THE WAR -- The Human Costs

“… And the appearance of the wounded, bereft of arms, of legs, eyes put out, flesh wounds in the face and body, and uniforms crimsoned with blood, proclaimed with equal force the savage horrors of human battling with weapons of war.”

This is how a New York World correspondent described the grim scene of July 21, 1861, as bloodied troops of the Union army struggled into Washington after the battle of Bull Run. Sometimes called the first battle of the first modern war, the horrors of the Civil War were sketched, photographed and written about in the truth of gruesome detail from the bombardment of Fort Sumter to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox courthouse.

Assaying the death and carnage of this massive blood-letting, historian Drew Gilpin Faust writes: “Soldiers struggled for the words to describe mangled corpses strewn across battlefields; families contemplated the significance of newspaper lists of wounds: “slightly, in the shoulder,” “severely, in the groin,” “mortally, in the breast.” … For the first time civilians directly confronted the reality of battlefield death rendered by the new art of photography. They found themselves transfixed by the paradoxically lifelike renderings of the slain of Antietam that Mathew Brady exhibited in his studio on Broadway.”

The public of Lincoln’s day could not have found refuge from the “patriotic gore” of the war had they wanted to do so. How things have changed.

As we know by now, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being reported in ways that shade civilians from the heat of death and human suffering taking place in those violent worlds. The Iraq and Afghanistan nightmare toll rolls on in the far distance. We are familiar with roadside bombs and suicide bombers, but the death and destruction of lives and bodies, the work of war, all takes place in lands filled with place names we have quit trying to pronounce. And the dead and the wounded for life barely register on our consciousness, not quite visible, not quite real.

After accepting five-and one-half years of wars churning toward ever-changing objectives, we’ve become comfortable with our can’t see, don’t see, won’t see sensibility. Few at home clamor for wider, deeper, more detailed coverage and analysis of these ongoing wars. No one asks to see the images of the bloodbath we created. Only the exceptionally persistent and courageous search out and are willing to gaze at bodies blown to pieces by IEDs along roadways and human bombs delivered to market place crowds.

Over four thousand American troops have died in Iraq; last week the five-hundredth death was marked in Afghanistan. The military issues the names of the dead, their age, rank, unit and hometown. This spare accounting arrives on most days of our busy weeks, day in and day out.

In the early years of the wars, our dead heroes returned home in the cargo holds of commercial flights. Travelers on holiday and frequent flyers on important business trips might glance out the windows of planes and see a flag draped coffin preceding their suitcase up the luggage ramp into the space beneath where they were seated. Did this require them to think about what they were seeing? The military now uses private chartered jets.

The wounded come home in far greater numbers. They have sacrificed much and arrive unannounced. They are ignored as they depart from hospitals and rehab centers to take up the difficult strands left of their lives. The stories of the medical conditions, red tape encountered in their searches for help and lonely depression they face only occasionally break through the surface of non-stop news on Brett Favre, “American Idol,” whatever.

If we should decide to search out the price being paid by the heroes of these wars, the flesh, bone, blood and breath of their sacrifices, where would we look? Because most of us will be lucky enough to not lose a close loved one in these wars, and only a few will ever attend and support a grieving family who has suffered such a loss, I recommend the reading of Jim Sheeler’s magnificent book, Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives.

Sheeler wipes away the anonymity of those who made the ultimate sacrifice; he documents the courage of families left behind; he honors Marine Major Steve Beck who takes on the crushing, necessary task of notification and support of the families of the fallen. Major Beck is a hero who honors heroes. He works with a dedication that is deserving of medals and promotions not yet imagined by the military brass sitting behind polished desks.

Read this book to better understand the total and final loss exacted by these wars.

On the wounding of these brave women and men, there is now a book that should be in all libraries, public offices, and especially in the hands of every politician holding or running for office. Television newscasts should open and close with a shot, presented without comment, of a photo from this book. Newspapers need to regularly run excerpts and photos from this book.

War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq: A Series of Cases, 2003-2007 was written and designed to teach surgeons going into these war zones what they will see, what to expect, and what practices are effective. This book has been praised by the military medical establishment. This book has saved lives.

Before War Surgery was published (order from U.S. Government Printing Office), attempts were made to censor it and keep it from being made available to the public. Along with flag-draped coffins, our war government does not want American citizens to see the horrors of war.

War Surgery is filled with photos of the human damage coming from the wars we are a part of — burns, bleeding, limbs shredded, amputations, an unexploded rocket embedded in a soldier’s hip. This is not video game pixel violence or summer movie special effects and stunt man make believe.

