Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, a Research Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

In 2008, the Iraqi government went on a military spending spree, signaling its intent to buy large quantities of advanced weapons from the United States — including F-16 fighters and M1 tanks. In 2009, it’s preparing to go further, with Defense News reporting the potential purchase and refurbishment in the United States of 2,000 T-72 tanks. These potential arms deals are worth over $16.6 billion, and if fully realized will mark the re-emergence of Iraq as a major regional military power. While debates over the nature and pace of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq (as mandated by last years Status of Forces Agreement) have taken up the space allocated to Iraq in our national political discourse, relatively little attention has been paid to the plans for the rearmament of Iraq’s conventional military.

Assuming all the pending arms deals go through, by 2011 Iraq will be stronger in conventional military terms than at any point since before the First Gulf War in 1991. Its land forces will have much improved armor capability, though this capability is offset by a lack of artillery. Iraq’s air force will possess a similar number of modern combat aircraft as it did in 1991, but will have no second- and third-line combat aircraft beyond light attack aircraft. Its naval situation will remain relatively unchanged. In sum, by 2011, Iraq will have regained its place as a major conventional military power thanks to U.S. arms sales and military assistance.

These sales (and associated training by U.S. military personnel) will substantially alter the security architecture of the Middle East. Iraq’s neighbors, which have grown accustomed to a weak Iraq over the past two decades, may (depending on internal Iraqi politics) have to deal with an increasingly assertive and confident Iraq in regional politics. While it’s unlikely Iraq will engage in any overseas adventures in the future, it is likely that Iraq will no longer allow itself to be ignored or pushed around by other regional powers. If Iraq manages to achieve a modicum of internal political stability in the near future – democractically or not – it will have the military muscle to back up claims to a greater role in the region.

Here are some of the deals signaled or cut by the Iraqi government over the past year:

Air forces:
- 36 F-16C Fighting Falcons – ~$3.6 billion
- 24 Armed Bell 407 helicopters (with associated equipment and armament) – $366 million
- 20 T-6 Texan trainers (with associated equipment) – $210 million
- 36 AT-6B Texan light attack aircraft (with associated equipment) – $520 million
- 6 King Air 350 intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft – $10.5 million
- 24 EC 635 light helicopters – unknown cost

Land forces:
- 2,000 Upgraded T-72 tanks – $6 billion
- 140 M1A1M Abrams tanks – $1.4 billion
- 156 Humvee variants – part of $2.16 billion package including M1 tanks
36 M113 armored personnel carrier variants – part of $2.16 billion including M1s
- 400 Strykers – part of $1.11 billion light armored vehicle deal
- 400 M1117 Armored Security Vehicles – part of $1.11 billion light armored vehicle deal
105,000 M16A4 and M4 rifles – $148 million
- 2,550 M203 grenade launchers – part of $148 million M16/M4 rifle package

Naval forces:
- 20 – part of $1.01 billion ship deal
- 3 Offshore Support Vessels – part of $1.01 billion ship deal

Total estimated cost: $16.634 billion (~$10.5 billion in direct military purchases from U.S. manufacturers, with $6 billion in refurbishment contracts.) Read more

Today during the White House press briefing, a reporter asked press secretary Dana Perino if President Bush is “okay with” the conflict between Hamas and Israel continuing as he leaves office and if “there any kind of sense within the White House that he’d like to wrap things up or at least achieve a resolution” before next Tuesday.

Perino said that when it comes to protecting and caring for Palestinian civilians, “there is no time limit on that.” But a second reporter noted that Bush had previously said he would “sprint to the finish” and wondered if he was “working the phones” to get a deal done. Perino brushed off any notion of Bush working on the issue, claiming that its more “appropriate” for Rice to be doing the talking:

Q: But when is the last time he had direct conversations with people brokering the Egyptian-French cease-fire –

PERINO: The President isn’t doing that; he has a Secretary of State who he has working on that and that’s who should be — that’s absolutely appropriate, is to have his Secretary of State working on that.

Watch it:

But Bush himself has previously worked the phones with international leaders and heads of state to help alleviate conflicts and crises. In fact, there are photographs of him doing it — in one he is talking with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown about the global financial crisis and in another, he’s on the phone with the Senegalese president discussing the situation in Darfur. In a July 2006, press conference, Bush described his personal touch in getting involved with North Korea:

BUSH: And so I was on the phone this morning with Hu Jintao and President Putin, and last night I talked to Prime Minister Koizumi and President Roh. And my message was that we want to solve this problem diplomatically, and the best way to solve the problem diplomatically is for all of us to be working in concert, and to send one message, and that is — to Kim Jong-il — that we expect you to adhere to international norms and we expect you to keep your word.

Moreover, Perino is wrong. Last January, Bush did set a time limit on the Israel-Palestine situation, saying “there will be a signed peace treaty by the time I leave office,” adding, “I am on a timetable — got 12 months.” So perhaps Bush has just checked out and is no longer interested in Middle East peace. After all, last week, he said he is “eager for a more carefree life in Dallas.”

