Sullivan on Iraq War, Sept. 1, 2002



There has been no accountability for all the war hysteria whipped up by media pundits and politicians about Iraq in the year before the U.S. invaded. Although it is true that Doug Feith's various special offices in the Pentagon, and VP Dick Cheney's politburo of Scooter Libby and John Hannah, along with Ahmad Chalabi and others fed false and misleading information to the government and the press, many talking heads were pitifully gullible.



Let's start with Andrew Sullivan, who, at the beginning of the September before the war, published in the London Times a vicious tongue-lashing of the New York Time's Howell Raines for not being on board with the program. I present excerpts below:

Sunday Times (London), September 1, 2002

The liberal cheerleader getting a bad name



Andrew Sullivan



"At the beginning, few readers noticed any change. The new executive editor of The New York Times, Howell Raines, took over last September and was immediately embroiled in the biggest New York story in decades. The coverage of the 9/11 massacre was superb, detailed and thorough - exactly what the American elite demands of its paper of record.



"And then the rot set in. The New York Times has gone from being America's most reliable (if sometimes PC) compendium of news to being one of the most suspect media entities around . . .



"Why on earth should anyone care? The answer is, in fact, a critical one in assessing the current American debate about war against Iraq. Since September 11, polls have shown that a hefty majority of Americans favour a military effort to prevent weapons of mass destruction being used by Saddam and his allies against American allies and the homeland itself . . .



"Beginning in July, [Raines] used America's most authoritative front page to run inflammatory non-stories about the impending conflict. On July 30, the Times detailed how war "could profoundly affect the American economy". Duh.

Cole: Note that Sullivan dismisses the argument that the war could have a deep impact on the US economy as a commonplace. But in fact, Bush administration officials consistently low-balled the American public about the cost. It was to be $60 billion. Iraq's oil would pay for reconstruction. There would be no long-term impact on oil prices. Raines was right and the Bush administration officials were wrong. Sullivan here calls the prediction that the war would have a big impact on the US economy an "inflammatory non-story" (which by the way is a meaningless phrase and therefore bad writing. A non-story cannot be inflammatory. What he presumably means is that Raines ran inflammatory stories about the economic impact that were inaccurate. But they almost certainly underestimated the economic impact of the Iraq war, the full dimensions of which we can now only begin to guess.)

"After the first day of Senate hearings on Iraq, the headline was: "Experts warn of high risk for American invasion of Iraq". In fact, the hearings had been dominated by defectors' tales of Saddam's imminent nuclear capacity. Every other major outlet led with that troubling news. The Times buried it."

Cole: Sullivan here castigates Raines for not swallowing the crock of shit that Saddam had an imminent nuclear weapons capacity. No serious analyst thought Iraq had an imminent such capacity. At this point in time, Ambassador Joe Wilson had already demonstrated to the CIA and Cheney that Iraq had not bought yellowcake uranium from Niger. The defectors' tales were fairy tales. Sullivan not only swallowed this crock whole, he licked his lips, asked for more, and beat up on Raines for not wanting any.

"It was slowly becoming clear that Raines was intoxicated with the power of his position - and you can see the temptation. The Times has influence beyond its reach as a paper for the most influential people in the most powerful country on earth . . ."

Cole: Not content to question Raines's journalistic judgment, Sullivan now goes for the jugular of character. What is the explanation for Raines's puzzling reticence about the case for an Iraq war? Why isn't he buying the stories of a menacing Saddam, sitting atop massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and within a year or two of having a nuke, plotting to strike the United States? Is it possible that Raines just can't see reliable sources for such tales, corroborated by other, unconnected reliable sources? Is it possible that there is an honest difference of opinion here? No, Raines must be a megalomaniac, drunk on power.



Whenever a writer replies to an argument with an attack on his opponent's character, calling him "immoral" or "unscrupulous" or "full of pride," you are in the presence of propaganda. The reasoned response to an argument is a counter-argument. It is not always inappropriate to call someone unscrupulous. I have long felt that the unscrupulous deserve the epithet. But an argument made by an unscrupulous person can nevertheless be correct, and would need to be refuted on its own merits even after one was done with the name calling.