Dr. David E. Lounsbury, a retired Colonel and 1991 and 2003 Iraq vet and one of the three authors of War Surgery had this to say about the attempts to censor and restrict this book: “I’m ashamed to say that there were folks even in the medical department who said, Over my dead body will American civilians see this.”

The Civil War journalist quoted above offered this observation and prediction: “Most horrible were the sights presented to view, and never to be forgotten by those who witnessed them.”

As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq drone on: What have we seen? What will we remember?
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This piece was first published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, August 17, 2008.

THE WAR The Money [Part 32]

Reports of waste, deception and deviousness in Iraq pile up almost as fast as Bush administration resignations. No real surprises here for anyone who has been half awake. Yet we’ve seen Bush, Senate Republicans and McBush (when he's around to cast a vote) are ready to go to the veto and fillibuster mats to keep appropriations cuts for a war that never should have happened from coming to a vote. I guess that’s called “continuity” by those Republican rabbits who have no place to go but back into the same hole.

If you read this entire article you will find that, yes, Cheney’s old corporate parlor car, Haliburton, is still the first car on the bloody gravy train. Here’s a target quote: “When the war began, for example, Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company run by Dick Cheney before he was vice president, was the largest Pentagon contractor in Iraq. After years of criticism and scrutiny for its role in Iraq, Halliburton sold the unit, which is still the largest defense contractor in the war, and has 40,000 employees in Iraq.”

Right. 40,000!

And this brings us to the last paragraph in the excerpt below. It points out circumstances few recognize let alone think about.

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The New York Times
August 12, 2008
Use of Iraq Contractors Costs Billions, Report Says
By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — The United States this year will have spent $100 billion on contractors in Iraq since the invasion in 2003, a milestone that reflects the Bush administration’s unprecedented level of dependence on private firms for help in the war, according to a government report to be released Tuesday.

The report, by the Congressional Budget Office, according to people with knowledge of its contents, will say that one out of every five dollars spent on the war in Iraq has gone to contractors for the United States military and other government agencies, in a war zone where employees of private contractors now outnumber American troops. . . .

Contractors in Iraq now employ at least 180,000 people in the country, forming what amounts to a second, private, army, larger than the United States military force, and one whose roles and missions and even casualties among its work force have largely been hidden from public view. The widespread use of these employees as bodyguards, translators, drivers, construction workers and cooks and bottle washers has allowed the administration to hold down the number of military personnel sent to Iraq, helping to avoid a draft.

GO HERE

THE WAR -- The Money [Part 31]

Barak Obama is finally linking the miserable war in Iraq to the fast deteriorating economy at home. To his credit, he’s never spouted nonsense like failure to defeat the terrorists in Iraq will mean those terrorists will climb into the trunks of our Humvees and “follow us home.” He seems well aware that what will follow us home from the ruins of five years in an unnecessary war, what will be tied around the necks of the American people for generations as a result of this disaster, is massive debt.

No one should be, and Barak Obama is not, so naive as to think terrorism ends in this world the day our last hero leaves Iraq. And no one should think for a minute that another terrorist attack cannot (or even will not) take place within the United States at some date in the future. But fear, however real, should not freeze us in place, force us to continue a policy that was wrong from the start and has cost us so much through all these years.

Who can seriously argue that involvement in Iraq is the best defense and preparation against fanatical assaults being planned, who knows where, right now? Resources being wasted in this war need to be used intelligently at home. Terrorism is global, not something corralled within the borders of a single nation.

McBush is throwing around heavily weighted but never defined words like “victory” and “defeat.” He will continue these going nowhere attacks right up until election day. (What else does he have to use?) But this campaign tactic only satisfies mindless emotions while ignoring hard facts. This is the stuff that has hurt us far too long. Enough.

I say: “Obama, 16 months is 16 months too long.” But given Bush’s mushy “horizon” time table (sic) and the slow ticking of McBush’s perpetual clock, Obama’s is the only option making sense..

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The New York Times July 22, 2008
News Analysis
For Obama, a First Step Is Not a Misstep
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and JEFF ZELENY

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government on Monday left little doubt that it favors a withdrawal plan for American combat troops similar to what Senator Barack Obama has proposed, providing Mr. Obama with a potentially powerful political boost on a day he spent in Iraq working to fortify his credibility as a wartime leader. . . .