Susan Crawford, the “top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial,” tells Bob Woodward in today’s Washington Post that the United States military tortured Mohammed al-Qahtani, one of the planners of the 9/11 attacks. As a result, Crawford decided the U.S. could not prosecute Qahtani:

“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution. [...]

“I sympathize with the intelligence gatherers in those days after 9/11, not knowing what was coming next and trying to gain information to keep us safe,” said Crawford, a lifelong Republican. “But there still has to be a line that we should not cross. And unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward.”

Crawford dismissed the charges against Qahtani last year. Though military prosecutors refiled charges by using evidence they claim was not coerced, Crawford said she would not allow it to go forward. And now that torture has precluded Qahtani’s prosecution, his status is in question. “He’s a very dangerous man,” Crawford said. “What do you do with him now if you don’t charge him and try him?”

Qahtani is hardly the only detainee whose charges have been dropped due to improper treatment. In October, the Pentagon dismissed cases against five terror suspects, including Binyam Mohamed, a former British resident accused in the “dirty bomb” case:

He has claimed he was tortured while in American custody or in countries to which he said the United States sent him. His lawyers argued Tuesday that the government was trying to avoid having to answer his accusations.

“They have been cornered into doing this to avoid admitting torture,” said Clare Algar, the executive director of Reprieve, a legal organization that represents Mr. Mohamed.

Similarly, detainee David Hicks was released from Guantanamo and sent back to his native Australia in a deal — apparently arranged by Vice President Cheney and then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard — requiring him to renounce his claims of torture and abuse at the hands of the U.S. military.

Far from making us safe, torture is creating a legal morass in which we cannot lawfully and thoroughly prosecute — and sentence — terrorist suspects.

The big story from Hillary Clinton’s Senate confirmation hearings yesterday is her affirmation of President-elect Obama’s intention to seek to engage more actively with Iran. As the Washington Post reports, this signals “a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy from the Bush administration.”

On Iran, the Bush administration has pursued a carefully calibrated effort that held out the prospect of economic and political incentives if Iran agreed to suspend its efforts to enrich uranium, a key component of nuclear weapons. Bush permitted ambassador-level diplomats to meet with Iranian counterparts but insisted that more substantive discussions not occur unless Iran first changed its behavior.

Clinton said flatly yesterday that Bush’s effort has “not worked” and that President-elect Barack Obama’s team is “very open to looking to a positive, effective way of engaging with Iran.” She acknowledged that the effort represents a gamble and insisted that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable to Obama, but she added: “We won’t know what we’re capable of achieving until we’re actually there working on it.”

Over the last year, it’s been interesting to watch as the idea of engagement with Iran without preconditions has gone from a “naive and irresponsible,” as Clinton herself put it during the Democratic primary, to “conventional wisdom” in Washington, having been endorsed in September by five former secretaries of state. Importantly, this shift has occurred over the invariably condescending objections of the same hardline conservative fantasists whose crackpot ideas for transforming the Middle East only succeeded in boosting Iran’s regional influence.

Just in time, the Rand Corporation has produced a new study entitled Understanding Iran. One of its key recommendations, in my view, is the idea that the U.S. “must overcome the mystique of talking with Iran while managing its expectations and being mindful of unique Iranian negotiating attributes.”

The U.S. approach to Iran is defined by a peculiar form of mystique that defies America’s history of engaging other international actors of varying shades of enmity (for example, North Korea, Serbs, and Somali warlords). This aversion to talking to Iran has squandered several opportunities to reduce tension — in 2001, on the margins of the Bonn talks on Afghanistan, and in 2003, on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In these cases, Iran came to the table because of gratitude and fear, two motives that are largely absent today, replaced by a strategic confidence and the perception of diminished U.S. credibility and maneuverability.

There is value in negotiating with Iran, even if the likelihood for a breakthrough is distant. First, negotiations broaden U.S. contacts inside the regime and produce more information about its processes, both of which might generate unexpected openings for influence later. Second, negotiations reduce misunderstandings that can escalate into conflict. Third, negotiations can help de-mystify the Islamic Republic, reducing the U.S. tendency to treat it as an exceptional and abnormal actor in the international system.

The Center for American Progress has long advocated stronger engagement with Iran as a way to better gauge its intentions and change its behavior, especially in the realm of its nuclear program. In February 2007, the Center released Contain and Engage, by Joe Cirincione and Andy Grotto. Recognizing the the failure of the Bush administration’s approach — which has resulted in a more powerful and more deeply entrenched regime — Cirincione and Grotto advised coupling “the pressures created by sanctions, diplomatic isolation and investment freezes with practical compromises and realizable security assurances to encourage Iran onto a verifiable, non-nuclear weapons path, rather than pursuing the faint hope that the organization of coercive measures will force Iran’s capitulation.”