Neo-Conned! Again

by D Liam O'Huallachain

  1. “Resistance Attack Eliminates puppet General Director for fighting 'Terrorism,'” FreeArabVoice.org, June 9, 2005.

  2. Lasseter and Landay, loc. cit.

  3. Paul Reynolds, “Iraq Two Years On: Endgame or Unending War?” BBC News (online), April 6, 2005.

  4. Liz Sidoti, “Commander: Iraq Insurgency Still Strong,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 23, 2005, online.

  5. Tod Robberson, “Insurgents Regrouped and Refocused, Analysts Say,” Dallas Morning News, May 26, 2005.

  6. Timothy Phelps, “Experts: Iraq Verges on Civil War,” Newsday, May 12, 2005, online.

  1. In spite of this growing consensus, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld maintains the contrary. Appearing before the House Armed Services Committee in March, 2005, he declared: “The world has seen, in the last three and a half years, the capability of the USA …. They have seen the United States and the coalition forces going into Iraq …. That has to have a deterrent effect on people …. If you put yourself in the shoes of a country that might decide they'd like to make mischief, they have a very recent, vivid example of the fact that the U.S. has the ability to deal with this” (Anne Scott Tyson, “U.S. Gaining World's Respect From Wars, Rumsfeld Asserts,” Washington Post, March 11, 2005, online).

  1. Scott Ritter, “Squeezing Jello in Iraq,” Aljazeera.net, November 13, 2004, online.

  2. Lin Noueihed, “U.S. Wins Fallujah but Struggles Elsewhere,” Reuters, November 19, 2004, online.

  3. Georgie Ann Geyer, “Maginot Minds in Washington Gloss Over the Truth in Iraq,” Universal Press Syndicate (uexpress.com), December 28, 2004, online.

  4. Jim Lobe (Inter Press Service), “Bye, Bye Unipolar World,” Antiwar.com, December 29, 2004, online.

  1. Paul Craig Roberts, “How Americans Were Seduced by War,” LewRockwell.com, January 18, 2005, online.

  2. Regular American troop totals are not the sole guide to the number of military forces in Iraq, however. Much if not most of what goes by the name of “private contractors” are soldiers of fortune or paid mercenaries. There are an estimated 25,000 security “shooters” in Iraq, many of whom come from U.S. military and special-forces backgrounds. They are so numerous that the 60-plus private security companies (PSCs) in the country have their own lobbying association headed by Lawrence Peters. Recently they have been pressing for better armaments, with which to deal more effectively with the resistance. As a Washington Post article detailed recently, “PSCs, whose duties in Iraq increasingly mirror those of the U.S. military, are in some instances agitating for the right to arm themselves with heavy military-style weapons. Charged with the frontline responsibility of defending infrastructure projects, homes, personnel, and even U.S. military convoys, the companies operatives have become prime targets of terrorist attacks.” The manager of one company asked for the PSCs to be equipped with “40mm grenade launchers, shoulder-fired antitank rockets, and M72 anti-armor Vietnam holdovers or AT4 bunker busters.” The implications are far-reaching: there are tens of thousands more “troops” in the field in Iraq than indicated by the Army statistics – and it still isn't enough. See Sharon Behn, “Iraq Security Companies Lobby for Heavy Arms,” Washington Post, June 6, 2005, online.

  3. The scale of these incentives indicates just how serious the recruitment and re-enlistment crisis is. According to a recent press account, “the Army has boosted some incentives, now offering up to $20,000 in signing bonuses and $70,000 toward college tuition” (Nick Perry, “Big Drop in Seattle For Army Recruits,” Seattle Times, June 6, 2005, online). Army Secretary Francis Harvey has already spoken to lawmakers about increasing those incentives. If approved by Congress, the Army would “raise the maximum cash bonus for new recruits to $40,000 and begin a pilot program to give up to $50,000 in home-mortgage assistance to people who volunteer for eight years active-duty service” (Will Dunham, “U.S. Army Slips Further Behind Recruiting Goals,” Reuters (at YahooNews), June 10, 2005, online). As for veteran special-forces non-commissioned and warrant officers, “the Army offers a re-enlistment bonus of $197,000” (Joe Galloway, “Administration Stubbornly Stays the Course in Iraq,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 3, 2005, online). It says something that in spite of this huge sum that “the backbone of the force,” in the words of Galloway, “is leaving in droves” – attracted by the $20,000 per month that they can obtain from “contractors” in Iraq.