He said his conversation with General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker focused on “what’s adequate for our security interests, factoring in the fact that not only do we have Afghanistan, which I believe is the central front on terror, but also the fact that if we’re spending $10 billion a month over the next two, four, five years, then that’s $10 billion a month that we’re not using to rebuild the United States or drawing down our national debt or making sure that families have health care.” . . .

Go Here for Full Article

THE WAR -- The Money [Part 30]

Comments are flying about “Bush Lied” charges being left-wing paranoia. I guess it depends on what a lie is. Let’s see, you’ve got your flat-out-lie, your bald face lie, your genteel falsehood. And then there’s the Texas whopper, the all purpose bunk and we mustn’t forget that political standby, artful misrepresentation. Sissela Bok in Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life writes about lies as excuses, lies of justification, lies in crises, lies protecting peers and clients. Bok also analyzes "lies to the incompetent.”

Has the Bush war administration been engaging in lies to the incompetent–namely us, the American people?

Maybe that paranoia is really a bill of particulars. Maybe we need legal authority to seriously examine, while under oath, policies and pronouncements that may have been lies of commission and omission. These lies (if that is what they turn out to be) should be sorted out from the plain, vanilla on steroids incompetence, riddling the Bush years.

Here’s a report on a “surge” you hear little or nothing about, electrical deaths and injuries to our troops in Iraq.

Who’s to blame? As usual, the stone-walling by KBR and the Bush administration matches the Great Wall of China. Nice point in this report about “accusations of overbilling” and “[hiring] unskilled Iraqis who were paid only a few dollars a day” to electrical work.

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The New York Times July 18, 2008
Electrical Risks at Iraq Bases Are Worse Than Said
By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — Shoddy electrical work by private contractors on United States military bases in Iraq is widespread and dangerous, causing more deaths and injuries from fires and shocks than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to internal Army documents.

During just one six-month period — August 2006 through January 2007 — at least 283 electrical fires destroyed or damaged American military facilities in Iraq, including the military’s largest dining hall in the country, documents obtained by The New York Times show. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire at their base near Tikrit in 2006, the records note, while another was injured while jumping from a burning guard tower in May 2007.

And while the Pentagon has previously reported that 13 Americans have been electrocuted in Iraq, many more have been injured, some seriously, by shocks, according to the documents. A log compiled earlier this year at one building complex in Baghdad disclosed that soldiers complained of receiving electrical shocks in their living quarters on an almost daily basis. . . .

The reports of shoddy electrical work have raised new questions about the Bush administration’s heavy reliance on contractors in Iraq, particularly because they come after other high-profile disputes involving KBR. They include, providing unsafe water to soldiers and failing to protect female employees who were sexually assaulted.

Officials say the administration contracted out so much work in Iraq that companies like KBR were simply overwhelmed by the scale of the operations. Some of the electrical work, for example, was turned over to subcontractors, some of which hired unskilled Iraqis who were paid only a few dollars a day.

GO HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE

THE WAR -- The Money [Part 29]

US and Iraqi forces drive al-Qa'ida from stronghold
The Australian
Marie Colvin, Mosul | July 07, 2008

AMERICAN and Iraqi forces are driving al-Qa'ida in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country. . . .

The group has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen at the weekend, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians. . . .

US and Iraqi leaders believe that while it is premature to write off al-Qa'ida in Iraq, the Sunni group has lost control of its last urban base in Mosul, and its remnants have been driven into countryside to the south.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has also led a crackdown on the Shia Mahdi Army in Basra and Baghdad in recent months, claimed yesterday that his Government had "defeated" terrorism. . . .

Iraq is enjoying a surge in oil revenue driven by record crude prices and the highest production levels since Saddam's ouster. The Government expects to earn $73 billion from oil this year if prices remain high.

Putting some of this money to work, the Iraqi Government held a groundbreaking ceremony at the weekend for a project to refurbish the main road to the Baghdad airport.

GO HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE
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Is The Australian a “the surge is working” or, as the critics of the critics of the war so profoundly put it, a “cut and run” news source? Who cares? This is good news–isn’t it?

The report notes only two policemen killed and, what the heck, they were off duty.

Bombings? Hey, we can live (though some will die) with “sporadic.”

And how about the chasing of the “remnants” of those pesky trouble makers into the countryside? I guess they will live there, happily ever after, as the brilliant fairy tale planners of this war envisioned it.

But the best news of all comes from Iraq’s Prime Minister, he pronounces, let’s put it in bold and in caps: “HIS GOVERNMENT HAD “DEFEATED” TERRORISM.” And why shouldn’t we believe our staunch, democratically elected, ally?