"Why would the Times risk its reputation as a liberal but fair paper of record to lurch to the left of The Guardian? Since Raines won't speak to the general press, it's hard to know for sure. Part of it, perhaps, is to do with his generation of liberals. Scarred by Vietnam, they see every war as a replay of that hell and assume war critics always have the moral edge over war supporters. Raines is also a white liberal from Alabama, eager to prove that he isn't a Southern bigot. He won a Pulitzer for a guilt-ridden memoir of his black nanny when he was a child. So he overshoots."

The lessons progressives drew from the Vietnam War were that it is unwise for the US to become embroiled in an Asian land war, that Asian nationalism is a potent force that Washington consistently underestimates, that wars cost innocent lives and brutalize those who prosecute them, and that you should not go into a war without an exit strategy. The chief post-Vietnam strategic thinker on these issues was Colin Powell, by whose guidelines the Iraq war should not have been fought. How Raines's alleged white liberal guilt could possibly have an impact on this argument is beyond me, but I guess when you are libelling someone mercilessly, you may as well throw in the kitchen sink.

"But there is also a paranoid hatred of the president among the paper's chief columnists. Almost universally, they hate Bush in the way that some extreme conservatives once hated Clinton. Payback, perhaps. These major voices are not simply anti-Bush for good, defensible reasons. They have entered the realm of conspiracy theories, knee-jerk suspicion and profound cynicism about an administration thrust into one of the most dangerous national security crises in decades . . ."

Cole: Yes, it was quite wrong of Raines to be in any way suspicious of the Bush administration. Why, it would not try to scare us with a reference to nuclear purchases in a State of the Union address that the CIA refused to validate, now would it? It wouldn't keep dropping hints about Saddam and al-Qaeda that were wholly unsubstantiated by the president's own admission, would it? It would not keep things secret from the American public, would not violate the Geneva Conventions on a massive scale, would it?



In actual fact, most Democrats gave the Bush administration far too much credit for sincerity, and allowed themselves to be duped into confusing the addled, weak Saddam with Dr. Strangelove.

"More conservative voices have been purged. After criticising the new direction of the Times, I was told that Raines had barred me from contributing to the paper. That's his prerogative, of course, But it helps reveal the closed mind running the most influential paper on the planet."

I just am too embarrassed to comment on this paragraph.

"Recently, there have been signs of improvement. Two weeks ago, the man who lost out to Raines in the race to be editor, Bill Keller, penned an op-ed all but chastising his boss. "The three Republican foreign policy luminaries who have been identified in the press as sceptics - Mr (Brent) Scowcroft, Lawrence Eagleburger and Henry Kissinger - spend much of their time courting well-paying clients who would rather not rock boats in the Middle East," wrote Keller."

Cole: It is true that Kissinger was misunderstood by the Times's reporter. But Scowcroft and Eagleburger had legitimate cautions about the rush to war that now seem quite prophetic, if insufficiently pessimistic in retrospect. Keller turns out to have been wrong and Raines was right. But here Sullivan slams Raines (and Scowcroft and Eagleburger).

"The real opponents of the war in America, therefore, are outside the elected political branch and are threefold: The New York Times, the men who left Saddam Hussein in power in 1990 and are thus partly responsible for the current crisis (Scowcroft, Colin Powell), and gun-shy military brass, who also opposed the first Gulf war. The three have worked together during the dog days of August to prevent a war. And they have made great headway, as polls have shown a slow decline in public support. But so far this has been a phoney war - between newspaper ideologues and security has-beens defending their own complicity in Saddam's survival."

Cole: Note that Sullivan again resorts to character assassination to undermine Scowcroft, Powell and others. They are not sincere, he says, and he does not even bother to recapitulate their arguments or try to refute them. Since they are abject human beings, he implies, he does not have to engage them at that level. In other words, he uses propaganda. Powell (who was later bamboozled into presenting false intelligence to the UN) had actually fought in a war. I suspect Sullivan has not, nor has he in all likelihood even lived in a war zone for any extended period of time. He had no standing to launch a vicious attack on the officer corps of the United States Army and Marines, accusing them of cowardice (I take it that is the meaning of "gun-shy.")

"Soon, the real debate will take place. The president will speak. Congress will vote. And the war, despite Raines's hysteria, will, barring unforeseen events, almost certainly follow."