  1. See David Wood and Harry Esteve, “National Guard Stretched to the Limit,” The Oregonian, June 12, 2005, online: “Currently 27,495 Army National Guard soldiers are being involuntarily kept on active duty, a status that can last months.”

  2. Liz Sidoti, “Top Military Officials say Forces Strained,” Associated Press, February 2, 2005, online.

  3. Dunham, loc. cit.

  1. Anne Scott Tyson, “Army Considers Extending Reserve,” Washington Post, February 3, 2005, p. A22.

  2. Philip Turner, “Army Faces Growing Recruiting Crisis,” UPI, June 2, 2005, online.

  3. Tom Bowman, Baltimore Sun, January 5, 2005, online.

  4. David Wood and Harry Esteve, “National Guard Stretched to the Limit,” The Oregonian, June 12, 2005, online. Elsewhere in this piece the authors say “the Army National Guard is hanging on by its fingertips. It provides half of the Army's combat power … but its battalions are struggling to scrape up enough soldiers and hand-me-down equipment to meet overseas deployment orders …. “They cite internal National Guard documents indicating that “all 10 of its special forces units, all 147 military police units, 97 of 101 infantry units and 73 of 75 amour units cannot, because of past or current mobilizations, deploy again to a war zone without reinforcements.” This translates into a need for “a staggering $20 billion worth of equipment to sustain its operations.” The pool of soldiers available for assignment is also declining: “Fewer recruits are coming in, more soldiers are leaving the Army, and more troops are being drawn down. The pool is shrinking. Internal National Guard documents show that, in December 2004, 86,455 soldiers were available for duty. As of April 30, 2005, the number had shrunk to 74, 519. The current need for National Guard soldiers in Iraq alone is 32,000 …. On average each month, the Guard is enlisting three of the four recruits it needs.” The number of soldiers coming into the Guard from the active force is also shrinking rapidly. In the first five months of this fiscal year, only 974 active duty soldiers switched to the Guard, while Col. Mike Jones, a National Guard manpower planner, said that “normally we're at 7,000” during the same period.

  1. Turner, loc. cit.

  2. Robert Novak, “Army's Recruitment Crisis Deepens,” Chicago Sun-Times, May 26, 2005, online.

  3. Testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, June 23, 2005 (http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2005/sp20050623-secdef1661.htm#l).

  4. Turner, loc. cit.

  5. Novak, loc. cit. One sign of the panic setting in is the June 2005 coverage of the Pentagon's move to set up a database of high-school students between the ages of 16 and 18 for more precisely targeted recruiting efforts. Privacy and government watchdog outfits have, not surprisingly, gone ballistic over the move. See “Pentagon Creating Student Database,” Jonathan Krim, Washington Post, June 23, 2005, 2005, p. A1.

  1. Tyson, loc. cit.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Wood and Esteve, loc. cit.

  4. Thomas Harding, “Armed Forces Stretched Beyond Limit,” Daily Telegraph, June 16, 2005, online at news.telegraph.co.uk.

  1. “U.S. Troops Have One In 11 Chance Of Being Wounded Or Killed In Iraq,” BigNewsNetwork.com, June, 23, 2005.

  2. Ibid.

  3. December 27, 2004, Slate, published at www.slate.msn.com.

  4. Ibid. The magnitude of the problem is evident in the VA budget revision to provide medical care to the estimanted 80,000 more veterans than originally planned (Thomas B. Edsall, “VA Faces $2.6 Billion Shortfall in Medical Care,” Washington Post, June 29, 2005, p. A19).