And the good news just keeps coming. $73 billion from oil going to the honest and efficient Iraqi government (and their families and clans) this year. That should shut the mouths of those clueless critics of Bush and McBush who are always saying Americans haven’t been asked to sacrifice during this war. Well, as anyone who has ever stood in front of a gas pump and watched the dollars ring up knows, Americans are putting their support of the war in their gas tanks, right next to their fading “Bomb Saddam” bumper stickers.

Nice touch at the end of this story, “the Iraqi Government held a groundbreaking ceremony at the weekend for a project to refurbish the main road to the Baghdad airport.” This IED pocked stretch of road does need some fixing.

Hope they get it done soon so that we can give our brave troops a smooth ride to the planes that will bring them home. Seeing as the surge has worked to perfection, why would we need to keep them over there?

THE WAR -- The Money [Part 28]

Oil Giants Back

Maybe this is what McBush has in mind when he lets loose with those I don't care if we stay in Iraq “100 years,” and then, "No, I mean 50 years” pronouncements. Sweetheart deals with Big Oil written on the bodies of fallen American heroes in Iraq, who cares? After all, it may mean saving a dime to a quarter at the pump. Of course, Big Oil wants what Altman in this piece calls “a certain degree of confidence” to back up the no-bid windfall profits those hard working billionaire CEOs at Exxon, Mobil, Shell and BP foresee in Iraq's future. Are they going to pay the Blackwater mercenaries to protect their pipes and pumps, chauffeur around the geologists and engineers, and protect the skies over the desert derricks? I don’t think so. You and I are going to pay for the "permanent bases," or as the militarist wordsmiths would say, "venerable temporary facilities," Bush is pushing for in Iraq. And what we pay won’t be showing up at the pump as we fill our gas guzzlers.

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International Herald Tribune
June 19, 2008

High Energy Thursday: A peculiar deal for some of Iraq’s oil
Posted by Daniel Altman in High energy

Imagine. At the precise moment when demand for oil was the highest in history, a recently democratized country with enormous reserves had the chance to sell extraction contracts to the highest bidder. This was a country that desperately needed the revenue to help rebuild its schools, power grid and water supply after a long internal conflict. So why did it hand out the contracts with no auction at all?

As Andrew Kramer writes [see “Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back,” NYT, 6/19/2008] , Iraq has handed out no-bid contracts to the same companies that used to profit from its oil before Saddam Hussein came to power. . . .

Undoubtedly, there is some political intrigue here; the contracts were actually signed before Iraq’s blockbuster oil law was approved by the government. And the deals do require a certain degree of confidence on behalf of the oil companies that their investment will be protected, even for a couple of years. Just this week, Shell had to close down an offshore oil rig producing 200,000 barrels a day because of attacks by a Nigerian militia. . . .

http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/business/globalization/?cat=9

THE WAR -- The Money [Part 27]

Why is there such a disconnect between the reality of the enormous costs (human and dollars) of this war and the slivers of what imagined “victory” can achieve in Iraq? In a brilliant analysis of Lincoln’s moral development ( Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography ), William Lee Miller offers this observation while examining two wartime presidents, Polk and Lincoln.

“The human inclination to self-deception and self-exculpation, . . . is magnified in collective life – in the behavior, in particular, of nations. Every nation . . . has a magnified ego and a minimized conscience. The national egotism, is a compound of the egotism and the idealism of the individuals who compose it.”

Doesn’t the self-deception and self-exculpation of the tail-enders in the Bush administration and among his dwindling supporters clearly demonstrate Millers’ point? In this we have the explanation for their frozen in place response to the heat of the facts.

While the evidence of lies, mistakes, and never to be recouped costs have piled up at the feet of Bush, McCain, and Republican congressmen on autopilot, they have refused to budge off of their self-righteous perches of power. Their magnified egos stubbornly refuse to face realities that do not fit their self-aggrandizing calculations; their minimized consciences sustain a personal and dreamy ideological romance which ignores human tears and cold cash evidence.

And November is still five months away.
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Iraq war could cost taxpayers $2.7 trillion
In addition to the cost of war, taxpayers pay for rising veteran health care costs, and returning soldiers faced with foreclosure and unemployment.

By David Goldman, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: June 12, 2008: 12:20 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As the Iraq war continues with no clear end in sight, the cost to taxpayers may balloon to $2.7 trillion by the time the conflict comes to an end, according to Congressional testimony.

In a hearing held by the Joint Economic Committee Thursday, members of Congress heard testimony about the current costs of the war and the future economic fallout from returning soldiers. . . .

