Iraq's Shocking Human Toll: About 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans

Image via Wikipedia

AlterNet

We are now able to estimate the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration. Looking at the empirical evidence of Bush's war legacy will put his claims of victory in perspective. Of course, even by his standards -- "stability" -- the jury is out. Most independent analysts would say it's too soon to judge the political outcome. Nearly six years after the invasion, the country remains riven by sectarian politics and major unresolved issues, like the status of Kirkuk.
We have a better grasp of the human costs of the war. For example, the United Nations estimates that there are about 4.5 million displaced Iraqis -- more than half of them refugees -- or about one in every six citizens. Only 5 percent have chosen to return to their homes over the past year, a period of reduced violence from the high levels of 2005-07. The availability of healthcare, clean water, functioning schools, jobs and so forth remains elusive. According to Unicef, many provinces report that less than 40 percent of households have access to clean water. More than 40 percent of children in Basra, and more than 70 percent in Baghdad, cannot attend school.
The mortality caused by the war is also high. Several household surveys were conducted between 2004 and 2007. While there are differences among them, the range suggests a congruence of estimates. But none have been conducted for eighteen months, and the two most reliable surveys were completed in mid-2006. The higher of those found 650,000 "excess deaths" (mortality attributable to war); the other yielded 400,000. The war remained ferocious for twelve to fifteen months after those surveys were finished and then began to subside. Iraq Body Count, a London NGO that uses English-language press reports from Iraq to count civilian deaths, provides a means to update the 2006 estimates. While it is known to be an undercount, because press reports are incomplete and Baghdad-centric, IBC nonetheless provides useful trends, which are striking. Its estimates are nearing 100,000, more than double its June 2006 figure of 45,000. (It does not count nonviolent excess deaths -- from health emergencies, for example -- or insurgent deaths.) If this is an acceptable marker, a plausible estimate of total deaths can be calculated by doubling the totals of the 2006 household surveys, which used a much more reliable and sophisticated method for estimates that draws on long experience in epidemiology. So we have, at present, between 800,000 and 1.3 million "excess deaths" as we approach the six-year anniversary of this war.
This gruesome figure makes sense when reading of claims by Iraqi officials that there are 1-2 million war widows and 5 million orphans. This constitutes direct empirical evidence of total excess mortality and indirect, though confirming, evidence of the displaced and the bereaved and of general insecurity. The overall figures are stunning: 4.5 million displaced, 1-2 million widows, 5 million orphans, about 1 million dead -- in one way or another, affecting nearly one in two Iraqis.
By any sensible measure, it would be difficult to describe this as a victory of any kind. It speaks volumes about the repair work we must do for Iraqis, and it should caution us against the savage wars we are prone to. Now that Bush is gone, perhaps the United States can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it.
John Tirman is Executive Director of MIT's Center for International Studies.
© 2009 The Nation All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/123818/

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• Iraq: Blackwater not welcome (msnbc.msn.com)
• Iraq Violence Continues, Despite Lower Death Numbers, Says New York Times (huffingtonpost.com)
• Soleful tribute: Bush shoe-throwing now a work of art (guardian.co.uk)

Iraq's Shocking Human Toll: About 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans

Image via Wikipedia

AlterNet

We are now able to estimate the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration. Looking at the empirical evidence of Bush's war legacy will put his claims of victory in perspective. Of course, even by his standards -- "stability" -- the jury is out. Most independent analysts would say it's too soon to judge the political outcome. Nearly six years after the invasion, the country remains riven by sectarian politics and major unresolved issues, like the status of Kirkuk.
We have a better grasp of the human costs of the war. For example, the United Nations estimates that there are about 4.5 million displaced Iraqis -- more than half of them refugees -- or about one in every six citizens. Only 5 percent have chosen to return to their homes over the past year, a period of reduced violence from the high levels of 2005-07. The availability of healthcare, clean water, functioning schools, jobs and so forth remains elusive. According to Unicef, many provinces report that less than 40 percent of households have access to clean water. More than 40 percent of children in Basra, and more than 70 percent in Baghdad, cannot attend school.
The mortality caused by the war is also high. Several household surveys were conducted between 2004 and 2007. While there are differences among them, the range suggests a congruence of estimates. But none have been conducted for eighteen months, and the two most reliable surveys were completed in mid-2006. The higher of those found 650,000 "excess deaths" (mortality attributable to war); the other yielded 400,000. The war remained ferocious for twelve to fifteen months after those surveys were finished and then began to subside. Iraq Body Count, a London NGO that uses English-language press reports from Iraq to count civilian deaths, provides a means to update the 2006 estimates. While it is known to be an undercount, because press reports are incomplete and Baghdad-centric, IBC nonetheless provides useful trends, which are striking. Its estimates are nearing 100,000, more than double its June 2006 figure of 45,000. (It does not count nonviolent excess deaths -- from health emergencies, for example -- or insurgent deaths.) If this is an acceptable marker, a plausible estimate of total deaths can be calculated by doubling the totals of the 2006 household surveys, which used a much more reliable and sophisticated method for estimates that draws on long experience in epidemiology. So we have, at present, between 800,000 and 1.3 million "excess deaths" as we approach the six-year anniversary of this war.
This gruesome figure makes sense when reading of claims by Iraqi officials that there are 1-2 million war widows and 5 million orphans. This constitutes direct empirical evidence of total excess mortality and indirect, though confirming, evidence of the displaced and the bereaved and of general insecurity. The overall figures are stunning: 4.5 million displaced, 1-2 million widows, 5 million orphans, about 1 million dead -- in one way or another, affecting nearly one in two Iraqis.
By any sensible measure, it would be difficult to describe this as a victory of any kind. It speaks volumes about the repair work we must do for Iraqis, and it should caution us against the savage wars we are prone to. Now that Bush is gone, perhaps the United States can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it.
John Tirman is Executive Director of MIT's Center for International Studies.
© 2009 The Nation All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/123818/

Related articles by Zemanta

• Iraq: Blackwater not welcome (msnbc.msn.com)
• Iraq Violence Continues, Despite Lower Death Numbers, Says New York Times (huffingtonpost.com)
• Soleful tribute: Bush shoe-throwing now a work of art (guardian.co.uk)

Former Iraqi PM Allawi Testifies Before Congress, Blasts Maliki

News you won't see in the mainstream.
AlterNet

Allawi blasted the so-called surge, saying that it failed in its primary objective, namely, to end the Iraqi civil war and foster political reconciliation. He said that General Petraeus personally came to his house early in 2007 to assure him that the surge would accomplish its intended objective. Instead, things got worse, said Allawi.
"There is an urgent need to build nonsectarian institutions," he told the committee. Sitting alone, dressed conservatively in a gray suit, Allawi said that Iraq's police and army are still organized on a sectarian basis. Asked about the importance of U.S. training for Iraqi forces, Allawi said, "The issue is not training. By and large, training is secondary." The problem, he said, is that the police and army are not loyal to Iraq, not loyal to a national chain of command, but report informally to Shiite militias.
Asked by subcommittee chairman Rep. Willian Delahunt (D.-Mass.) if the Iraqi army was composed of sectarian militias that have just "exchanged uniforms," Allawi replied, "Unfortunately, this is the case." He said that he'd discussed the problem directly with President Bush and General Petraeus, but without answer.
Allawi said that 13 members of his party had been assassinated by thugs tied to the army and police. "They were killed by people in uniforms, dressed in police and army uniforms. We had not only 13 killed, but we had hundreds arrested." Such arrests and killings, Zimbabwe-style, made a sham of the 2005 and 2006 elections. Backed by more than 100 Iraqi parliamentarians, Allawi is trying to ensure the UN and Arab League observers keep a close watch on provincial and national elections in 2009.
Most of the militia gangs who've infiltrated Iraq's security forces are tied to the Iran-backed Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and its Badr Brigade, who provide Maliki's main political support.
Allawi stressed the Iraq's constitution, which he called "divisive," needs to be rewritten. Allawi demanded that the Iraqi parliament be given a chance to review any U.S.-Iraq accords signed by Bush and Maliki.

