By Leila Fadel, McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD - After failing to break the resistance of Shiite militias in the five-day siege of oil rich Basra, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki sent a top general to hold talks with his Shiite rival, Muqtada al Sadr, Saturday night only to be rebuffed by the firebrand cleric, an Iraqi official close to the negotiations said.

Maliki denounced Shia militants in Basra as the equivalent of Al Qaida, and Sadr told his supporters not to hand over their arms to a puppet state of the United States.

The diplomatic initiative and the harsh rebuff further eroded expectations for a successful outcome to the offensive, which Maliki is personally directing from the presidential palace in the southern port city. It was not the only sign of problems.

Maliki issued orders Friday to enlist volunteers for the battle against the Shiite militias, and his Dawa party sought to enlist fighters. The U.S. military raised its profile in Basra still further, providing protection for installations including the palace where Maliki is housed, Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said.

There were more U.S. air strikes in the Sadrist stronghold of Sadr City, and local officials said U.S. forces joined Iraqi security forces in clashes against Sadrists lasting hours south of Hilla, which lies south of Baghdad. Meanwhile, Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia went door to door in Sadr City with a list of those employed by government security services, demanding that they not report to their jobs, local residents said.

The circumstances in which the negotiations with Sadr took place suggested the government is no longer able to dictate the terms of an agreement with Sadr but now must seek a deal. General Hussein al Assadi, a Baghdad-based commander, traveled to Najaf to call on the head of Sadr’s political bureau there, Lewaa Smaisam. From his office, the two men telephoned Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran, where he is studying religion. But they could not reach agreement, an official close to the negotiations said. He would not give his name due to the sensitivity of the subject.
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By Adam Nossiter, New York Times

Montgomery, Alabama - Former Governor Don Siegelman of Alabama, released from prison today on bond in a bribery case, said he was as convinced as ever that politics played a leading role in his prosecution.

In a telephone interview shortly after he walked out of a federal prison in Oakdale, La., Mr. Siegelman said there had been “abuse of power” in his case, and repeatedly cited the influence of Karl Rove, the former White House political director.

“His fingerprints are smeared all over the case,” Mr. Siegelman said, a day after a federal appeals court ordered him released on bond and said there were legitimate questions about his case.

Mr. Rove has strenuously denied any involvement in the conviction of the former governor, who was sentenced to serve seven years last June after being convicted in 2006. He could not immediately be reached for comment today.

Mr. Siegelman served nine months while his lawyers appealed a federal judge’s refusal to release him on bond, pending the ex-governor’s appeal of his conviction. That refusal was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Thursday.

The former governor, a Democrat, said he would “press” to have Mr. Rove answer questions about his possible involvement in the case before Congress, which has already held a hearing on Mr. Siegelman. On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee signaled its intention to have Mr. Siegelman testify about the nature of his prosecution.

In June of 2006 he was convicted by a federal jury here of taking $500,000 from Richard M. Scrushy, the former chief executive of the HealthSouth corporation, in exchange for an appointment to the state hospital licensing board. The money was to retire a debt from Mr. Siegelman’s campaign for a state lottery to pay for schools, and the ex-governor’s lawyers have insisted that it was no more than a routine political contribution.

On the telephone outside the prison today, Mr. Siegelman said he had confidence that the federal appeals court, which will now consider his larger appeal, would agree with his view of the case - that he was convicted for a transaction that regularly takes place in American politics.

Otherwise, Mr. Siegelman said, “every governor and every president and every contributor might as well turn themselves in, because it’s going to be open season on them.”

His case has become a flash point for Democratic contentions that politics influenced decisions by the Justice Department, fueled by testimony from an Alabama campaign operative that suggested Mr. Rove may have had some involvement.

In Alabama, the Siegelman case has inflamed partisan passions, with Republicans insisting that Mr. Siegelman’s term from 1998 to 2002 was deeply corrupted, and Democrats furious over what they depict as a years-long political witch-hunt.