William Beach, director of the Center for Data Analysis, told members of Congress that the Iraq war has already cost taxpayers $646 billion. That's only accounting for five years, and, with the conflict expected to drag on for another five years, the figure is expected to more than quadruple. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., told members of Congress that the war costs taxpayers about $430 million per day, and called out the Bush Administration. . . .

The Bush Administration, which was invited to give testimony, declined to participate.

The Pentagon has previously said that the war costs approximately $9.5 billion a month, but some economists say the figure is closer to $25 billion a month when long-term health care for veterans and interest are factored in.

Health care: In testimony before the committee, Dr. Christine Eibner, an Associate Economist with research firm RAND, said advances in armor technology have kept alive many soldiers who would have been killed in prior wars. But that has added to post-war health care costs for veterans, especially for "unseen" wounds like post traumatic stress disorder, major depression and traumatic brain injury.

Unemployment: Furthermore, many veterans who recently completed their service are coming back to a difficult job and housing market.

Foreclosure: Many soldiers who come home from active duty are also finding difficulty keeping their homes.
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First Published: June 12, 2008: 12:07 PM EDT/ For complete CNN article:

GO HERE

THE WAR -- The Money [Part 26]

This is about The Money we didn't have to spend on a useless, deadly and debilitating war in Iraq. Some think it is unnecessary to find out what happened to thrust us into this five years and counting mess. Are we all Chicago Cub fans? What's happened in the past can't be recalled, replayed, re-voted on, so Go You Cubs. That's why baseball is a game and war is serious. That's why stammering cries of "We're winning." and hollow declarations about "Victory" are meaningless. We were lied to, we believed the lies, we're paying the price. There's no, "Wait till next year."

After long delays by the Republicans in the Senate, comes the dropping of the second shoe "of investigations by the Senate Intelligence Committee into the use, abuse and faulty assessments of intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003." You may remember (most do not) the first part which demonstrated the failures of the CIA. Part 2 is about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and that whole gang and their 2002-03 pre-war "exaggerations," or what most of us would call lies. Playing up and accentuating a climate of fear, massaging and misrepresenting the intelligence they collected, counting on Americans' deep well of too often blind patriotism, and threatening the timid in Congress with defeat at the polls, these liars led us into a war without a justifiable purpose.

We've been paying big time ever since.


The New York Times
June 5, 2008
Senate Panel Accuses Bush of Iraq Exaggerations
By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — A long-delayed Senate report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans has concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq’s weapons programs and Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda.

The report was released Thursday after years of partisan squabbling, and it marks the close of five years of investigations by the Senate Intelligence Committee into the use, abuse and faulty assessments of intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. . . .

The 170-page report accuses Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials of repeatedly overstating the Iraqi threat in the emotional aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Its findings were endorsed by all eight committee Democrats and two Republicans, Senators Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. . . .

For full story and link to the Senate Intelligence Report go to:

Senate Investigation

THE WAR -- The Money [Part 25]

Writing about “The Money,” I often use phrases like “floating billions on the desert winds” and “pounding American dollars into a bloody, sandy abyss.” These flights of rhetoric are a way to personally express outrage and relieve frustration. But as I have tried to show in these "The Money" posts my angry words are sourced in the deeds and actions of our government. The evidence is grounded in years of Bush incompetence, Congressional lockstep faux patriotism, a failure of the press to do its job, and public indifference.

And now, with a shift of party control in Congress, with a “change” election looming, elected officials, Democratic and Republican, are scrambling or sulking toward a degree of accountability. Even part of the press is ready to help the public in understanding the depths of the waste that accompanied the ignorance and arrogance which spawned the disaster that is America in Iraq.

Hunkering down in the White House bunker of denial, only Bush and McBush refuse to face the mountain of evidence that has been growing, looming for years. They still talk about “Victory.” They still try to use flag lapel pins and hollow “Support Our Troops” bumper stickers to cover the crimes, large and small, bloody and venial, that they, and so many others have committed.
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New York Times May 23, 2008
Iraq Spending Ignored Rules, Pentagon Says
By JAMES GLANZ

A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.

The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the United States military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash. The audit was released Thursday in tandem with a Congressional hearing on the payments.

In one case, according to documents displayed by Pentagon auditors at the hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a cash payment of $320.8 million in Iraqi money was authorized on the basis of a single signature and the words “Iraqi Salary Payment” on an invoice. In another, $11.1 million of taxpayer money was paid to IAP, an American contractor, on the basis of a voucher with no indication of what was delivered. . . .