A Social History of the Surge

Did the surge work? Juan Cole at Informed Comment has an in depth analysis of the facts. The answer is the surge probably had little to do with the changes. Major changes were due to the practice of bribing Sunni tribesman to fight Al Qaeda and the disarming of Sunni's in Baghdad which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad of Sunni's by Shia Militia.

U.S. Was 'Clueless' on Counterinsurgency in Iraq

The New York Sun

Paul Wolfowitz, in his first public remarks on the Iraq war in years, said the American government was "pretty much clueless on counterinsurgency" in the first year of the war.


The former deputy secretary of defense said yesterday that the force sent to Iraq was adequate for fighting Saddam Hussein's military, citing the speed with which American troops toppled the regime. But Mr. Wolfowitz said no one in the Bush administration anticipated that Saddam would order his security services to wage an insurgency after their formal defeat on the battlefield.

If you were an Army chief and were about to meet a superior force on the ground that had a history in a previous conflict of decimating your Army in a frontal assault, what would you do?
a. Surrender
b. Die with honor in a frontal assault.
c. Avoid a frontal assault, go asymmetrical and mount an insurgency.
DUH!
It just shows you how out of touch with reality the Neocons were and still are.

Iraq the Debacle

A National Defense University study by a former Pentagon official:

The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted "manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers" from "all other efforts in the war on terror" and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.


"Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East," the report continued.

Double Think Dubya's "Surge" Debacle

Informed Comment

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney initially rejected the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report, which advised that Iraq could not be solved militarily and that regional diplomacy and engagement would be necessary.


Bush chose instead to pursue an escalation of the war, which he euphemistically called a 'surge.' This tactic backfired when Bush inadvertently allowed the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis of Baghdad, turning the capital into a playground for the Shiite Mahdi Army. As a result of the Shiitization of Baghdad, violence in the city thereafter declined, since there were fewer Sunnis around to kill (many were cowering in Damascus). The US achieved a ceasefire with the Mahdi Army (and why not, since the US military was disarming its enemies and allowing it to then chase them off to Syria?)


Moreover, Baghdad was only one hot spot in a very complicated country, and security continued to deteriorate in the Kurdish north along the Turkish border and in the southern Shiite oil port of Basra, as I argue in an op-ed today in the Boston Globe.


Even the temporary reduction in violence was more modest than the US press tended to assume. And the death rate may have reached its nadir and begun climbing back up now that the extra troops are being withdrawn. As David Fiderer pointed out, that outcome is precisely what the ISG report predicted.


So now it turns out that recently General David Petraeus has been doing regional diplomacy in an attempt to get local regimes to cooperate in cutting the flow of foreign fighters, money and arms to Iraq.


In other words, the military escalation, which is now getting to be over with, did not do the trick. So the only alternative is to go back to the Baker Hamilton Commission recommendations.


Question: How far ahead of the game would we be if this regional diplomacy had started in December of 2006 instead of being dismissed by Bush and Cheney in favor of a set of purely military tactics?


Another question: Why not also talk to Iran?


Likewise, the ISG pointed out that the Badr Corps paramilitary was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and is close to Tehran. (See below). It fought on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's side in the recent Basra fighting. In other words, the government side was the pro-Iranian side. The Mahdi Army and Sadr neighborhood militia forces they attacked were largely Iraqi nativists who bad-mouth Iran. Fiderer points out that the ISG report had already diagnosed this syndrome. The Bush team did propaganda, pointedly declining to name Badr as an Iranian client and blaming Iran for the Mahdi Army's violence. In fact, the violence came as a response to violations of the cease fire by the US and the Iraqi government, which took advantage of it to arrest Mahdi Army commanders (that's a ceasefire?)

Al Sadr Wins Again

Both bin Ladin and al Sadr seem adept at manipulating the Bush Administration into facilitating the building of their movement. Become the enemy of the US and grow in power and numbers, be permanently remembered as a fearless leader. Oh, I think Bush saw himself as a hero maker, it just didn't turn out as he planned.
csmonitor.com

On Monday, one day after the Shiite cleric's call for a truce following the battle that killed hundreds of people and wounded scores of others, several conclusions are clear. Mr. Sadr has demonstrated his power, despite the blows dealt to his movement over the past few years. The government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, thanked him profusely on Monday for his decision, but vowed that the fight would continue in Basra, where militiamen have now largely melted away from the streets, but remain very much in control of their strongholds. "It's the same old ending," says Juliana Dawood, a Basra resident, referring to previous battles with Sadr's Mahdi Army in 2004 that have finished with similar truces.