Before his release earlier in the day, the ex-governor completed his prison chores for the day - mopping a barracks area - and waited for his wife and son to pick him up for the eight-hour drive to his home in Birmingham, Ala.

“It feels great to be out,” Mr. Siegelman said. “I wish I could say it was over. But we’re a long way from the end of this.”

Calitics:

Well, Day 1 of the California Democratic Party convention is pretty much wrapping up at this point, well, save for the hospitality suites. The caucuses went pretty much as you would expect them. Steve Westly was at the computer caucus, Karen Bass made an appearance as the Speaker-elect in the Progressive Caucus, and Carole Migden was pretty much everywhere with two people with signs following her everywhere. It was all rather royal entrance-ish (Disclosure: I do some work for Mark Leno).

The progressive caucus recapped all of the committee work for the past few months. The election integrity is working hard to have the back of Secretary of State Debra Bowen as she fights for elections we can trust. Marci Winograd discussed the massive prison bond package, and the subject of Bob Mulholland came up again. In fact, the ProgCauc passed a resolution urging the party to distribute a list of alternate press contacts, including several members of the ProgCauc’s board.

Mulholland must be loving life. I think for Mulholland, every time somebody talks about him, he grows another fraction of a millimeter. And if nobody talks about him? He slowly shrinks in his own eyes. Yup, Bob does the job of attracting fire, and he’s pretty darn efficient at the task.

Other topics at the ProgCauc included education, the war (of course) and the normal litany of bills and legislators. Dave Jones talked about a new healthcare bill, which Shiela Kuehl called the “2nd most important healthcare bill”. Not bad praise, really.

I stopped by the Youth Panel, although, at least one of the presenters didn’t get a chance to talk. But, I learned some interesting facts, like Asian-American youth are now going, in vast numbers, to Democrats. Over 45% are registered Dems, while only 16% are Republicans. Or something like that. (Sorry, Claire, if I messed that up). At the LGBT caucus, we saw several LGBT candidates and electeds. Some are either termed out, or otherwise not returning. It should be interesting to see how many LGBT officials we have next year to continue the fight for full equality and civil rights. I’m hoping that the marriage fight will already be concluded by the time these new officials get sworn into office, though.

Enjoy the video of the rally cries. Even 2 months after the election, a few people still have lungs to scream “Yes We Can” and “Hill-a-ry.” Good times. Save some of those lungs for the general, my friends. And for yelling “NO ON 98!”

Think Progress:

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D), who went to jail in June 2007 on federal corruption charges, “will be released from prison, after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals granted him an appeal bond.” Yesterday, TPMmuckraker reported that the House Judiciary Committee is seeking to hold a hearing where Siegelman will testify about the controversial prosecution that led to his incarceration.

Here’s video from yesterday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on selective prosecutions, where ex-Gov. Don Siegelman’s (D-AL) was the marquee case:

As TPM reported yesterday, Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) made a hard run at Jill Simpson, the Republican lawyer who’s testified that Alabama Republicans often chattered about how the Justice Department and local U.S. attorneys would take Siegelman down. Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) rose to her defense, and Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney himself and lawyer for Siegelman, testified that the case took on a new life in 2005 after officials in Washington got involved.

You can see video of former attorney general Dick Thornburgh’s testimony here.

By Gareth Porter, IPS

WASHINGTON, Mar 26 (IPS) - The escalation of fighting between Mahdi Army militiamen and their Shiite rivals, which could mark the end of Moqtada al-Sadr’s self-imposed ceasefire, also exposes Gen. David Petraeus’s strategy for controlling Sadr’s forces as a failure.

Petraeus reacted immediately to Sunday’s rocket attacks on the Green Zone by blaming them on Iran. He told the BBC the rockets were “Iranian provided, Iranian-made rockets”, and that they were launched by groups that were funded and trained by the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Petraeus said this was “in complete violation of promises made by President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts”.

Petraeus statement was clearly intended to divert attention from a development that threatens one of the two main pillars of the administration’s claim of progress in Iraq — the willingness of Sadr to restrain the Mahdi Army, even in the face of systematic raids on its leadership by the U.S. military and its Iraqi allies.