Examples of the paperwork for some of those payments, displayed at the hearing, depict a system that became accustomed to making huge payments on the fly, with little oversight or attention to detail. In one instance, a United States Treasury check for $5,674,075.00 was written to pay a company called Al Kasid Specialized Vehicles Trading Company in Baghdad for items that a voucher does not even describe.

In another case, $6,268,320.07 went to the contractor Combat Support Associates with even less explanation. And a scrawl on another piece of paper says only that $8 million had been paid out as “Funds for the Benefit of the Iraqi People.”

But perhaps the masterpiece of elliptic paperwork is the document identified at the top as a “Public Voucher for Purchases and Services Other Than Personal.” It indicates that $320.8 million went for “Iraqi Salary Payment,” with no explanation of what the Iraqis were paid to do.

Whatever it was, the document suggests, each of those Iraqis was handsomely compensated. Under the “quantity” column is the number 1,000, presumably indicating the number of people who were to be paid — to the tune of $320,800 apiece — if the paperwork is to be trusted.
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These excerpts are from a long and detailed article. If you have the stomach for it, go to:

Iraq Spending Ignored Rules, Pentagon Says

THE WAR -- The Money [Part 24]

Sometimes “The Money” is not about the endless bundles of death cash we snake through the alleys of Baghdad, or send out into the desert never to be seen again, or line the pockets of the few, the well-placed and the brutally powerful.

Sometimes it’s about:

“Omar, a 69-year-old refugee from Baghdad, interviewed by UNHCR, said that he will die a “slow death” if assistance is stopped. His family has depended on food and medical aid since arriving in Syria in 2006, and pay rent out of remittances from Iraq which he described as “our only way to survive.”

And it’s about “The Money” we refuse to spend.


Money running out for Iraqi refugee crisis, warns UN agency

9 May 2008 –The United Nations refugee said today that it could soon be forced to reduce or even halt assistance to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees unless donors provide more funds.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said there was a $127 shortfall for health, education and food assistance for Iraqi refugees. “We will not be able to help hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees and internally displaced if we do not receive funding for the remainder of 2008,” said High Commissioner António Guterres. “Without this support, the humanitarian crisis we have faced over the past two years may grow even larger,” he added.

A total of 4.7 million Iraqis have been uprooted as a result of the crisis in their country. Of these over 2 million are living as refugees in neighbouring countries – mostly Syria and Jordan – while 2.7 million are internally displaced inside Iraq. . . .

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26614&Cr=iraq&Cr1=

THE WAR -- The Money [Part 23]

Frederick Kagan (author of Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq, 2007) stood firm on “Mission Accomplished” day. In a nutshell, victory in Iraq remains within reach, all that is good and true will follow.

The many who pushed this disastrous war, true believers and deceivers from the start, are now reduced to turning their past lies into future truths. The madness of all this was presciently, if inadvertently, skewered by Lewis Carroll in the 19th century. His “When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.” is probably one of the most quoted lines in contemporary political analysis. In Kagan’s case, it catches the authoritarian logic and tone of one who led us into the dark wood of war without even the bread crumbs provided Hansel and Gretel.

Here’s Kagan’s latest rickety prop to a war that could never be “won.” One senses in it the laying of the groundwork for the Right Wing Warrior nonsense that will come with our final withdrawal. The blustering spouts of how the left “lost” Iraq, plunged that country into chaos, and upset a smoothly running plan to create a democratic and peaceful middle-east. It will all flow with the darkness and force of the oil profits of Exon.

For five long years the United States presence in Iraq has attempted to build dreamy sand castles without the aid of reason and ignoring the weight of reality. Here’s Kagan’s Op-Ed in full. Lewis Carroll responds in bold type. Ridicule can never replace the pointed labor of reason or the careful sifting of reality, but it does provide a respite from the madness.


The New York Times, May 4, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Don’t Drain Iraq’s Cash
By FREDERICK KAGAN

THE way forward in Iraq must proceed from the recognition that the surge, of which I was an early proponent, has stabilized central Iraq, reduced violence overall and provided space for the Iraqi government to undertake important reconciliation efforts.

[“What I tell you three times is true.”]

Continuing along this path to success requires maintaining our counterinsurgency strategy and committing to see Iraq through its democratic transformation, with parliamentary elections scheduled for late 2009.

[“I think I could, if I only knew how to begin. For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.”]

