were leaking US war plans to the Iraqis. Just another coincidence, I'm sure.