The rocket attacks appear to have been one of several actions by the Mahdi Army to warn the United States and the Iraqi government to halt their systematic raids aimed at driving the Sadrists out of key Shiite centres in the south. They were followed almost immediately by Mahdi Army clashes with rival Shiite militiamen in Basra, Sadr City and Kut and a call for a nationwide general strike to demand the release of Sadrist detainees.

Even more pointed was a strong warning from Sadr aide Abdul-Hadi al-Mohammedawi to the United States as well as to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), whose Badr Organisation militiamen, in the uniforms of Iraqi security forces, have targeted the Madhi Army throughout the south. “They don’t seem to realise that the Sadrist trend is like a volcano,” he told worshippers Friday in Kufa. “If it explodes, it will crush their rotten heads.”

The signs that the Madhi Army will no longer remain passive mark a major defeat for the U.S. military command’s strategy aimed at weakening the Mahdi Army.

When he took command in Iraq in early 2007, Petraeus recognised that the U.S. occupation forces could not afford to wage a full-fledged campaign against the Mahdi Army as a whole. Instead it adopted a strategy of dividing the Sadrist movement.

Petraeus and the ground commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, hoped that there were leaders in the Sadrist movement who would be willing to give up further military resistance and accept the U.S. occupation and the existing government.

For months, the command tried to generate a “dialogue” with “moderates” in the Sadrist camp. It issued a series of statements hailing Sadr’s willingness to change the purpose of his movement. Most recently, on Jan. 17, Odierno said, “I believe he is trying to move forward with more of a religious organisation and get away from a militia type-supported organisation.” But he admitted, “That could change.”

Meanwhile, Petraeus targeted selected elements of the Mahdi Army in raids in Sadr City and the Shiite south, portraying its targets as “criminals” and “rogue elements” which had broken away from Sadr and were armed, trained and financed by Iran. Odierno suggested in his Jan. 17 press briefing that such renegade groups were causing “the majority of the violence”.

But the “moderate” Sadrists who would be willing to make a deal with the U.S. never materialised. Last July, a U.S. commander in Baghdad claimed that Sadrist representatives had initiated “indirect” talks with the U.S. military. But in January, Odierno would say only that they had been meeting with “local leaders” in Sadr City, not with representatives of the Sadrist movement.

The Mahdi Army’s blunt warnings of military countermeasures followed months of raids against Sadr’s political-military organisation by both U.S. forces and the Badr Organisation. According to a senior Sadrist parliamentarian, between 2,000 and 2,500 Mahdi Army militiamen had been detained since Sadr declared a ceasefire last August.

The raids have been aimed at weakening the Madhi Army’s political hold on Shiite cities in anticipation of eventual provincial elections.

During 2007 there were signs of strong support for Sadr in Najaf, Basra and Karbala, as Sudarsan Raghavan reported in the Washington Post last December. In Najaf, portraits of Sadr and his father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, who was assassinated by Saddam Hussein’s security forces in 1999, had “mushroomed defiantly in the streets”.

Sadr’s image had also been “pervasive” in Karbala, according to Raghavan, until security forces loyal to the ISCI arrested more than 400 of Sadr’s followers in an obvious effort to destroy its organisation in the city.

For months Sadr had refrained from authorising a full-fledged response to such attacks on his forces. But Tuesday an officer at Sadr’s headquarters in Najaf said the Mahdi Army should be prepared to “strike the occupiers” as well as the Badr Organisation.

Revealing the contradictions built into the U.S. position in Iraq, even as it was blaming Iran for the alleged renegade units of the Mahdi Army, the U.S. was using the Badr Organisation, the military arm of the ISCI, to carry out raids against the Mahdi Army. The Badr Organisation and the ISCI had always been and remained the most pro-Iranian political-military forces in Iraq, having been established, trained and funded by the IRGC from Shiite exiles in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.