The fighting has also firmly wedged the US in an intra-Shiite struggle that has been bubbling for some time and will probably only intensify. The battle has also spawned more popular anger and frustration, especially in places like eastern Baghdad, toward both US forces and Mr. Maliki's government, which already had been teetering on the verge of collapse.


This popular anger is like an adrenaline rush for the Sadrist movement, which, in contrast to other Shiite parties, particularly the one led by rival Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, is seen as being on the side of the young, poor, and downtrodden.


Already Sadr is gearing up to capitalize on this comeback with a huge anti-American rally planned in Baghdad on April 9, the day Saddam Hussein's statue was brought down in the capital five years ago.


[..]A trail of wires led to detonation boxes inside the alleyways manned by Mahdi Army foot soldiers. One of those boxes was at the front gate of Amir Rahim's home. Some of the rockets aimed at the Green Zone over the past week were also fired from outside his home. "They will not be able to finish off the Mahdi Army," he says. "But it's us, the civilians, who are caught in the middle and just keep paying the price." He asked how he can be expected to confront these foot soldiers if hundreds of policemen and soldiers in Sadr City simply abandoned their posts or handed their weapons to the militia over the past week. He says that most of those in the police and Army have great sympathy for Sadr.


Militiamen also paraded in newly issued Humvees, which were taken from the Army in several neighborhoods, according to witnesses.

Senator Whitehouse Takes On Dubya's Double Doings

Thanks to Cosmic Tap for the tip on Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's speech today. A few Dems and even Republicans are willing to talk turkey about Doublethink Dubya.

In a nutshell, these three Bush administration legal propositions boil down to this:


1. “I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them.”


2. “I get to determine what my own powers are.”


3. “The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.”


When the Congress of the United States is willing to roll over for an unprincipled President, this is where you end up. We should not even be having this discussion. But here we are. I implore my colleagues: reject these feverish legal theories. I understand political loyalty, trust me, I do. But let us also be loyal to this great institution we serve in the legislative branch of our government. Let us also be loyal to the Constitution we took an oath to defend, from enemies foreign and domestic. And let us be loyal to the American people who live each day under our Constitution’s principles and protections.

There is more here.

Iraq Troops Casualty Cover-up?

Why would there be 20,000 severely injured troops excluded from the Pentagon's casualty reports?
USATODAY.com

At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries, according to military and veterans records compiled by USA TODAY.


The data, provided by the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs, show that about five times as many troops sustained brain trauma as the 4,471 officially listed by the Pentagon through Sept. 30. These cases also are not reflected in the Pentagon's official tally of wounded, which stands at 30,327.


[..]More than 150,000 troops may have suffered head injuries in combat, says Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., founder of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force. "I am wary that the number of brain-injured troops far exceeds the total number reported injured," he says.


About 1.5 million troops have served in Iraq, where traumatic brain injury can occur despite heavy body armor worn by troops.

I would tend to agree with Juan Cole at Informed Comment.

Although some of the under-reporting of this condition could be inadvertent, the scale of it strongly suggests an underlying policy.

Richard Bruce Cheney, the country's most notorious traitor

Informed Comment

What is clear is that Dick Cheney's desperate bid to grab Iraq for US petroleum corporations and for proprietary contracts to supply the US is backfiring big time. Instead of reducing the importance of Saudi Arabia, Cheney and the Neocons have magnified it. Instead of bringing online a big new supplier (Iraq) they have actually reduced the average production from Iraq as compared to the days of the UN sanctions on Saddam! Instead of assuring the US position as a superpower by assuring it special access to Gulf petroleum through military means, Cheney and his friends have destabilized the key energy-producing regions of the world and are driving some producers to deliberately seek proprietary contracts with China s so as to avoid over-dependence on an overbearing US that openly announces it would like to overthrow their governments. (I'm thinking of Venezuela here; with tweaking the same thing could be said of Iran).


