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General: Iran working to influence Iraq vote
WASHINGTON TIMES
BAGHDAD
The top U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday that Iran still is training and equipping Iraqi insurgents but is shifting its focus to influence the upcoming Iraqi elections and exerting “soft power” over its majority-Shiite neighbor.
Iranian meddling “is more targeted now than it has ever been,” Gen. Ray Odierno said following meetings with visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. “They are focused on their attempt to influence the national elections that will come up. They will be very focused on trying to support a government that will be more friendly to Iran.”
Mr. Gates was getting a firsthand look at U.S.-Iraqi cooperation following the formal handover of control of Iraqi cities to Iraqi security forces. He met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad over Iraqi requests for more military hardware, including state-of-the-art fighter jets.
The timetable for withdrawal of approximately 130,000 U.S. forces is keyed to the national election calendar, with most combat forces remaining through August 2010.
Gen. Odierno said he believed the Iranians “have done a reassessment” following Iraqi adoption of a security pact with the United States late last year. Iran opposed the pact, which would leave U.S. forces in Iraq through 2011, and urged Iraqis to refuse it as a point of national honor.
Mr. Gates expressed satisfaction with the pace of U.S. disengagement. “Gen. Odierno and I are confident the Iraqi forces are up to the task of securing these urban areas and soon their entire nation, but we stand ready to assist if called upon,” he said.
Mr. Gates sidestepped questions about whether American forces might stay beyond their 2012 departure deadline.
Mr. al-Maliki suggested last week that if Iraq needs more security help, it might ask for an extension of the U.S. military’s commitment.
“What happens beyond 2011 is a subject best left to the end of 2010 or 2011 itself,” Mr. Gates said.
Mr. al-Maliki has given Mr. Gates a shopping list of U.S.-made military equipment he wants to acquire, including marquee fighter planes. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Mr. Gates and Mr. al-Maliki discussed equipment sales again Tuesday.
“They also want to give Iraq part of what they already have in Iraq as a form of aid to arm the Iraqi army,” Mr. al-Dabbagh said, and would “facilitate payment installments.”
Iraq wants to buy more F-16s or other fighters than U.S. officials think it can afford, and Gen. Odierno said Iraq needs better air defenses faster than new F-16s could be delivered.
Iraq also is expected to consider French- or Russian-made planes.
“We’re looking for creative solutions” that might include the “loan” of decommissioned U.S. planes, Gen. Odierno said.
A special U.S. Air Force assessment group will be in Iraq soon to help figure out a solution, Gen. Odierno said. Without more equipment and help, Iraq will not be able to defend its own air space when U.S. forces pull out completely in 2011, Gen. Odierno said.
U.S. military officials in Iraq downplayed what they called minor misunderstandings and hitches since the handover, which brought an end to solo U.S. combat patrols inside turbulent cities such as Baghdad and Mosul.
Gen. Odierno said that, after a few early problems, he ordered an enormous video conference involving about 500 U.S. and Iraqi officers to go over the new rules. Problems dropped off sharply after the session in early July, he said.
Mr. Gates met earlier Tuesday with U.S. soldiers serving in a model unit organized to help and advise Iraqis instead of leading the fight themselves. The Iraqi general in charge of his half of a joint military base in Talil asked Mr. Gates for more surveillance equipment to keep an eye on the nearby Iranian border.
Mr. Gates also made a point Tuesday of saying that the United States is “ready to help resolve disputes over boundaries and hydrocarbons,” a reference to widening tensions between Arabs and Kurds. Gen. Odierno called the Arab-Kurd rift his No. 1 security worry.
Mr. Gates is expected to visit Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region on Wednesday. Kurdish leaders are squabbling with Iraq’s central government over oil-rich territory.
Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.
Iraqi government sponsors Christmas celebration
FROM WND
Christians, the first people of Iraq, have faced persecution, threats, assassination and mass extermination in recent years. But to celebrate Christmas 2008, the government formally recognized the Christian faith by sponsoring a Baghdad city-center party featuring a huge poster of Jesus suspended by a balloon and an artist creating oil paintings representing Jesus.
According to a report from CNN, the agency’s correspondent was told by Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Karim Khalaf, “All Iraqis are Christian today!”
Ken Joseph Jr. of the Assyrian Christians told WND walking through the streets of Washington, D.C., provides a visitor with no link between the decorations and festivities of the holiday time and the birth of Jesus.
Yet in Baghdad, “the government sponsored a special Christmas celebration for the Christians. The main focus was the huge picture of Jesus,” he said.
“It’s ironic that this was part of our whole struggle. We have fantastic support from the Iraqi side. They love the Christians,” he said.
At Hot Air, Ed Morrisssey wrote, “Can anyone imagine this celebration taking place with government support in any other Arab nation — even those normally described as ‘moderate’? Not only does this celebration include the standard secular imagery of Santa Claus, they actually put a picture of Jesus Christ on a hot-air balloon. That’s a big deal in a Muslim nation, where they object strenuously (and often violently) to iconography. Suggesting that Iraqis are ‘all Christians’ on any day would get a Muslim fired or worse anyplace else in the region.”
He continued, “This is what victory looks like. Iraq has settled into what Condoleezza Rice called a ‘multi-confessional’ society, one that has begun to promote a religious tolerance that is unlike anything seen in that region in decades, if not centuries or ever.”
The CNN report said the celebration featured tables loaded with cookies and cakes, with Santa balloons hanging from trees.
It was held at a public park in eastern Baghdad and included a Christmas tree and military band, which played martial music instead of Christmas carols, the report said.
Khalaf told the CNN correspondent Iraq lost thousands of people to sectarian and ethic violence.
“Now that we have crossed that hurdle and destroyed the incubators of terrorism,” he told the network, “and the security situation is good, we have to go back and strengthen community ties.”
The report cited the presence of Father Saad Sirop Hanna, a Chaldean Christian priest. He recalled the 28 days he was held by kidnappers in 2006, because of his Christianity.
“We are just attesting that things are changing in Baghdad, slowly, but we hope that this change actually is real. We will wait for the future to tell us the truth about this,” he said.
Baghdad is not the only Iraqi city to celebrate, either. According to AsiaNews, Christians in Kirkuk are awaiting a return of midnight Mass, an institution banished during years of conflict and violence.
The report said while the event hasn’t yet been returned to the traditional midnight hour – it’s held these days at 5:30 in the afternoon – the assembly itself is a promise to the Christian community.
Joseph said the Christian community in Iraq dates to the same time period the apostles were spreading their faith. In fact, he said, the people of the original Assyrian Christian community were among the first to send missionaries to other nations.
To this day, many Assyrian Christians still speak Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. They are also the people of ancient Nineveh, the city visited by the biblical prophet Jonah that lies today near the modern city of Mosul, Iraq.