There is one obstacle to success, however, that we must avoid. Having failed to legislate retreat, some members of Congress are exploiting Americans’ economic anxieties and insisting that the Iraqi government help defray our costs in fighting our common enemies.

[“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”]

Yes, the war in Iraq is expensive (though hardly the hyperbolic $3 trillion some have suggested), and the desire to reduce that expense is reasonable. Iraq has a lot of money from oil, and we should do what we can to help and encourage the Iraqis to spend their money on rebuilding their country whenever possible.

[“His answer trickled through my head - Like water through a sieve”]

But a dangerous note has crept into the discussion, a tinge of imperialism, in fact. The argument that Iraq should use its oil revenues to pay the United States sounds like the ultimate proof that we invaded Iraq for mercenary reasons.

[“'But I don’t want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked. 'Oh, you can’t help that,' said the Cat. 'We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.' 'How do you know I’m mad?' said Alice. 'You must be,” said the Cat. 'or you wouldn’t have come here.'”]

If it insists that Iraq underwrite American military forces, Congress would do catastrophic damage to our image in the world, particularly the Muslim world. America does not go to war for profit — ever. We should not make it appear as if we do.

[“Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”]

FREDERICK KAGAN is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
[“Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”]

THE WAR -- The Money [Part 22]

There was a term in the military back when the weapons of war (as compared with the high tech, micro-destroyers of life used in the present) were akin to medieval siege machines and uniforms were without a square inch of Velcro. Enlistees served three year hitches, draftees, two. And then there were the “6 monthers.” After their 180 days it was back home to the Guard and Reserves. Fairly or unfairly, they were not much admired when I served.

Thomas Friedman has served most of the Iraq war as a 6 monther. (There are many of these among the pundits even today.) He’s always managed to almost get one foot out the door. For some reason though, he’s never quite able to pull the other one clear. Instead, on a regular basis he has solemnly informed his many readers that “in 6 months we will know if it’s time to leave Iraq.” He’s redeployed himself so many times I've lost count.

Lately he’s taken a new approach. The energy crisis, always a main concern with this 6 monther, is not going to be eased through any form of “victory” in Iraq. He doesn’t say this in so many words. Now he finesses the withdrawal issue by discovering the need for "nation building," at home. So there’s work to be done at home. Friedman makes like a modern day Paul Revere. If Paul had taken side trips to Canada, Ireland and the Bahamas, he still would have aroused the countryside as fast as stuck-in-Iraq-Friedman.

Many have been saying the same thing Friedman is saying about our crumbling infrastructure, pitiful research initiatives, and failing educational system since before “Mission Accomplished.” The costs of the Iraq war come in many forms. It’s irritating to see Friedman wring his hands and act as if he has to be the bearer of this bad news. If he had started with this line after the first 6 months of this disaster of a war, we might be getting out within six months after Bush leaves office. Barring, of course, the election of McBush. If that tragedy is heaped upon the last five year fiasco, Friedman will need a new supply of calendars.
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The Money [Part 22]


The New York Times May 4, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Who Will Tell the People?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Traveling the country these past five months while writing a book, I’ve had my own opportunity to take the pulse, far from the campaign crowds. My own totally unscientific polling has left me feeling that if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it’s this: People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America.

They are not only tired of nation-building in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with so little to show for it. They sense something deeper — that we’re just not that strong anymore. We’re borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage — as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil. . . .

Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country. . . .
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Who Will Tell the People?

THE WAR -- The Money [Part 20]

That Was Then, This Is Now . . .

In March of 2003, the war in Iraq loomed. Oriana Fallaci, the much honored Italian journalist who died at 77 in 2006, published in English a scathing essay later turned into a book, The Rage and the Pride.

Fallaci was contemptuous of Islamic culture. Any compromise, nod or lean in the direction of understanding and conciliation with the followers of Mohamed was weakness and betrayal of the West. Her view (often called “Islamophobic”) was a tireless indictment (often called a rant) against Islamic fundamentalism.The book questioned the stated tenets of Islam and its practice, condemned totalitarian forces bent on destroying liberal Western society and civilization, and railed against apathy regarding the immediate threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism. In the United States, she was supported by the Ayn Rand Institute and a number of other right wing foundations.

Here is smattering from that March 2003 essay, “The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt--Thoughts on the eve of battle in Iraq.” Appearing just before the Iraq war began, this essay showed her unleavened contempt for any and all who might give Iraq a hearing, insist on more UN arms inspections, exhaust diplomatic channels. Be they communists or the Holy Father of the Catholic Church, Bush should and must have his war.