Cheney's militarism is too blunt an instrument for the delicate job of assuring US energy security. Nearly $90 a barrel is not security for us-- it is a threat to our economy. Prices may not stay this high all that long in the short term, since primary commodity markets to fluctuate. But as the peak oil people point out, no new big fields have been found or exploited for a very long time, and demand from China, India and elsewhere is growing rapidly. It is going to be an expensive or cold winter for a lot of Americans. It likely won't be the last. Courtesy in some part, the short-sighted and counter-productive policies of one of the country's most notorious traitors, Richard Bruce Cheney.

Bill Maher on Neocon Think Tanks

Thanks to PoliticsPlus

Strange Bedfellows in Iraq

It continues to amaze me that the Bush Administration could think they could control events in Iraq while dealing with an Iraqi government dominated by allies of Iran and handmaidens with the organization that inspired Hezbollah, the Islamic Dawa Party led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Clearly, there was never hope the US would benefit from a Shia revolution in Iraq.
Informed Comment

Ammar al-Hakim, who has been acting head of ISCI in his father's absence, preached a sermon in which he pledged to work against enduring US bases in Iraq. (On December 4, 2006, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim stood next to Bush in the Rose Garden and asked for US troops to remain in Iraq, so this pronouncement seems to be the beginnings of a reversal). Al-Hakim also argued for forging ahead with a Shiite provincial confederation in the south. He argued for a complete return of sovereignty to Iraq, according to AFP.


You have to wonder whether the recent Iran-brokered pact between al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr, plus the new ISCI / Sistani consensus on reining in the US military and ultimately pushing it out altogether are a sign of new Iranian and Iraqi Shiite strategizing about the future. It also seems to me that the constant US drumbeat against Iran may have alarmed the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is an Iranian client and which needs Iranian money and support to maintain its political position in Iraq. Iran is therefore working to position ISCI as anti-Occupation over the medium to long run, and as responsible and orderly (thus the pact with Sadr.)


[...](It is ironic that the US government is currently waging a campaign against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, but is turning southern Iraq over to groups like the Badr Corps, which was trained by . . . the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.)

Retired General Sanchez Blasts Bush Administration; Sistani Blasts Occupiers

Informed Comment

Retired Gen. Rick Sanchez lambasted the Bush administration's Iraq War in a speech on Friday, as "a nightmare with no end in sight". Sanchez implied that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would have been court-martialled if he had been in the active duty military. The NYT reports him saying, '“There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding later in his remarks that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.” ' Sanchez dismissed the current troop escalation ('surge') as highly unlikely to improve the situation in Iraq significantly, saying that the best the US can realistically hope to achieve is to stave off defeat.


To Sanchez's trenchant critique was added on Friday a fatwa from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiites. AFP says,

The foreign security companies working in Iraq belittle innocent Iraqi citizens," a statement from Karbalai said. "The occupying forces do the same in some of their operations, adding to the criminal acts of the takfiris (Sunni militants).

Sistani is said to be demanding legislation in parliament to hold the security companies accountable. In addition, this is the strongest condemnation I have seen by Sistani of the US military ('the occupying forces') and it may be a turning point.

Blackwater is Mayhem on Wheels

Here is one of the reasons we've lost the war in Iraq. US mercenaries behaved with total disregard of Iraqi lives.
AlterNet

When I read this editorial by Janessa Gans in my L.A. Times yesterday, my mouth dropped open. Gans, a visiting political science professor at Principia College, was a U.S. official in Iraq from 2003 to 2005. She's not a big Blackwater fan:

As a U.S. official in Baghdad for nearly two years, I was frequently the "beneficiary" of Blackwater's over-the-top zeal. "Just pretend it's a roller coaster," I used to tell myself during trips through downtown Baghdad.


We would careen around corners, jump road dividers, reach speeds in excess of 100 mph and often cross over to the wrong side of the street, oncoming traffic be damned.


