DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA Twenty-one reasons Iraq is not
working By Tom Engelhardt
Recently, in one of many speeches melding
his "global war on terror" and his war in Iraq, US
President George W Bush said: "Victory in Iraq
will be difficult and it will require more
sacrifice. The fighting there can be as fierce as
it was at Omaha Beach or Guadalcanal. And victory
is as important as it was in those earlier
battles.
"Victory in Iraq will result in a
democracy that is a friend of America and an ally
in the war on terror. Victory in Iraq will be a
crushing defeat for our enemies, who have staked
so much on the
battle
there. Victory in Iraq will honor the sacrifice of
the brave Americans who have given their lives.
And victory in Iraq would be a powerful triumph in
the ideological struggle of the 21st century."
More than three years after the 2003
invasion of Iraq, Bush likes to refer to that
country as the "central front [or theater] in our
fight against terrorism", and a National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE), part of which was
recently leaked to the press and part then
released by the president, confirms that Iraq is
now a literal motor for the creation of terrorism.
As the document puts it, "The Iraq conflict has
become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding
a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim
world, and cultivating supporters for the global
jihadist movement." A study by a British Ministry
of Defense think-tank seconds this point,
describing Iraq as "a recruiting sergeant for
extremists across the Muslim world".
So
what exactly does "victory" in Bush's Iraq look
like 1,288 days after the invasion of that country
began with a "shock and awe" attack on downtown
Baghdad? A surprising amount of information
related to this has appeared in the press in
recent weeks, but in purely scattershot form.
Here, it's all brought together in 21 questions
(and answers) that add up to a grim but realistic
snapshot of Bush's Iraq. The attempt to reclaim
the capital, dipped in a sea of blood in recent
months - or the "battle of Baghdad", as the US
administration likes to term it - is now the
center of administration military strategy and
operations. So let's start with this question:
How many freelance militias are
there in Baghdad? The answer is "23"
according to a "senior [US] military official" in
Baghdad - so write Richard A Oppel Jr and Hosham
Hussein in the New York Times; but according to US
National Public Radio, the answer is "at least
23". Antonio Castaneda of the Associated Press
says there are 23 "known" militias. However you
figure it, that's a staggering number of militias,
mainly Shi'ite, but some Sunni, for one large
city.
How many civilians are dying
in the Iraqi capital, because of those militias,
numerous (often government-linked) death squads,
the Sunni insurgency, and al-Qaeda in Iraq-style
terrorism? More than 5,100 people in July
and August, according to a recently released
United Nations report. The previous, still
staggering but significantly lower figure of 3,391
offered for those months relied on body counts
only from the city morgue. The UN report also
includes deaths at the city's overtaxed hospitals.
With the Bush administration bringing thousands of
extra US and Iraqi soldiers into the capital in
August, death tolls went down somewhat for a few
weeks, but began rising again toward month's end.
August figures on civilian wounded - 4,309 - rose
14% over July's figures and, by late September,
suicide bombings were at their highest level since
the invasion.
How many Iraqis are
being tortured in Baghdad at present?
Precise numbers are obviously in short
supply on this one, but large numbers of bodies
are found in and around the capital every single
day, a result of the roiling civil war already
under way there. These bodies, as Oppel of the
Times describes them, commonly display a variety
of signs of torture, including "gouged-out
eyeballs, wounds in the head and genitals, broken
bones of legs and hands, electric and cigarette
burns ... acid-induced injuries and burns caused
by chemical substances, missing skin ... missing
teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails".
The UN's chief anti-torture expert, Manfred Nowak,
believes that torture in Iraq is now not only
"totally out of hand" but "worse" than under
dictator Saddam Hussein.
How many
Iraqi civilians are being killed countrywide?
The UN Report offers figures on this:
1,493 dead, over and above the dead of Baghdad.
However, these figures are surely undercounts.
Oppel points out, for instance, that officials in
al-Anbar province, the heartland of the Sunni
insurgency "and one of the deadliest regions in
Iraq, reported no deaths in July".