Cole: An accurate prediction, even though actual debate was forestalled by a campaign of misinformation and intimidation. However, the blame for "hysteria" is placed on entirely the wrong party. It was ol' "Yellowcake Bush" who played chicken little.



Ironically, the NYT later acquiesced in the hysteria, and alowed Judith Miller to act as stenographer for Ahmad Chalabi's lies on the front page. That is grounds for slamming the New York Times. Sullivan's rant was wrong-headed from beginning to end.



By the way, I think that despite this particular shocking instance of lack of elementary journalistic judgement and knowledge of Middle Eastern society, Andrew Sullivan can't simply be dismissed as "unreliable" or "hopelessly biased." I find his arguments for gay rights cogent and persuasive, for instance. You can refute and dismiss an argument. It is harder to dismiss an entire human being.



Muslim mystics attribute to the Imam Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law, the saying that "And you think that you are a but a tiny body, while in fact an entire universe is enfolded within you." That's true of each of us.



Truth in advertising: Sullivan attacked me on his weblog Thursday as having lost all "moral compass" because I dared to point out that the US Department of Defense and its allies are now killing Marsh Arabs around Kut, Amara and Majar al-Kabir--the very Marsh Arabs Mr. Wolfowitz said he was invading Iraq to protect from Saddam, who also used to kill them. In those days they were called the Iraqi Hizbullah. Many of them now are allied with Muqtada al-Sadr. There is an enormous difference in scale between what Saddam did to them and what the Coalition has done since the beginning of April. But it is early days, after all. And in issues of ethics and hypocrisy, scale is less important than principle.



I take it as a compliment that the Right is so afraid of this observation (the recent fate of the Marsh Arabs is not being discussed anyplace but the much-maligned Guardian) that they feel it necessary to resort to character assassination ("unreliable," "no moral compass") in my regard, in hopes of marginalizing me quick before the observation gains traction.



"Saving" the Iraqi Shiites was maybe the last rationale for their war that hadn't been discredited. Since April 2 they haven't been saving them any more. They have been killing them.

Martin and Malcolm, Chalabi and Muqtada



An informed Iraqi Shiite writes:

" 1.Chalabi is setting himself up to be Martin Luther King to Muqtada's Malcolm X. I predict he will head to Najaf soon to mediate.



"2. You are absolutely right: Muqtada has won, and alive or dead the movement he has sponsored will keep fighting the American forces until they leave. I think the likelihood of theocracy in Iraq has skyrocketed. What is the United States to do? Install Ayatollah Sistani as the anti-theocracy voice of secularism? Preposterous isn't it. History will record the Sayyid Muqtada Al-Sadr was the first hero of the Islamic Revoloution in Iraq. Iran's islamic republic has taken over 20 years and still hasn't evolved into a "real" democracy. I hope it won't take that long in Iraq. The war against the Americans will likely be followed by a civil war to oust whoever the Americans install as dictator. Then the Islamic Republic will be established and hopefully eventually evolve into a democracy, but that could take 50 years. I am not optimistic.



"3. I get your point with the analogy, but please do not compare Muqtada to David Koresh. I think a better analogy is that Ayatolah Sistani is the grandfather or patriarch of the family, and Muqtada is a teenager with issues. Like the kid who says "I hate you Dad!" but doesn't really mean it, or acts out anger or frustration. At the end of the day Muqtada has respect for Sistani (he has offered to disband his militia and leave Najaf if Sistani commands him to.) and Sistani considers Muqtada one of his own and will not critisize him by name publicly (i.e. outside the family).



"4. Your warnings to other Shia groups are right on target, anyone seen as siding with the US against Muqtada is politically doomed. The issue is not Muqtada's popularity vs. Sistani's the issue is Muqtada's popularity vs. Paul Bremer's. Six months ago most Iraqis would have prefered Bremer, now it is Al-Sadr by a landslide. Chalabi's attempts to distance himself from the US highlight that point.

Chalabi's House Raided; He is Suspended from the Interim Governing Council



Ahmad Chalabi's house was raided in Baghdad by US troops on orders of an Iraqi judge. He is said to have been suspended from the Interim Governing Council, though he maintains that Ghazi al-Yawer, the current president of the IGC, has called him to a meeting on Friday afternoon at 4 pm Baghdad time.