I began to wonder whether my meetings, intended to further U.S. policy goals and improve the lives of Iraqis, were doing more harm than good. With our drivers honking at, cutting off, pelting with water bottles (a favorite tactic) and menacing with weapons anyone in their way, how many enemies were we creating?


We were on a narrow stretch of highway with no shoulders and foot-high barriers on both sides. The lead Suburban in our convoy loomed up behind an old, puttering sedan driven by an older man with a young woman and three children.


As we approached at typical breakneck speed, the Blackwater driver honked furiously and motioned to the side, as if they should pull over. The kids in the back seat looked back in horror, mouths agape at the sight of the heavily armored Suburbans driven by large, armed men in dark sunglasses. The poor Iraqi driver frantically searched for a means of escape, but there was none. So the lead Blackwater vehicle smashed heedlessly into the car, pushing it into the barrier. We zoomed by too quickly to notice if anyone was hurt. "Where do you all expect them to go?" I shrieked. "It was an old guy and a family, for goodness' sake. Was it necessary for them to destroy their poor old car?"


My driver responded impassively: "Ma'am, we've been trained to view anyone as a potential threat. You don't know who they might use as decoys or what the risks are. Terrorists could be disguised as anyone."


"Well, if they weren't terrorists before, they certainly are now!" I retorted. Sulking in my seat, I was stunned by the driver's indifference.


The military has established rules of engagement, plus it is required to pay compensation for damages (though it is a difficult and bureaucratic process). Blackwater seemed to have no such rules, paid no compensation and, per long-standing Coalition Provisional Authority fiat, had immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law.


I've said it before, and I'll say it again: This is what BushCo has created. And to repeat what Clive Stafford Smith said, "The immoral has become so mundane."

And warnings from US officials were ignored.
Los Angeles Times

The State Department, which is facing growing criticism of its policy on private security contractors, overlooked repeated warnings from U.S. diplomats in the field that guards were endangering Iraqi civilians and undermining U.S. efforts to win support from the population, according to current and former U.S. officials.


Ever since the contractors were granted immunity from Iraqi courts in June 2004 by the U.S.-led occupation authority, diplomats have cautioned that the decision to do so was "a bomb that could go off at any time," said one former U.S. official.


But State Department leadership, unable to field U.S. troops or in-house personnel to guard its team, has clung to an approach that shielded the contractors from criminal liability, in the hope of ensuring continued protection to operate in the violent countryside.

Only a U.S. Withdrawal Will Stop Al Qaeda in Iraq

AlterNet

One of the last justifications for continuing the U.S. occupation of Iraq despite overwhelming opposition from Iraqis, Americans and the rest of humanity has come down to this: U.S. forces must remain in order to battle "Al Qaeda in Iraq."


Like so many of the arguments presented in the United States, the idea is not only intellectually bankrupt, it's also the 180-degree opposite of reality. The truth of the matter is that only the presence of U.S. forces allows the group called "Al Qaeda in Iraq" (AQI) to survive and function, and setting a timetable for the occupation to end is the best way to beat them. You won't hear that perspective in Washington, but according to Iraqis with whom we spoke, it is the conventional wisdom in much of the country.


The Bush administration has made much of what it calls "progress" in the Sunni-dominated provinces of central Iraq. But when we spoke to leaders there, the message we got was very different from what supporters of a long-term occupation claim: Many Sunnis are, indeed, lined up against groups like AQI, but that doesn't mean they are "joining" with coalition forces or throwing their support behind the Iraqi government.


Several sources we reached in the Sunni community agreed that AQI, a predominantly Sunni insurgent group that did not exist prior to the U.S. invasion -- it started in 2005 -- will not exist for long after coalition forces depart. AQI is universally detested by large majorities of Iraqis of all ethnic and sectarian backgrounds because of its fundamentalist interpretation of religious law and efforts to set up a separate Sunni state, and its only support -- and it obviously does enjoy some support -- is based solely on its opposition to the deeply unpopular U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.