Meanwhile, in Diyala province, northeast
of Baghdad, deaths not only seem to be on the
rise, but higher than previously estimated. The
intrepid British journalist Patrick Cockburn
recently visited the province. It's not a place,
he comments parenthetically, "to make a mistake in
map-reading". (Enter the wrong area or
neighborhood and you're dead.) Diyala, he reports,
is now largely under the control of Sunni
insurgents who are "close to establishing a
'Taliban republic' in the region". On casualties,
he writes: "Going by the accounts of police and
government officials in the province, the death
toll outside Baghdad may be far higher than
previously reported." The head of Diyala's
provincial council (who has so far escaped two
assassination attempts) told Cockburn that he
believed "on average, 100 people are being killed
in Diyala every week". ("Many of those who die
disappear forever, thrown into the Diyala River or
buried in date-palm groves and fruit orchards.")
We're talking about close to 40,000 Iraqi
deaths a year. We have no way of knowing how much
higher the real figure is.
How many
American and Iraqi troops and police are now
trying to regain control of the capital and
suppress the raging violence there? About
15,000 US troops, 9,000 Iraqi army soldiers,
12,000 Iraqi national police and 22,000 local
police, according to the commander of US forces in
Baghdad, Major General James Thurman - and yet the
mayhem in that city has barely been checked at
all.
How many Iraqi soldiers are
missing from the US campaign in Baghdad?
Six Iraqi battalions or 3,000 troops,
again according to Thurman, who requested figures
from the Iraqi government. These turn out to be
Shi'ite troops from other provinces who have
refused orders to be transferred from their home
areas to Baghdad. In the capital itself, US troops
are reported to be deeply dissatisfied with their
Iraqi allies. ("Some US soldiers say the Iraqis
serving alongside them are among the worst they've
ever seen - seeming more loyal to the militias
than the government.")
How many
Sunni Arabs support the insurgency? About
75% of them, according to a Pentagon survey. In
2003, when the Pentagon first began surveying
Iraqi public opinion, only 14% of Sunnis supported
the insurgency (then just beginning) against US
occupation.
How many Iraqis want the
US to withdraw its forces from their country?
Except in the Kurdish areas of northern
Iraq, strong majorities of Iraqis across the
country, Shiite and Sunni, want an immediate US
withdrawal, according to a US State Department
survey "based on 1,870 face-to-face interviews
conducted from late June to early July". In
Baghdad, nearly 75% of residents polled claimed
that they would "feel safer" after a US
withdrawal, and 65% favored an immediate
withdrawal of US and other foreign forces.
A recent Program on International Policy
Attitudes (PIPA) poll found 71% of all Iraqis
favor the withdrawal of all foreign troops on a
year's timetable. (Polling for Americans is a
dangerous business in Iraq. As one anonymous
pollster put it to the Washington Post, "If
someone out there believes the client is the US
government, the persons doing the polling could
get killed.")
How many Iraqis think
the Bush administration will withdraw at some
point? According to the PIPA poll, 77% of
Iraqis are convinced that the US is intent on
keeping permanent bases in their country. As if
confirming such fears, this week Jalal Talabani,
the Kurdish president of the US-backed Iraqi
government ensconced in the capital's
well-fortified Green Zone, called for Iraqis to
keep two such permanent bases, possibly in the
Kurdish areas of the country. He was roundly
criticized by other politicians for this.
How many terrorists are being killed
in Iraq (and elsewhere) in the "global war on
terror"? Fewer than are being generated by
the war in Iraq, according to the just-leaked NIE.
As Karen De Young of the Washington Post has
written: "The war in Iraq has become a primary
recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic
extremists, motivating a new generation of
potential terrorists around the world whose
numbers may be increasing faster than the United
States and its allies can reduce the threat, US
intelligence analysts have concluded."
It's worth remembering, as retired
Lieutenant-General William Odom, former director
of the National Security Agency, told a group of
House Democrats this week, that al-Qaeda
recruiting efforts actually declined in 2002, only
spiking after the invasion of Iraq. Carl Conetta
of the Project for Defense Alternatives sums the
situation up this way: "The rate of terrorism
fatalities for the 59-month period following
September 11, 2001, is 250% that of the 44.5-month
period preceding and including the 9/11 attacks."