Rumors are swirling in Baghdad that Chalabi had been taking a percentage of some contracts or that he had been trying to transfer government assets to the Iraqi National Congress before the transfer of sovereignty on June 30. There are also rumors that his militia, which Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had flown into Iraq last year on a Pentagon aircraft, has engaged in coercive or extortionate activities. The problem is that these sorts of rumors have been swirling in Baghdad for many months. So why did the US move now?



Chalabi is charging that the crackdown on him is an attempt by the United Nations to squelch investigations into the bribes Saddam had paid UN officials under the oil for food program, and on which Chalabi had information. The Pentagon had quite outrageously turned over to the Iraqi National Congress the intelligence files of the old Saddam government, which Chalabi has threatened to use to blackmail officials of neighboring governments. Chalabi's charge is implausible and he is just trying to waft some smoke into the public's eyes.



Lakhdar Brahimi, the special UN envoy, had made it clear over a month ago that he would not appoint Chalabi to the caretaker government. In response, Chalabi has become increasingly critical of the US. He complained that rehabilitating the Baathists after the siege of Fallujah failed was tantamount to putting Nazis in power. He has recently loudly complained about the crackdown on the militia of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, saying that it has cost 1500 Iraqi lives, more than should be spent to arrest a single man.



Chalabi came on television on Thursday and said his message to the US was "Let my people go!" He is now playing an Iraqi Martin Luther King! He says he wants an immediate turn-over of all authority in Iraq to the Iraqis. I.e. he now has adopted the Dennis Kucinich position. Assuming that he manages to stay out of jail, Chalabi will run for political office in January, 2005, and will probably represent himself as an anti-Occupation Iraqi nationalist. You know, the wily old chameleon could still come out ahead.



Chalabi was for long a darling of the Department of Defense and VP Dick Cheney, and their initial plan had been to turn Iraq over to him. The State Department, the CIA and (I am told) Tony Blair all intervened in April 2003 to stop DoD from simply handing the country over to him. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress supplied to the US government and to Judith Miller of the New York Times false and misleading "intelligence" that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, a nuclear weapons program, and was connected to al-Qaeda. Chalabi later all but admitted that these allegations had been false, and said they didn't matter because Saddam had been overthrown.



The State Department and the CIA became increasingly less enamored of Chalabi in the course of the 1990s. In part, he could not account for the money they gave him. In part, his harebrained schemes to overthrow Saddam went awry. He retained strong supporters in Neoconservative circles, however, especially Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. Rumsfeld and Cheney were also big boosters, at least until recently. The CIA and State Department appear to have leaked to Newsweek a couple of weeks ago intelligence that Chalabi had been sharing sensitive information with Iran, and was tilting toward Iran. Some Neocons have felt betrayed by Chalabi's inability to get Iraq to recognize Israel or provide it with petroleum, as he appears to have pledged to them.



One problem with the way the US has been behaving in Iraq, whatever the merits of this case, is that it is alienating all major political forces in the country. First its radical debaathification (so that a high school teacher out in Ramadi who had joined the Baath party but never done anything criminal was fired and excluded from civil society) alienated the Sunnis. They have not been mollified by recent steps belatedly to reverse this policy. Then the US came after Muqtada al-Sadr and began alienating a lot more Shiites. Now it has turned the Iraqi National Congress against it. The INC, whatever one thinks of it, has strong Kurdish and Shiite allies. What happens to a ruler without strong allies? Can you say Louis XVI?



Andrew Cockburn is worth reading on all this. But 1) I think calling what Chalabi had in mind a "coup" is exaggerated; 2) I think the idea that the Sadrists would follow a multi-millionnaire dapper expatriate is implausible and 3) the issue of Chalabi's nepotism and financial irregularities cannot be underestimated as an impetus for the raid. Brahimi and Bush in some sense need now to get back the Iraqi government from Chalabi's carefully planted nephews, sons-in-law and long-time associates, who control key ministries. In some senses, it is the CPA that made the coup.