  1. Michael Evans, “Toll of British Wounded in Iraq War Reaches 800,” The Times, Januar
y 18, 2005, online.

  2. Terri Judd, “Mental Health Problems For 700 Troops In Iraq,” The Independent, February 5, 2005, online.

  3. “Iraq War Vets Fight an Enemy at Home,” Julian Guthrie, San Francisco Chronicle, January 17, 2005, online.

  4. Leo Shane III, “DOD Adds Post-Combat Counseling Session to Diagnose Long-Term Trauma,” Stars and Stripes, January 27, 2005, online.

  5. See, e.g., Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker, “Bush's Optimism On Iraq Debated,” Washington Post, June 5, 2005, p. 1: “[A] democratically elected Iraqi government protected by a better trained and equipped Iraqi military will hold off what remains of the insurgency and gradually allow U.S. forces to withdraw …. ”

  6. See, e.g., James Janega, “4,000 Marines, 30,000 Hostile Square Miles,” Chicago Tribune, June 4, 2005, online: “'This is not something that we are going to solve. This is something where we can provide stability so that the government can form and resolve it,' said Lt. Col. Lionel Urquhart, commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, whose troops occupy garrisons in Haditha and Hit.”

  1. See, e.g., Youssef, loc. cit., and Sabrina Tavernise and John Burns, “As Iraqi Army Trains, Word In The Field Is It May Take Years,” New York Times, June 13, 2005, p. 1. [Also see the essay by Mark Gery on pp. 761–795 of the present volume for a deeper discussion of the political landscape as regards the Kurdish and Shiite factions.—Ed.]

  2. Also see Edmond Roy, “Iraq Insurgency Produces Better Trained Terrorists: CIA Report,” Australian Broadcasting Company (www.abc.net.au), June 23, 2005, online. Roy interviewed Michael McKinley, senior lecturer in international relations and strategy at the Australian National University, who said that “the declared intentions and wishes of leading political figures in Iraq, that the best military would be the militia, that is, the Shiites in the south and the Kurds in the north. Now that doesn't bode well, especially when the principal enemy comes from the Sunni group. It's a recipe for dubious internal conflict bordering on civil war.”

  3. Fadil al-Badrani, “Unit Refuses To Train at U.S. Center,” Reuters, June 5, 2005, online. See also Andrew Hammond, “Iraqi Army Fears Insurgents Outside Walls of Base,” Reuters, August 8, 2005, online, quoting an Iraqi recruit: “We're all afraid. I can't go outside the base wearing these military clothes.”

  1. Dilip Hiro, “Cul-de-sacs All Around: Assessing the Iraqi Election,” Tomdispatch.com, January 26, 2005, online.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Andrew Buncombe, Kim Sengupta, and Raymond Whitaker, “Pentagon Covers Up Failure to Train and Recruit Local Security Forces,” The Independent on Sunday, February 13, 2005, online.

  4. “Rummy in Wonderland,” Newsday, June 19, 2005, online.

  5. Buncombe et al., loc. cit.

  1. Brendan Murray, “Bush, Iraq's Al-Jaafari to Meet Amid Concern Over War,” Bloomberg.com, June 24, 2005.

  2. Vicki Allen, “Wolfowitz Says No Iraq Nationalist Insurgency,” Reuters, February 3, 2005, online.

  3. Buncombe et al., loc. cit.

  4. Tavernise and Burns, loc. cit.

  5. VandeHei and Baker, loc. cit.

  6. Borzou Daragahi, “Iraqis Look At Cuts In Payroll,” Los Angeles Times, June 6, 2005, p. 1. See also Cordesman, loc. cit.