We spoke by phone with Qasim Al-jumaili, a former member of Falluja's City Council, who was confident that his local militias would eliminate Al Qaeda in Iraq from Fallujah if U.S. forces were to withdraw. "The U.S. presence is making our work harder," he said. "For example, the Anbar Salvation Front [the Sunni tribal leadership group that declared war against Al Qaeda in Iraq], is not getting a lot of public support because they think we're collaborating with the U.S. and the Al-Maliki government."


Al Jumaili was confident that Iraqis wouldn't tolerate Al Qaeda in Iraq's presence in an independent Iraq. "If the U.S. was to pull out from Iraq and let Iraqis have a national government instead of the puppet one now, Iraqis with their government and tribal leaders would quickly eliminate Al Qaeda from all Iraq," he said. It's a credible statement -- most estimates of the terror group's strength suggest its membership is in the low thousands, no match for the larger organized militias or the fledgling security forces without the support of some of the residents of the areas in which they operate.


[..]In July, three of the most prominent Sunni insurgent groups agreed to join forces in a concerted effort to end the occupation. Abd al Rahman al Zubeidy, a spokesman for one of the groups, told the Guardian: "Resistance isn't just about killing Americans without aims or goals. Our people have come to hate Al Qaeda, which gives the impression to the outside world that the resistance in Iraq are terrorists. We are against indiscriminate killing, fighting should be concentrated only on the enemy." He added that "a great gap has opened up between Sunni and Shia under the occupation and Al Qaeda has contributed to that … Most of Al Qaeda's members are Iraqis but its leaders are mostly foreigners. The Americans magnify their role, even though they are responsible for a minority of resistance operations."


The public opinion research shows that those views are shared by overwhelming majorities of ordinary Iraqis. All of Iraq's ethnic groups oppose Al Qaeda. They reject AQI's attacks on Iraqis, its harshly fundamentalist brand of Islam and its attempts to form a separate Sunni "caliphate" -- an independent theocratic state -- in central Iraq, but significant pluralities -- and a huge majority of Sunnis -- support AQI's attacks on occupation forces. A recent poll by the BBC found that almost half of all Iraqis backed AQI's attacks on coalition troops, but only one in 100 favored its larger separatist agenda (PDF).

Big Lies Surround the Iraq "Surge"

AlterNet: Juan Cole

The average number of Iraqis killed in 2007 per day exceeds those killed in 2006. Independent counts by news organizations do not agree with Pentagon estimates about drops in civilian deaths over-all. Nation-wide attacks in June reached a daily all-time high of 177.5. True, violence in Baghdad has been wrestled back down to the levels of summer, 2006 (hint: it wasn't paradise), but violence levels are up in the rest of the country. If you compare each month in 2006 with each month in 2007 with regard to US military deaths, the 2007 picture is dreadful.


Here are the US troop death via Icasualties.org.


8-2007 77 8-2006 65
7-2007 79 7-2006 43
6-2007 101 6-2006 61
5-2007 126 5-2006 69
4-2007 104 4-2006 76
3-2007 81 3-2006 31
2-2007 81 2-2006 55
1-2007 83 1-2006 62


I mean, how brain dead do the Bushies think we are, peddling this horse manure that US troop deaths have fallen? (There are always seasonal variations because in the summer it is 120 F. in the shade and guerrillas are too heat-exhausted to fight; but the summer 2007 numbers are much greater than those for summer 2006; that isn't progress.) And why does our corporate media keep repeating this Goebbels-like propaganda? Do we really live in an Orwellian state?

AlterNet: Paul Krugman

The administration, this time relying on Gen. David Petraeus to play the Colin Powell role, has had remarkable success creating the perception that the "surge" is succeeding, even though there's not a shred of verifiable evidence to suggest that it is.

[..]What about civilian casualties? The Pentagon says they're down, but it has neither released its numbers nor explained how they're calculated. According to a draft report from the Government Accountability Office, which was leaked to the press because officials were afraid the office would be pressured into changing the report's conclusions, U.S. government agencies "differ" on whether sectarian violence has been reduced. And independent attempts by news agencies to estimate civilian deaths from news reports, hospital records and other sources have not found any significant decline.