How many Islamic extremist websites
have sprung up on the Internet to aid such acts of
terror? About 5,000, according to the same
NIE.
How many Iraqis are estimated
to have fled their homes this year because of the
low-level civil war and the ethnic cleansing of
neighborhoods? A total of 300,000,
according to journalist Patrick Cockburn.
How much of Bush's Iraq can now be
covered by Western journalists? About 2%,
according to New York Times journalist Dexter
Filkins, now back from Baghdad on a Nieman
Fellowship at Harvard University. Filkins claims
that "98% of Iraq, and even most of Baghdad, has
now become 'off-limits' for Western journalists."
There are, he says, many situations in
Iraq "even too dangerous for Iraqi reporters to
report on". (Such journalists, working for Western
news outlets, "live in constant fear of their
association with the newspaper being exposed,
which could cost them their lives". Filkins added:
"Most of the Iraqis who work for us don't even
tell their families that they work for us.")
How many journalists and "media
support workers" have died in Iraq this year?Twenty journalists and six media support
workers. The first to die in 2006 was Mahmoud
Za'al, a 35-year-old correspondent for Baghdad TV,
covering an assault by Sunni insurgents on two
US-held buildings in Ramadi, capital of al-Anbar
province, on January 25. He was reportedly first
wounded in both legs and then, according to
witnesses, killed in a US air strike. (The US
denied launching an air strike in Ramadi that
day.)
The most recent death was Ahmed
Riyadh al-Karbouli, also of Baghdad TV, also in
Ramadi, who was assassinated by insurgents on
September 18. The latest death of a "media support
worker" occurred on August 27: "A guard employed
by the state-run daily newspaper Al-Sabah was
killed when an explosive-packed car detonated in
the building's garage."
In all, 80
journalists and 28 media support workers have died
since the invasion of 2003. Compare these figures
to journalistic deaths in other US wars: World War
II (68), Korea (17), Vietnam (71).
How many US troops are in Iraq
today? About 147,000, according to General
John Abizaid, head of US Central Command,
significantly more than were in-country just after
Baghdad was taken in April 2003 when the
occupation began. Abizaid does not expect these
figures to fall before "next spring" (which is the
equivalent of "forever" in Bush administration
parlance). He does not rule out sending in even
more troops. "If it's necessary to do that because
the military situation on the ground requires
that, we'll do it." Finding those troops is
another matter entirely.
How is the
Pentagon keeping troop strength up in Iraq?
Four thousand troops from the 1st Brigade
of the 1st Armored Division, operating near Ramadi
and nearing the end of their year-long tour of
duty, have just been informed that they will be
held in Iraq at least six more weeks. This is not
an isolated incident, according to Robert Burns of
the Associated Press. Units are also being sent to
Iraq ahead of schedule.
US Army policy has
been to give soldiers two years at home between
combat tours. This year alone, the time between
tours has shrunk from 18 to 14 months. "In the
case of the 3rd Infantry," writes Burns, "it
appears at least one brigade will get only about
12 months because it is heading for Iraq to
replace the extended brigade of the 1st Armored."
And this may increasingly prove the norm.
According to senior Rand Corporation analyst Lynn
Davis, main author of "Stretched Thin", a report
on US Army deployments, "soldiers in today's
armored, mechanized and Stryker brigades, which
are most in demand, can expect to be away from
home for a little over 45% of their career".
The army has also maintained its strength
through a heavy reliance on the Army Reserves and
the National Guard, as well as on involuntary
deployments of the Individual Ready Reserve. Thom
Shanker and Michael Gordon of the New York Times
recently reported that the Pentagon was once again
considering activating substantial numbers of
Reserves and the National Guard for duty in Iraq.
This is despite, as journalist Jim Lobe has
written, "previous Bush administration pledges to
limit overseas deployments for the Guard". (Such
an unpopular decision will surely not be announced
before the mid-term elections next month.)