Rockets Fired at Italian Base



News from Italy about Iraq via a kind reader there:

Drawing on ANSA News agency (Rome): "Two rockets (NB: Italian journalists aren't very precise with military terminology, you never know what really was fired) exploded today at dawn inside the "Tallil" base near Nassiriya, where most of the Italian contingent live. No injuries. Ansa got the information from local military sources. It's the first time that the super-protected base of Tallil has come under fire; besides Italians there are military people from other countries.



' "We saw where the explosions came down. We're now investigating to figure out where they came from," said Colonel Giuseppe Perrone, speaker for the Italian commander, without explaining exactly where the rockets landed. In any case, he said, there were "no consequences." Most of the Italian "Antica Babilonia" contingent has recently transferred to the Tallil base. There's Camp Mittica, with the brigade headquarters, the ROA (Autonomous Operating Group) of the Italian Air Force, the MSU of the Carabinieri and other groups. There are also Portuguese and Romanian military included in the Italian contingent, Korean soldiers, Americans and people from other countries.



==========



"Radio Popolare this morning described Berlusconi's conversation with Bush (carried on TV during the night, so nobody saw it) as being really hi-there-buddy-good-to-see-ya-again with no mention being made (in public) about the political difficulties here. Berlusconi declared (ansa carried this) that most Italians support the Antica Babilonia mission.



"On Bruno Vespa's important talk show "Porta a Porta" ("Door to door) last evening, Gianni De Michelis, leader of the resurrected Socialist Party, came out firmly in favor of staying, with only Fausto Bertinotti, of Rifondazione Comunista, loudly insisting for withdrawal. Marco Pannella of the Radical Party also favors staying. The argument for staying is fear of what would happen if the Coalition abandoned Iraq, and even fear of leaving the US alone with the problem. Not present on the program were the political leaders (on the left) who have to support Italy's contribution to world affairs but whose potential voters include a large number of no-global, anti-capitalist, and crypto-anarchist organizations, screw-the-public transport unions, knee-jerk anti-americans, peace-at-any-price flag-wavers and nostalgic Catholics, whose attitude is "screw Bush at any price." These leaders are in trouble.



So Berlusconi's "support" should be read as "most Italians realize that the Coalition is stuck with the problem and has to finish the job." "

Wolfowitz and the Marsh Arabs



Mickey Kaus responds to my explanation (below) of my view of the relative authority of Muqtada al-Sadr and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He says, however, that I compared Wolfowitz to Saddam and that I was in his view too "shrill" to be "completely reliable" as a result. But this is what I said:

When I say Muqtada has won politically . . . I mean that he has made the US look like an oppressive tyrant. Paul Wolfowitz kept crowing last summer about how the US saved the Marsh Arabs from Saddam, but now that many of them have joined the Sadrists in Kut and Amara, Wolfowitz is having the Marsh Arabs killed just as Saddam did, and for the same reasons.

I did not "compare Wolfowitz to Saddam." I compared the killing of dozens of Marsh Arab fighters in Kut and Amara by the US Department of Defense to the killing of dozens of Marsh Arab fighters by Saddam. I said that Muqtada has maneuvered the US into looking to the Marsh Arabs as though it is behaving like Saddam.



As for my reliability, well that depends on a record. Go back and read the Web Log over the past year and show me where I've been unreliable.

US War Planes Kill 40 Iraqis Near the Syrian Border



The NYT report on the US helicopter gunship attack that killed 40 Iraqis, including 15 children and 10 women is typical of reporting on this incident in showing puzzlement at what actually happened. The US military claims that they were hitting arms smugglers coming across the border from Syria, and have good evidence in the form of captured materials that that is what they did hit. Local people told reporters that the US had hit a wedding party. My suspicion is that the US military mistook the wedding party, which included celebratory fire, for combatants. They did this once before, in Afghanistan. And I wish the US military spokesmen could be more gracious about such errors. They seemed to deny having hit civilians, and insisted it was a righteous strike, even as all the reports were coming on the Arab satellite channels about the dead at the wedding party.



Can't they just say that they are deeply sorry for the Iraqis' loss, and that they are not sure what went wrong, and will investigate? If they did kill so many women and children, surely that is a mistake no matter how you parse it, and they may as well admit it. It is this arrogance and instistence that the US is always right that has caused almost 90% of the Iraqis to come to view the Americans as occupiers rather than liberators.



