U.S. occupation’s problems increase in Iraq

Roadside bombs, bullets and a helicopter crash killed 17 U.S. troops and civilian officials in Iraq on the second weekend of 2006. Added to the 11 troops killed on the Thursday before the weekend started, this was one of the deadliest periods of the war for the U.S. military.

At least 130 Iraqis died in two suicide bomb attacks, one in Karbala against pilgrims and the other in Ramadi against 1,000 men lined up to be interviewed for the Iraqi police force. Even the Interior Ministry came under bomb attack.

The Pentagon hasn’t announced yet whether the Black Hawk helicopter, carrying 12 people, which crashed on the night of Jan. 8 near embattled Tal Afar in northern Iraq, was shot down or crashed due to heavy weather. Helicopters are used to move people between bases in Iraq because the military has decided that travel by road is unsafe and is only to be undertaken by large, heavily guarded convoys.

At the start of the new year, the Penta gon and a number of press agencies announced Iraq casualty figures. They are daunting.

Agence France Press, compiling its figures from Pentagon News releases, announ ced that as of Jan. 8, over 2,200 U.S. troops had lost their lives. There is no official estimate of Iraqi casualties, military and civilian, but the Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, estimated in October 2004 that 100,000 Iraqis had died up until then due to the war and occupation. Based on the Lancet figures, a number of analysts estimate the current casualty toll for Iraqis to be between 130,000 and 150,000, including combatants and civilians.

In addition, from Oct. 7, 2001, the official start of the Afghan war, until Jan. 1, 2006, the government reported that some 187 people from all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces, plus four from the CIA, have died in the fighting there. The year 2005 was the deadliest yet, with 92 U.S. soldiers dying in intensified combat against a revived anti-occupation force, apparently led by the Taliban.

While the casualty figures are important, but fluctuate with changes in tactics on both sides and the ebb and flow of combat, there is another statistic that continues to rise—the rate at which U.S. troops are wounded or injured in accidents.

According to the Pentagon, as of Jan. 3 some 16,329 troops had been wounded or injured since March 19, 2003, when the U.S. invasion began. Among them, 7,582 were so seriously hurt that the Pentagon listed them as “WIA Not RTD,” which is its acronym for: Wounded in Action, not Returned to Duty. For most of the wounded in this category, their injuries are so severe that they will be crippled or impaired for the rest of their lives.

Besides the helicopter crash indicating that the U.S. forces in Iraq don’t have the command of communications that is vital to crush an insurgency, the up-tick in casualties and wounded that the U.S. has suffered since the election Dec. 15 indicates that the decline of these rates in December was due to a decision by a large part of the Iraqi resistance to calm down the conflict while the vote was taking place. And now the resistance has stepped up its attacks on U.S. and puppet troops.

While the U.S. is not facing imminent military defeat—far from that—it is clear that a decisive military victory is unattainable and the political and economic costs of its war in Iraq are growing. Two top economists—Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Blimes of Harvard—just released a report estimating the total costs of the war in Iraq will be over $2 trillion. Every public opinion poll shows that doubts and outright opposition are growing among the U.S. population.

The New York Times published an article Jan. 7, asserting that the United States is conducting wide-ranging, exploratory talks with certain elements of the Iraqi resistance with the aim of splitting the Al Qaeda faction from the rest. This article was widely reproduced in the Arab and Asian press.

According to the Times, the U.S. is opening up contacts with the resistance, both on a face-to-face basis with local leaders and—through intermediaries—with national leaders. In addition, the occupation authorities also released Satam Quaood, an associate of Saddam Hussein, and twenty other major figures from the Baath Party, the former ruling party in Iraq. The Shiite-dominated government opposed this release.

That the U.S. government says it is negotiating with elements in the resistance indicates that at least some elements directing the U.S. occupation believe that the Pentagon and its Iraqi puppets have failed to win a military victory. The U.S. is thus in an untenable stalemate. These talks are Washington’s admission of weakness, an admission that all the tremendous military force the U.S. can bring to bear is still not enough to crush the Iraqis.

The U.S. military, under extreme pressure from Congress, adopted a program to reimburse up to $1,100 of the money families have spent on personal safety equipment, mainly body armor for soldiers sent to Iraq. The armed forces say they can’t solve the bureaucratic problems involved in giving its soldiers all the protection the soldiers have asked for.

But the need to buy this armor and to spend a trillion or so tax dollars, the need to ensure the safety of U.S. troops and to end the slaughter of Iraqis in this war—all these difficult and complicated problems—could be relieved by the prompt and immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Iraq would still face major issues in reconstruction, rebuilding and fashioning a working society. But U.S. withdrawal would give the Iraqis a chance.