  1. Roy, loc. cit.

  2. Buncombe et al., loc. cit.

  3. Johnson and Liu, loc. cit. See also Patrick J. McDonnell, “Ranks Plagued by Infiltrators,” Los Angeles Times, June 29, 2005, online, and CNN, “U.S. Study: Insurgents Infiltrate Iraqi Police,” CNN.com, July 25, 2005.

  4. Spencer Ante, “A Hole in Bush's Iraq Exit Strategy,” Business Week, April 19, 2005, online.

  1. Patrick Cockburn, “150 Hostages and 19 Deaths Leave U.S. Claims of Iraqi 'Peace' in Tatters,” The Independent on Sunday, April 17, 2005, online.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Colin Freeman, “Saddam's Old Judges Provoke U.S. Fury with Their Lenient Sentences for Insurgents,” The Sunday Telegraph, March 13, 2005, online.

  4. United Press International, “1,342 Iraq Forces Killed Since June,” BigNewsNetwork. com, February 4, 2005, online.

  5. Bryan Bender, “Insurgency Seen Forcing Change In Iraq Strategy,” Boston Globe, June 10, 2005.

  6. Tavernise and Burns, loc. cit.

  1. Beyond these two illustrative cases there are many others that could be cited. As noted above, a recent Reuters wire story noted how “an Iraqi national guard unit [in Rutba near the Jordanian border] had been disbanded after it refused to attend a military training academy overseen by U.S. advisers” (al-Badrani, loc. cit.).

  2. Shadid and Fainaru, loc. cit.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid.

  1. Ibid.

  2. Ibid.

  1. Tavernise and Burns, loc. cit.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid.

  1. Behn, “Retired General Estimates,” loc. cit.

  2. Matt Kelley, “Despite Pentagon's Low Figures, Outside Analysts Gauged Costs,” Portsmouth Herald, November 1, 2003, online.

  3. “How Bush Got Iraq War Costs Wrong,” Washington Times, January 26, 2005, online.

  1. Liz Sidoti, “Senate OKs $81B for Iraq, Afghanistan,” Associated Press, April 21, 2005, online. Cordesman (loc. cit.) predicted as of late June 2005 the need for another $200B to “stay the course” in Iraq.

  2. See Bill Summary & Status for the 109th Congress, H.R.1268 (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgibin/bdquery/z?d109:HR01268:@@@L&summ2=m&).

  3. William Watts, “White House Backs Defense Spending Bill,” www.marketwatch.com, June 16, 2005.

  4. Adding insult to injury is the fact that money earmarked for Iraq reconstruction is increasingly channeled towards security for reconstruction firms, due to the intractability of the resistance. An Associated Press report reveals that, according to Bill Taylor, director of the U.S.-led Iraq Reconstruction Management Office, “ceaseless attacks on contractors and facilities have also increased security demands, with up to 16 percent of all project costs now being spent on hiring armed guards, improving site protection, and providing equipment like hardened vehicles and telecommunications systems …. Since … 2003, the United States has earmarked $21 billion in resources for the country's reconstruction. So far $7.5 billion of this has been paid to contractors to perform works. Rebuilding, training and equipping Iraq's own security forces will eat up $5 billion alone” (Paul Garwood, “Insurgency Delays Reconstruction of Iraq,” Associated Press, May 22, 2005, online).

  1. “Iraq, Afghan War Costs May Exceed $300B,” Associated Press, February 16, 2005, online.

  2. “Iraqi Pipelines Hit Again As Oil Losses Grow,” Daily Star (Lebanon), October 25, 2004, online.

  3. Khaled Yacoub Oweis, “Iraq Sees No Early Prospect of Oil Export Increase,” Reuters, June 10, 2005, online.

  4. Daily Star, loc. cit.

  5. Khaled Yacoub Oweis, “Iraq Oil Industry Sabotage Worsening: Oil Minister,” Reuters, January 26, 2005, online.

  1. James Glanz, “Insurgents Wage Precise Attacks on Baghdad Fuel,” New York Times, February 21, 2005, online.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Samah Samad, “Tribes Accused of Iraq Oil Protection Racket,” Environment News Service, June 10, 2005, online. The story also notes that “[t]his big pipeline should be able to carry 800,000 barrels of oil per day, but because of the attacks it is currently averaging an eighth of that volume.”