Update 5/20: I just saw Gen. Kimmit on television denying that US forces saw any children at the site that was hit. But video and Arab television and press reports clearly show women and children casualties! This way lies a further erosion of the credibility of the US military in Iraq.



A reader writes:

As someone who has spent 8 years in the Middle East, mostly in Saudi Arabia, I just had to shake my head when I read the following quote;



"Ten miles from Syrian border and 80 miles from nearest city and a wedding party? Don't be naive," said Marine Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis in Fallujah. "Plus they had 30 males of military age with them. How many people go to the middle of the desert to have a wedding party?"



This guy obviously doesn’t know Arabs or Arab culture. On many occasions, Saudis I know spent the weekend “in the desert” for a wedding or other celebration. On one occasion, a Saudi that I worked with . . . asked me if we could trade cars for the weekend so he could attend a relatives wedding being held “in the desert”. I had great fun driving his Mercedes around Riyadh that weekend while he had great fun driving my jeep to and from the desert. And his “30 males of military age” comment? That’s truly ridiculous. I’ve been to LOTS of weddings that had “30 males of military age with them”. That comment was just plain stupid."

Cole here: I concur. In my trips to the Gulf I was always taken to the desert late at night by my hosts for a kind of extended picnic, with lots of (gender segregated) festivities, poetry, singing.

Sistani and al-Sadr: Demonstrations and Counter-Demonstrations



Mainstream Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the young sectarian leader Muqtada al-Sadr are now locked in a battle of wills, according to az-Zaman.



Several hundred Sistani supporters braved the dangerous streets of Karbala Wednesday to protest the continued battles near the shrine of Imam Husain and demanding that all combatants leave Karbala with their arms. Sistani had called for such demonstrations. Later in the day in Karbala, at least 7 Iraqis were killed and 13 were wounded on Tuesday night through Wednesday in clashes between the US and al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.. One of those killed was journalist Bassam al-Azzawi, who was covering the events there. Tanks spread through the city. It was deserted except for the one demonstration mentioned above.

Scheherezade Faramarzi of AP reports of Karbala: "Elsewhere in Iraq, U.S. military officials yesterday accused fighters loyal to Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr of firing on American forces from one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines. Sheik al-Sadr's militia was operating from the Imam Hussein shrine in the center of Karbala, said Capt. Noel Gorospe, spokesman for the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division. "They use mainly the windows of the second floor of the shrine [to fire at troops]," Capt. Gorospe said at Camp Lima, a coalition base on the outskirts of Karbala. Insurgents were using small arms, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, and their use of the shrine was more noticeable in the past three days, he said. Witnesses said American troops and militiamen fought yesterday near a militia checkpoint 100 yards from another holy site in Karbala, the Imam Abbas shrine."

About 300 supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, on the other hand (many of them apparently from elsewhere in Iraq and newly arrived) staged a rally in the center of Najaf protesting Sistani's call for an end to armed hostilities in the holy city. AP reports that fighting started back up in Najaf, as well.

"In Najaf, about 50 miles south of Karbala, strong explosions could be heard late Wednesday along with the rattle of machine gun fire. Fighters from al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army were seen on the streets despite a call Tuesday by the premier Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, for both the Americans and the militia to vacate the city."

az-Zaman says it was told by informed sources that the elders of the Sadrist movement begun by Muqtada's father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, oppose Muqtada's policies and his resort to armed violence. They are remaining silent, however, for fear of being killed by his partisans. The newspaper also received a communique signed by major clerics of Najaf condemning the gathering of extremists in the city and accusing Muqtada of having ordered that Sistani's house be sprayed by machine gun fire.



Al-Hayat is reporting a breaking development, saying that US Coalition leaders have backed off their hard line toward Muqtada al-Sadr and are offering him a truce and direct negotiations. I'm not sure this overture is actually a backing off of Coalition demands that Muqtada surrender himself to Abu Ghuraib prison, something he obviously will never do. (Would you?)



Meanwhile, a US military commander in Kut is hiring members of the Mahdi Army who will put down their weapons to help rebuild an old and now rusted amusement park. They figure the men would rather earn a living than fight in a militia.

' "Call it 'Six Flags Over Al Kut,' " quipped Col. Brad May, the regiment's commander. '

Give that man a medal.