NPR,
All Things Considered, December 13, 2011 Tuesday
Biden:
Iraq Will Be A Partner; History Will Judge If War Was Worth It
Iraq and the US are on the same page on Syria? The US believes yes, the only concern Iraq has
over sanction against Syria is adverse impact on poor, ordinary people.
ROBERT
SIEGEL: Prime Minister al-Maliki expressed some reservations about sanctions
against Syria. He remembers the sanctions against Iraq. With the Iraqis taking
a different view of Syria on such a basic question, can the president persuade
him, persuade the Iraqis?
JOSEPH
BIDEN: It is not a fundamentally different view. Maliki has had overwhelming
difficulty with Assad, has had confrontations with him, supports the Arab
League's position, but is skeptical about whether or not the sanctions will
result in the outcome -- getting rid of Assad and a stable government coming to
the fore. But we have no fundamental
disagreement with the Iraqis
After the US pulls out of Iraq, Iran is likely to fill the vacuum?
ROBERT
SIEGEL: Since Iraqi Shiites, Prime Minister Maliki among them, have very
strong, historic religious ties with the biggest Shiite country, Iran, what is
an appropriate limit to Iranian influence on that?
JOSEPH
BIDEN: .. the fact they share a
religion, a Shiite religion, does not mean that they are close. .. the fact of
the matter is that Maliki has been very tough with the Iranians. .. So there's
no indication that Prime Minister Maliki is any other than a nationalist.
========
NPR,
Talk Of The Nation, December 13, 2011 Tuesday
Troop
Pullout Not The End Of U.S. Presence In Iraq
Ted
Koppel
The
danger of a nation that is supporting terrorism. Oil, which was the great
unspoken issue in 2002 and 2003, very much a part of this. The difference, of
course, now is that the target is Iran, not Iraq. But the two are very close to
one another, and the fact of the matter is that Iran is exercising an enormous
influence throughout Iraq.
And
the oil fields, which have under the surface, they have something - I believe
it's the second-largest reserves of any country in the world. That's all
very close to Iran, and if Iran were to exercise significant political, let
alone military, control in that region, together with their own oil and gas,
they would have the capacity to wreak havoc on Western economies.
the U.S. consulate down in Basra is rocketed two or three times a
week
The
first thing that happens when you arrive there is they give you a security
briefing. And the security briefing is brief enough that I can give you here
and now: When you hear the alarm, hit the deck face down. Put your hands over
your ears, keep your mouth open, cross your legs.
When
you ask how long it is between the time that the alarm goes off and the rockets
hit, the answer is .. about two seconds.
16,000 contractors and civilians that we're leaving behind
RICHARD:
Yeah, I had a concern with those 16,000 contractors and civilians that we're
leaving behind, basically without military protection. Are we setting up for
another Iranian hostage crisis? And I don't mean the first one that everybody's
forgotten about that was diffused nicely under Ambassador William Sullivan, but
the second one that basically started Ted Koppel's fame as the leader of
"Nightline," which was essentially to report on the Iranian hostage
crisis that brought down a presidency
TED
KOPPEL: To this day, a good deal of
Iran's military hardware is American, dating back to the time that we sold all
the advanced weapon systems that we could to the shah of Iran.
What
we have in Iraq today are hundreds, possibly even thousands, of civilian
contractors who together with military trainers - the M1A1 tank for example is
built by General Dynamics, and the people who are there are General Dynamics
personnel who are training the Iraqis.
But
that's - in many respects, that's a purely commercial proposition. The
Iraqis over this past year or two have purchased $7.5 billion worth of weapons, and we have transferred
another $2.5 billion under a foreign aid
package.
Shiite v. Sunni in Iraq
NEAL
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. When Ted
Koppel visited Iraq recently on assignment for NBC's "Rock Center with
Brian Williams," he spoke with one of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's
official spokesmen who assured Koppel that the age-old Sunni-Shiite divide in
Iraq is no longer an issue in his national forces.
Koppel
then asked several uniformed officers about, some Sunni, some Shiite. At least
one did not feel comfortable answering what to him was a sensitive question.
Tensions have risen since the arrest of hundreds of former Baathists in the
last couple of days. Some Iraqis fear the American withdrawal will
leave room for divisions between Sunnis and Shiites to destabilize the
country.
And
I wanted to follow up with you, Ted, on that Shiite-Sunni divide. To call it a civil
war is probably not exaggerating. Back
in 2005, 2006, 2007, many were dead. And it is the Shiites who are ascendant.
The Sunnis under Saddam Hussein were ascendant. And many fear the
withdrawal of the referee, as you will, the Americans, will provide the
opportunity for this war to erupt again.
TED
KOPPEL: Interestingly enough, back during the height of that fighting, some of
the worst of it was down in Basra, Very heavily Shiite.
Prime
Minister Maliki went down there
ostensibly to suppress, and indeed ultimately they did suppress. the Shiite forces who were largely supported by the Iranians.
But that was
done, although not much was made of it at the time, with very heavy U.S. military involvement. Without that U.S. military involvement, I
don't think A, Maliki would have gone down
No U.S. Troops, But An Army Of Contractors In Iraq
by TOM BOWMAN, NPR, December 27, 2011
No U.S. Troops, But An Army Of Contractors In Iraq
by TOM BOWMAN, NPR, December 27, 2011
(As
many as 5,000 private security contractors will be protecting U.S. diplomats in
Iraq. The U.S. Embassy compound (above) and several consulates will have about
15,000 workers, making it the largest diplomatic operation abroad.)
The
U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, along with several consulates, will have some 15,000
workers, making it the largest U.S. diplomatic operation abroad. Those
diplomats will be protected by a private army consisting of as many as 5,000
security contractors who will carry assault weapons and fly armed helicopters.
Embassy
personnel will ride in armored vehicles with armed guards, who work for
companies with names like Triple Canopy and Global Strategies Group.
Their
convoys will be watched from above. Another company, DynCorp International,
will fly helicopters equipped with heavy machine guns.
"The
order to fire is given by that U.S. government, State Department security
professional," he says. "So the contractors just don't open
fire."
But
private security contractors did fire back in 2007 while protecting a State
Department convoy in Baghdad. Seventeen Iraqis were killed by guards working
for the company then-called Blackwater.
The
shooting created a major controversy, and a U.S. investigation later found the
convoy was not under threat.
The
State Department has a shaky record overseeing armed guards. A recent
congressional study found that many contractor abuses in Iraq during the war
were caused by those working for the State Department, not the
military.