Now, there are parts of Baghdad where civilian deaths probably have fallen -- but that's not necessarily good news. "Some military officers," reports Leila Fadel of McClatchy, "believe that it may be an indication that ethnic cleansing has been completed in many neighborhoods and that there aren't as many people to kill."

Lawmakers Describe 'Being Slimed in the Green Zone'

washingtonpost.com

The sheets of paper seemed to be everywhere the lawmakers went in the Green Zone, distributed to Iraqi officials, U.S. officials and uniformed military of no particular rank. So when Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) asked a soldier last weekend just what he was holding, the congressman was taken aback to find out.


In the soldier's hand was a thumbnail biography, distributed before each of the congressmen's meetings in Baghdad, which let meeting participants such as that soldier know where each of the lawmakers stands on the war. "Moran on Iraq policy," read one section, going on to cite some the congressman's most incendiary statements, such as, "This has been the worst foreign policy fiasco in American history."


The bio of Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.) -- "TAU (rhymes with 'now')-sher," the bio helpfully relates -- was no less pointed, even if she once supported the war and has taken heat from liberal Bay Area constituents who remain wary of her position. "Our forces are caught in the middle of an escalating sectarian conflict in Iraq, with no end in sight," the bio quotes.


"This is beyond parsing. This is being slimed in the Green Zone," Tauscher said of her bio. [..]Tauscher called it "the Green Zone fog."


"Spin City," Moran grumbled. "The Iraqis and the Americans were all singing from the same song sheet, and it was deliberately manipulated."


[..]It was the bio sheets that seemed to annoy the members of Congress the most. Just who assembled them is not clear. E-mails to U.S. Central Command's public affairs office in Baghdad this week went unanswered.


[..]For one, the quotations appeared to be selected to divide the visitors into those who are with the war effort and those who are against. For another, they were not exactly accurate. Under "latest Iraq vote," Tauscher's bio noted that she had voted in favor of legislation requiring the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days of the bill's enactment. She did vote that way -- in May. On Aug. 2, Tauscher voted in favor of her own bill, which mandates that troops be granted a leave from combat at least as long as their last combat deployment before being shipped back to Iraq. That vote might have been a little too popular with the soldiers she was meeting, Tauscher said.

More Children In Prison in Iraq

The US invasion has destroyed the country, so much so, that in order to survive, children must fight in this war.
The Bush Administration points to this fact as reflecting the success of the surge! So we as our sons and daughters to fight and die in this war killing hungry teenagers.
Los Angeles Times

Child fighters, once a rare presence on Iraq's battlefields, are playing a significant and growing role in kidnappings, killings and roadside bombings in the country, U.S. military officials say.


Boys, some as young as 11, now outnumber foreign fighters at U.S. detention camps in Iraq. Since March, their numbers have risen to 800 from 100, said Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, the commander of detainee operations. The Times reported last month that only 130 non-Iraqi fighters were in U.S. custody in Iraq.


Stone attributes the rise in child fighters in the country, in part, to the pressure that the U.S. buildup of troops has placed on the flow of foreign fighters.


Fewer of them are making it into the country, he said, and the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq is having a difficult time recruiting adults locally. Thus, it has turned to children.


"As our operations have increased, Al Qaeda [in Iraq] and others have used more minors in the fight against us, and in the process we have detained more and more juveniles," Stone said.


He said the children make effective fighters because they are easily influenced, don't experience fear in the same way as adults and don't draw as much scrutiny from U.S. forces.


Other causes for the increase in detentions may be that U.S. forces are simply coming into contact with more children because of the troop buildup, and that financial pressures may have pushed some Iraqi families toward the militants.


Stone said some children have told interrogators that their parents encouraged them to do the militants' dirty work because the extremists have deep pockets.


Insurgents typically pay the boys $200 to $300 to plant a bomb, enough to support a family for two or three months, say their Iraqi instructors at a U.S. rehabilitation center.


About 85% of the child detainees are Sunni and the majority live in Sunni Arab-dominated regions in the country's west and north. In these deeply impoverished, violence-torn communities, the men with money and influence are the ones with the most powerful arsenals. These are the children's role models.

Help End Dick Cheney's Quagmire in Iraq

Help End Dick Cheney's Quagmire in Iraq