  5. Khaled Yacoub Oweis, “Iraq Oil Industry Sabotage Worsening,” loc. cit.

  6. Ibid.

  1. See http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2005/cr061405.htm#.

  2. Yaukey, loc. cit.

  1. Weisman and Burns, loc. cit.

  2. Other examples of recent pieces in this vein are Ellen Knickmeyer and Naseer Nouri, “Sunnis Step Off Political Sidelines,” loc. cit.; Adrian Blomfield, “Saddam May Escape Noose to Halt Insurgency,” April 1, 2005, online; Priest, loc. cit.; and Reuters, “Troops Will Stay In Iraq, Bush Tells Americans,” Khaleej Times Online,
June 29, 2005. The focus of these and related articles tends to revolve around three themes: the insurgents themselves seeking “peace terms”; an alleged Sunni willingness to “participate” in the political process – with the implication that such a willingness signals a turning away from armed resistance; and an effort by the U.S. to “drive a wedge between the Iraqi and foreign insurgents” according to a “new” military plan allegedly approved back in August 2004 (Priest, loc. cit.). In all cases, the Sunni “representatives” allegedly participating in these initiatives cannot ever be proven to represent anyone other than themselves, and most if not all information about their activities is simply asserted by “U.S. officials.”

  In the piece by Weisman and Burns (loc. cit.), reference is made to the Sunni “National Dialogue Council” (NDC), said to be composed of 31 Sunni groups. The journalists themselves state plainly: “it is far from clear how much influence groups like the NDC have on insurgent leaders – and uncertain, too, whether even the council's leaders believe in the kind of majority rule democracy that the U.S. wants as its legacy in Iraq.” Which means that the NDC could very arguably consist of a rag-bag of self-serving politicians who claim links in order to boost their “standing” in the quest for “position” (see also Tony Allen-Mills, “America Talks: But Are These the Real Rebel Leaders?, London Sunday Times, July 3, 2005, online, and Borzou Daragahi, “The Puzzle of Sunnis' Leadership Vacuum,” Los Angeles Times, July 5, 2005, online, which illustrates the lack of credibility of the “self-proclaimed Sunni Arab leaders,” and unwittingly reveals that the “leadership vacuum” is merely the unwillingness of insurgents to participate in the U.S.-dominated political process).

  In many cases, if one reads past the headlines, one finds that the articles claiming the “Sunnis are seeking peace” state also that (see Knickmeyer and Nouri, loc. cit.) (1) senior Sunnis supporting the resistance do not take part in conferences held to facilitate “Sunni entrance into the political process,” (2) the conferences themselves issue statements confirming the legitimacy of armed resistance, and (3) conference attendees shout down and prevent from speaking those Sunnis who (they say) have “sold out” and joined the U.S.-supported, Shiite-led Iraqi government. Much of this contradictory evidence is also apparent in the case of Ayham al-Samurai, a Sunni Muslim (from Chicago!) who served as electricity minister in the new “Iraqi government.” Reports indicate that he has “supervised” meetings between insurgents and U.S. officials with the intention of silencing “skeptics who say there is no legitimate Iraqi resistance and that they cannot reveal their political face” (Reuters, “Troops Will Stay In Iraq,” loc. cit.). At the same time he maintains “the right of the Iraqi people to resist the occupation by all possible means and to differentiate between terrorism and resistance” (ibid). It is unlikely that U.S. negotiators involved in these alleged meetings share his assumptions; to the extent that they might, however, it would again reveal even their recognition that the conflict in Iraq is not simply an extension of the GWOT, as Bush makes it out to be. Regardless of what is true in all this, implying that it proves that there is a movement of Sunnis or resistance leaders away from armed conflict and towards a “political solution” is, quite frankly, a joke.