It was the ISCI leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim who had invited two IRGC officers to be his guests in December 2006, apparently to discuss military assistance to the Badr Organisation. The Iranian officials were seized in the home of home of Hadi al-Ameri, the leader of the Badr Organisation and detained by the U.S. military. The Bush administration continued throughout 2007 to cite those Iranian visitors as evidence of the IRGC’s illicit intervention in Iraq.

But the Badr Organisation had become the indispensable element of the Iraqi government’s security forces, who could be counted on to oppose the Mahdi Army in the south. And in a further ironic twist, it was the leaders of the ISCI and of the Nouri al-Maliki government, which depended on Iranian support, who insisted last summer and fall that the United States should credit Iran with having prevailed on Sadr to agree to a ceasefire. The close collaboration of the U.S. command with these pro-Iranian groups against Sadr appears to be the main reason for the State Department’s endorsement of that argument last December.

The Petraeus assertion that the rocket attacks on the Green Zone were Iranian-inspired strongly implied that Iran is still providing arms to Shiite militias. However, Odierno told a press briefing in mid-January, “We are not sure if they’re still importing [sic] weapons into Iraq.”

That admission came only after many months in which U.S. officers in the border provinces were unable to find any evidence of arms coming across the border from Iran.

Those officers also found no trace of the alleged presence of the IRGC personnel in Iraq. Last November, the French weekly news magazine Le Point quoted Maj. Scott A. Pettigrew, the military intelligence chief in Diyala province on the Iranian border, as saying, “I have never seen any activity or presence of the Quds Force. I see nothing here that resembles a proxy war with Iran.”

*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

Chris Bowers, Open Left:

The reason Hillary Clinton has never apologized for her Iraq war vote is because she clearly believes in the American “mission” in Iraq.

Here is a statement from her campaign today on the deaths of 4,000 American soldiers in Iraq:

“In the last five years, our soldiers have done everything we asked of them and more. They were asked to remove Saddam Hussein from power and bring him to justice and they did. They were asked to give the Iraqi people the opportunity for free and fair elections and they did. They were asked to give the Iraqi government the space and time for political reconciliation, and they did. So for every American soldier who has made the ultimate sacrifice for this mission, we should imagine carved in stone: ‘They gave their life for the greatest gift one can give to a fellow human being, the gift of freedom.’

Clinton presents Iraq as a resounding success where a tyrannical regime was removed from power, and freedom was brought to the Iraqi people. From this perspective, withdrawal is justified because the major missions have been accomplished, not because the war itself was a mistake. Also, as has been repeatedly made clear over the past twelve months, a sizable residual force will be left behind to continue some of the secondary missions of the war.

Compare this to Obama’s statement on 4,000:

Each death is a tragedy, and we honor every fallen American and send our thoughts and prayers to their families. It is past time to end this war that should never have been waged by bringing our troops home, and finally pushing Iraq’s leaders to take responsibility for their future. As we do, we must serve the memory of all who have died as well as they served our country, by providing support for their families, caring for our troops and veterans, and upholding the American values which our fallen heroes exemplified through their service.”

For all the supposed lack of policy differences between Obama and Clinton, even on their Iraq withdrawal plans, this remains a fundamental, deeply ideological discrepancy. As I wrote earlier today, the Iraq war has ended America’s brief tenure as the world’s only superpower, and effectively instigated a genocide in Iraq. If you still think this was a good idea that was worth the costs, even if it was badly managed, then you simply have a fundamentally different view of the world and America’s role in the world than someone who thinks the war was a mistake and not worth the costs. Even though I know it is something no presidential candidate can ever directly say and still hope to remain viable, the fact is that our soldiers in Iraq did not die for a good cause. Quite the opposite has occurred: they died as part of an effort that has eroded America’s power faster than any other event since the Civil War, and which has created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the past fifty years. It was a mistake of colossal proportions, not “the greatest gift one can give to a fellow human being.” A candidate’s ability or inability to recognize that mistake remains the best pos

MSNBC Reports:

Two contract employees of the State Department were fired and a third person was disciplined for accessing passport records of Sen. Barack Obama “without a need to do so,” State Department officials confirmed to NBC News.