As of now, write Shanker and Gordon, "so
many [US troops] are deployed or only recently
returned from combat duty that only two or three
combat brigades - perhaps 7,000 to 10,000 troops -
are fully ready to respond in case of unexpected
crises, according to a senior army general".
How many active-duty US Army troops
have been deployed in Iraq? About 400,000
troops out of an active-duty force of 504,000 have
already served one tour of duty in Iraq, according
to Peter Spiegel of the Los Angeles Times. More
than one-third of them have already been deployed
twice.
How is Iraq affecting the
army's equipment? By the spring of 2005,
the US Army had already "rotated 40% of its
equipment through Iraq and Afghanistan". Marine
Corps mid-2005 estimates were that 40% percent of
its ground equipment and 20% of its air assets
were being used to support current operations,
according to analyst Carl Conetta. In the harsh
climate of Iraq, the wear and tear on equipment
have been enormous. Conetta estimates that
whenever the Iraq and Afghanistan wars end, the
postwar repair bill for army and marine equipment
will be in the range of US$25 billion to $40
billion.
How many extra dollars does
a desperately overstretched US Army claim to need
in the coming defense budget, mainly because of
wear and tear in Iraq? A total of $25
billion above budget limits set by Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld this year; more than $40
billion above last year's budget. The amount the
army claims it now needs simply to tread water
represents a 41% increase over its current share
of the Pentagon budget.
As a "protest",
Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker chose
not even to submit a required budget to Rumsfeld
in August. The general, according to the Los
Angeles Times' Spiegel, "has told congressional
appropriators that he will need $17.1 billion next
year for repairs, nearly double this year's
appropriation - and more than quadruple the cost
two years ago". This is vivid evidence of the
literal wear and tear the ongoing war (and civil
war) in Iraq is causing.
How is
Iraqi reconstruction going? More than
three years after the invasion, the national
electricity grid can only deliver electricity to
the capital, on average, one out of every four
hours (and that's evidently on a good day). At the
beginning of September, Iraq's oil minister spoke
hopefully of raising the country's oil output to 3
million barrels a day by year's end. That
optimistic goal would just bring oil production
back to where it was more or less at the moment
the Bush administration, planning to pay for the
occupation of Iraq with that country's "sea" of
oil, invaded.
According to a Pentagon
study, "Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq",
released in August, inflation in that country now
stands at 52.5% (Damien Cave of the New York Times
suggests that it's closer to 70%, with fuel and
electricity up 270% from the previous year); the
same Pentagon study estimates that "about 25.9% of
Iraqi children examined were stunted in their
physical growth" due to chronic malnutrition,
which is on the rise across Iraq.
How many speeches has Bush made in
the past month extolling his "war on terror" and
its Iraqi "central front"? Six, so far,
not including press conferences, comments made
while greeting foreign leaders, and the like: to
the American Legion National Convention on August
31, in a radio address to the American people on
September 2, in a speech to the Military Officers
Association on September 5, in a speech on
"progress" in the "global war on terror" before
the Georgia Public Policy Foundation on September
7, in a TV address to the nation memorializing
September 11, and in a speech to the UN on
September 19.
* * *
This week, the count of
American war dead in Iraq passed 2,700. The Iraqi
dead are literally uncountable. Iraq is the
tragedy of our times, an event that has brought
out, and will continue to bring out, the worst in
us all. It is carnage incarnate. Every time the US
president mentions "victory" these days, the word
"loss" should come to our minds. A few more
victories like this one and the world will be an
unimaginable place.
Back in 2004, the head
of the Arab League, Amr Mussa, warned: "The gates
of hell are open in Iraq." Then it was just an
image. Remarkably enough, it has taken barely two
more years for us to arrive at those gates on
which, it is said, is inscribed the phrase,
"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."
Tom Engelhardt is editor of Tomdispatch and the
author of The End of Victory Culture. His
novel, The Last Days of Publishing, has
recently come out in paperback.
