Stratfor's Morning Intelligence Brief

1135 GMT - UNITED KINGDOM: British Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected the claim that the British government manipulated the Iraq dossier. Blair, who testified during a public inquiry into the death of British weapons inspector David Kelly, added that he would have stepped down if any part of the report on Iraq's weapons program was manipulated or exaggerated.

1130 GMT - CHINA: North Korean officials are demanding that the United States sign a nonaggression pact before it allows inspections of its nuclear facilities, CNN reported Aug. 28. However, U.S. officials have refused to sign a pact until North Korea proves that it has abandoned its nuclear program. The two sides have been meeting unofficially on the sidelines of six-way talks in Beijing.

1125 GMT - RUSSIA: One Russian soldier was reportedly injured as troops battled a group of militants Aug. 28 near Verkhny Kargaronthe, along the Ingush-North Ossetian border, Interfax reported, citing a source with the 58th army. The soldiers came across the militants while on patrol. The source added that the troops were driving the militants into a wooded area.

1120 GMT - IRAN: Iran is ready to begin negotiations to sign an additional nonproliferation treaty protocol that would make way for snap inspections of its nuclear facilities, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Aug. 28. The International Atomic Energy Agency says that Iran has been more cooperative recently regarding its nuclear program, which officials in Tehran have insisted is for public use and not meant for the weapons development.

1117 GMT - ISRAEL: The Palestinian National Authority has frozen the bank accounts of several charities in the Gaza Strip, Haaretz reported Aug. 28. It is unclear whether the action is part of a larger crackdown on militants inside the occupied territories.

1111 GMT - Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar could be hiding with about 800 fighters in the Daichopan district of Zabul province, Agence France-Presse reported Aug. 28, citing a military commander in the province. The officer said Omar is believed to be with the same fighters currently targeted by U.S. and Afghan forces.

1106 GMT - IRAQ: One British soldier was killed and another was wounded in Ali Ash Sharqi in southern Iraq, 200 kilometers northwest of Basra, late Aug. 27 after exchanging gunfire with a crowd of Iraqis, British military officials said. The soldiers were returning from an arrest operation when they were diverted through Ali Ash Sharqi because of a roadblock. Once in the city, a crowd of Iraqis surrounded them. The soldiers fired warning shots, and the crowd returned fire using small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. Ten Iraqis were arrested in the incident. Eleven British soldier have been killed since May 1, when major combat operations were declared over.

************************************************************************ Geopolitical Diary: Thursday, Aug. 28, 2003

Richard Perle, ex-chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, announced today that mistakes were made in Iraq. Perle no longer holds an official position in the U.S. administration, but he still has clout with the likes of U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Perle's admission, unofficial and deniable though it is, indicates that the Defense Department has not completely lost touched with reality -- although the statement reveals no more than the merely self-evident.

Perle's description of the error is interesting: "Our principal mistake, in my opinion, was that we didn't manage to work closely with the Iraqis before the war, so that there was an Iraqi opposition capable of taking charge immediately. Today, the answer is to hand over power to the Iraqis as soon as possible." Turning over Iraq to the Iraqis is an excellent idea, save that he does not specify which Iraqis he has in mind. Obviously it isn't Saddam Hussein or the Baath Party. So the question is -- who, exactly?

Iraq is divided along many lines. There are distinctions between Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite Iraq. Other groups have tribal distinctions; still others have political ones. These differences are not trivial, at least not to the people of Iraq. There are deep and serious divisions that have, over the centuries, deepened into profound distrust. Under Hussein, a generation of brutality drove deep wedges between Sunni and Shiite and other groups. Referring to them as "the Iraqi people" creates a fiction. Their loyalty does not go to the nation-state so much as to other institutions -- religious, tribal and ethnic.

Therefore, admitting to the mistake of not turning Iraq over to the Iraqis completely misses the point. Since Perle is a very smart man, he knows that. He isn't suggesting turning Iraq over to the Iraqis. That would lead to partition, chaos and civil war, or the reinstitution of dictatorship. What Perle means is that the United States should have turned Iraq over to the administrative council it created, one containing representatives of some groups but not others.

The problem with the administrative council is that it has no inherent power -- no army, no police force, no ability to tax, no budget. The council is in no sense representative. The most that it can do is serve as cover for the United States -- and not very plausible cover at that. To the extent that this board can act, it must do so through the United States, which does have an army, controls the police and holds the purse strings. The administrative council presides over nothing.

Institutions do exist to which the United States can transfer power. For example, among the Shiites in the south, divided though they are, dwell leaders with legitimacy among the public. They could rule in their own regions, at the very least. The problem with this, though, is that they don't want what the United States wants them to want, namely, a secular democratic society. What they do want is an Islamic society modeled to some extent on Iran. They're also interested in dominating all of Iraq.

So the problem with the desire to democratize Iraq is that the Iraqis, were they to vote, would neither come to a consensus on who should lead them, nor, more importantly, choose the kind of regime the United States prefers. Turning Iraq over to the Iraqis won't rectify mistakes unless the United States is prepared to make deals allowing people whom the United States fears -- like the Shiites -- to govern in a way Washington detests.

Accepting that U.S. interest in Iraq is not nation-building, but prosecuting the war on al Qaeda, means that we can look at Perle's statement and acknowledge this: If he meant by his statement that the United States should make deals with traditional leaders to let them govern in their own way, then turning Iraq over to the Iraqis might work. But if he believes that the current administrative structure can govern Iraq, then mistakes will continue.

This is the problem the Bush administration faces. Understanding that the United States cannot simply rule Iraq, but must allow the Iraqis to do so, means grasping the fact that Iraq is not Wisconsin. There's not an American inside of every Iraqi struggling to get out. The military mission in Iraq -- to pressure the surrounding states -- still can be carried out. Iraqi factions can even be co-opted. But until the U.S. administration accepts the fact that Iraq will not be remade into anything resembling the kind of regime it wants, progress is difficult to imagine.

This does not mean that the war cannot be prosecuted. It does mean that the prosecution requires subtlety.