The three people who had access to Obama’s passport records were contract employees of the department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, NBC News has learned. The unauthorized activity concerning Obama’s passport information occurred in January.

“A monitoring system was tripped when an employee accessed the records of a high-profile individual,” a department official told NBC News. “When the monitoring system is tripped, we immediately seek an explanation for the records access. If the explanation is not satisfactory, the supervisor is notified.”

Explaining why the contractors had access to the files, the official said: “The State Department uses cleared contractors to design, build and maintain our systems and cleared contract employees provide support to government employees and several steps of passport processing including data entry, file searches, customer service and quality control.

“Each time an employee logs on, he or she acknowledges the records are protected by the privacy act and that they are only available on a need-to-know basis,” the official added.

This breaking news story will be updated.

It’s shocking and unbelievable.

California is in crisis, facing a $16 billion budget deficit. Social services are being slashed to the bone. the brutal cuts proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, his California Republican “Yacht Party” colleagues in the state legislature are protecting the lavish lifestyles of the super-wealthy.

To air this ad Wednesday on CNN and MSNBC, plus the Daily Show and Colbert Report, we have to raise $10,000 by Tuesday from members like you.

That means we need 250 generous donors contributing an average of $40 per person ASAP. Will you chip in $25, $50 or $75 or more on ActBlue to fund our “Yacht Party” ad campaign no later than Tuesday at 12 p.m.?

Donate Here

Yacht purchases aren’t the only tax loophole California Republicans are blowing open for the fat-cat donors who paved their path to power in Sacramento.

Get this: Private jets are tax-free as well.

The only catch? Richie Rich must stash his yacht or private jet outside of California for at least 90 days.

So, if you’re wealthy enough to not only own a yacht but spend a sizable chunk of time vacationing on it (or sneakily ship it elsewhere for a few months), you don’t have to pay one dime of sales tax on your ultra-luxurious extravagance. Meanwhile, people like us pay sales tax on essential needs, from clothing to school supplies. And the Republicans in the state legislature march in lockstep, calling for draconian cuts that will destroy California’s social safety net.

It’s time for someone to tell the truth inside Sacramento: instead of serving the people of California, Republicans are serving their yacht-owning paymasters.

Will you help us raise $10,000 to air this “Yacht Party” ad on the Daily Show, Colbert Report, CNN and MSNBC? If you can contribute $25, $50, or $75 or more on ActBlue by noon on Tuesday, we can air this ad Wednesday on the huge flat-panel TV’s of Republicans across Sacramento:

Donate Here
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This week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has come under intense criticism and scrutiny for making multiple false claims about collusion between Iran and al Qaeda. As part of the push back, McCain’s campaign distributed a “Fact Check sheet” citing July 19, 2007 comments by Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno about whether there is an Iran-al Qaeda connection.But as Washington Post Fact Checker Michael Dobbs points out today, the campaign cut out Odierno’s disclaimer that undercuts McCain. Here’s what the McCain campaign left out:

We don’t see any evidence, significant evidence, that shows that [the Iranian-controlled] groups that are funding and providing arms to Shi’a extremists are directly related to al Qaeda.

Ignoring Odierno’s claim of no “significant evidence,” the McCain campaign’s document focuses on Odierno’s statement that “al Qaeda uses Iran and they do in some cases traffic some of their individuals through Iran to Iraq, but it’s a very small number of people.”

Over at the Wonk Room, however, Matt Duss notes that another quote from Odierno also contradicts the McCain campaign assertions:

There is no specific connection between the Shi’a extremists — excuse me — the [Iranian] Quds Force operations and supporting the Shi’a extremists and that of al Qaeda, and supporting al Qaeda.

Given the “evidence” provided by the McCain campaign, Dobbs writes that “it is a big stretch to conclude” that “Iran is providing organized support for al Qaeda in Iraq.” Even in the most charitable reading, Dobbs says “McCain is guilty of gross over-simplification on an extremely sensitive national security matter.”