Romancing The Stone

In Samarra, there has been another attack on the "golden dome" mosque that was damaged in an explosion in 2006.

BAGHDAD (AP) - Saboteurs blew up the two minarets of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra early Wednesday, in a repeat of the 2006 attack that shattered its famous golden dome and unleashed a wave of retaliatory sectarian violence that still bloodies Iraq. Sunni extremists of al-Qaida were quickly blamed.

The assault on the Askariya Shrine, one of the holiest in Shiite Islam, immediately stirred fears of a new round of intra-Muslim bloodshed, and prompted the 30-member bloc of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to suspend its membership in Iraq's parliament, threatening a deeper political crisis.

To ward off a surge of violence, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki quickly imposed an indefinite curfew on vehicle traffic and large gatherings in Baghdad. Before the curfew took hold, arsonists set fire to a Sunni mosque in western Baghdad, police said.

A Shiite shrine was also blown up north of Baghdad, while two Sunni mosques were bombed south of the capital, police said. One was destroyed and the other lost its minaret.

Since the 2006 attack, the mosque has been guarded by Iraqi forces. Curiously, the actual units seem to have been largely local Sunnis, according to the New York Times.

Since the attack in 2006, the shrine had been under the protection of local — predominantly Sunni — guards. But American military and Iraqi security officials had recently become concerned that the local unit had been infiltrated by Al Qaeda forces in Iraq.

A move by the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad over the last few days to bring in a new guard unit — predominantly Shiite — may have been linked to the attack today.

Speaking on Al Jazeera television, Abdul Sattar Abdul Jabbar, a prominent Sunni cleric, said the new guards had arrived at the shrine shouting sectarian slogans that may have provoked local Sunnis, in a sign that the attack was already being depicted as sectarian.

Gunfire was reported around the mosque last night, which may have been related to the change of guards.

Sectarian strife in Iraq has ratcheted up another notch, and we see again that it pervades the Iraqi security forces.

Which adds an ironic twist to the presentation to a House committee of Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who until recently led the U.S. military's training effort in Iraq.

A senior U.S. military commander said yesterday that Iraq's army must expand its rolls by at least 20,000 more soldiers than Washington had anticipated, to help free U.S. troops from conducting daily patrols, checkpoints and other critical yet dangerous missions.

Even then, Iraq will remain incapable of taking full responsibility for its security for many years -- five years in the case of protecting its airspace -- and will require a long-term military relationship with the United States, said Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who until recently led the U.S. military's training effort in Iraq.

What's better than unreliable Iraqi troops who are infiltrated by al Qaeda and who would rather shoot at each other than defend important targets? MORE such Iraqi troops!

To be fair to General Dempsey, he's not as out of touch as many who have testified before Congress.

Appearing before a House panel, Dempsey outlined his assessment of Iraq's 348,000-strong security forces looking into 2008 and the prospects that they can take over from U.S. troops. He said the Iraqi forces are improving but are still riddled with sectarianism and corruption and are suffering from a lack of leaders and the attrition of tens of thousands of members -- including 32,000 police between mid-2005 and January.

His projection of the size of the police force required to help bring stability -- 195,000 -- is more than 40 percent higher than Washington estimated in 2003. The remarks follow other blunt comments by U.S. military commanders that civilian deaths and attacks on U.S. troops have recently risen and that particularly tough fighting is expected in the coming months.

Charged with creating a plan to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, he's doing his best. It's not his fault if the plan sounds ridiculous. Still, Dempsey did betray a little of how it must feel to be in such a position after years of trying to train the Iraqis to take over:

Building a competent Iraqi security force is at the center of the U.S. effort to turn over military operations, but serious gaps in the capability of Iraqi forces are limiting their role in pacifying Baghdad and safeguarding civilians under the counterinsurgency plan being implemented by the top U.S. commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, Dempsey said.

Describing the U.S. effort in Iraq as a labor of Sisyphus, he said the metaphoric stone is "probably rolling back a bit right now in Baghdad. But I don't think it's going to roll over us."

Oh, good. We're not about to be crushed by the boulder we must endlessly, repeatedly roll uphill for all eternity. It just has rolled backwards a bit. Presumably, we'll have pushed it back to where it was real soon now, so we can then continue pushing uphill. Forever.

And how is that going?

Dempsey said that he is "cautiously optimistic" about Iraqi army units gaining proficiency, and that they are more ready to take over tactical jobs, such as running patrols and manning checkpoints, than dealing with pay, promotion, logistics and contracting. In those areas, Dempsey said, the Iraqis are "going to need some help in that for a long time."

Dempsey said Iraqi army rolls are inflated by soldiers who are severely wounded but are still paid because the government lacks retirement money for them. An Iraqi army commander might also corruptly over-report the number of troops he has, Dempsey said, "so that he gets a payroll share more than he deserves and thereby pocket it." Sectarian agendas also afflict the hiring and firing process.

Similar problems, including "ghost" personnel, afflict the police, Dempsey said. Of the 32,000 Iraqi police lost from the U.S.-and-foreign-trained force of 188,000 in the 18 months before January, more than 14,000 were killed or severely wounded, 5,000 deserted, and the rest are "unaccounted for," he said.

Asked whether the absent police could be fighting U.S. troops, Dempsey replied, "We just don't know," adding that he is trying to track how many of the U.S.-trained forces end up in U.S. custody "down the road."

So, again, that's 5,000 that we know deserted, and 13,000 that we have no idea about? 18,000 trained personnel, just gone? In a year and a half? We're saying we need more trained people then we thought we did, at the same time as we can't hold on to the trained people we had. That boulder is rolling back faster than I thought.

But, life for your average Iraqi must be getting better, right?

Dempsey depicted the level of violence tolerated by Iraqis as "mind-numbing" and acknowledged that a dearth of security has made some Iraqis nostalgic for the rule of Saddam Hussein, who was ousted by the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. "You'll hear people say, 'You know, we were a lot more secure and safe during the Saddam regime,' " he told the oversight panel of the House Armed Services Committee.

Oh.

Back in January, when the President announced his new strategy for Iraq, he spoke of helping a dynamic and competent Iraqi government assert its plan for reliable governance. They had detailed plans, you see, and all we needed was to give them a boost. We'd help calm things down in Baghdad, to give the Iraqis the breathing space to effect political solutions and end sectarian violence. In addition to a change in military deployments, we'd increase aid to Iraq, leveraging the money soon to be flowing to Iraqis from the new oil law, increasing reconstruction. Not only that, but we'd be using our "full diplomatic resources" to get help for Iraq from its neighbors, really boosting our efforts at a regional solution.

Apparently, the people in DC have decided they have to wait until September to discover that all that was a fairy story. Meanwhile, Iraq just keeps getting messier. The real Sisyphusean effort seems to be trying to get us out of there.