“They [anyone taking a pacifist or delay the war position] are in Rome where the communists left by the door and re-entered through the window like the birds of the Hitchcock movie. And where, pestering the world with his ecumenism, his pietism, his Thirdworldism, Pope Wojtyla receives Tariq Aziz as a dove or a martyr who is about to be eaten by lions. (Then he sends him to Assisi where the friars escort him to the tomb of St. Francis.)”

Tariq Aziz is the memory trace of importance in this pro-war diatribe. You might just recall this guy appearing regularly on TV. He always had a good word for Saddam; a straight-faced lie in service to his protector tyrant. Fallaci would no doubt rejoice with the news that this Chaldean Christian is facing post-Saddam justice in Iraq. But her smug joy at the prospect of Aziz going on trial would probably be tempered by her sneer at hearing the word justice in conjunction with a court made up of Muslims. Her war, much like Bush’s, was a Crusade, righteously pursued but lacking a clear, obtainable object. That kind of playing with people’s and nation’s lives is the essence of arrogance.

So it may be clear to all today that Tariq Aziz’s crimes as Saddam’s diplomatic and administrative henchman were brutal and tyrannical. What is not clear is what we should call the forces of brutality and chaotic tyranny we unleashed in an Iraq that no longer has a Tariq Aziz to bring to justice. One wonders if Oriana Fallaci could speak to that question with her cold reason today.

(Sometimes The Money is not about millions, billions and trillions. In this case it’s about what $15,000 could not buy in today’s war disabled Iraq.)
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The New York Times, April 30, 2008
Trial Opens for Former Hussein Aide
By STEPHEN FARRELL

BAGHDAD — Tariq Aziz, who for years was the public diplomatic face of Saddam Hussein’s government, went on trial in Baghdad on Tuesday, facing charges over the execution of Iraqi merchants during the Baathist era. . . .

Elsewhere in Baghdad on Tuesday, heavy fighting erupted in the Shiite district of Sadr City as American and Iraqi troops continued efforts to curb rocket and mortar attacks on the capital’s fortified Green Zone. Many of these are launched from nearby Sadr City, a stronghold of the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

The American military said it killed 28 gunmen during one prolonged clash on Tuesday morning, after a patrol was attacked with small arms, roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. A military statement said American troops had fought back, using rocket launchers.

Doctors in Sadr City hospitals said they had received the bodies of 21 people, including women and children, Reuters reported.

In the central province of Diyala, the police in Balad Ruz said they had found the bullet-riddled corpses of six academics who were kidnapped last week. Their families had paid $15,000 each, but the kidnappers still executed the hostages, Iraqi security officials said.
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Trial Opens for Former Hussein Aide

WAR -- The Money [Part 19]

This is what happens when you have a get along, go along Congress in place during five years of deadly, costly war. Let's see if John McBush makes getting the defense contractors to pay the $3 billion they are in arrears in taxes part of his "end the waste" campaign. Or will he turn his head, avoid the inconsistency, and just keep shoveling the money at the defense budget pirate profiteers as the war goes on, and on, and on . . .
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April 27, 2008
Editorial
Tracking the Spoils of the Private Sector

There are so many barn doors to be closed on the Bush administration’s wasteful, murky world of government contractors that Congress barely knows where to begin. The House has made a start in plugging the multibillion-dollar loophole that the White House let slip into its promised crackdown on fraudulent contractors.

An executive mandate that contracted companies report misuse of taxpayers’ dollars to the Justice Department somehow managed to exempt work performed overseas. A drafting error, says the White House. But one, of course, that would further insulate the administration’s favored war contractors from ever answering for waste and fraud. There have been dozens of offenses, including kickbacks and bribes in Iraq and Afghanistan, where more than $102 billion has been spent on contracts. The Senate must approve the loophole closer.

The House voted as well to address another long-running boondoggle: the brazen failure of contractors to pay federal taxes, even as they are enriched by taxpayers in winning government business. More than 60,000 federal contractors owe $7.7 billion in back taxes, according to the Government Accountability Office. Almost half of the deadbeats are defense contractors who owe the Treasury $3 billion. Anyone shocked? . . .
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Go HERE for full editorial.

WAR -- The Money [Part 18]

Is our mission in Iraq garbage detail? If this is the case, and if it will lead to some relief for the suffering Iraqi people, so be it. But after five long years and 100s of billions of dollars, it is fair to expect that we would be beyond these kinds of efforts. We entered this unplanned, ideologically driven war with nothing but an airy dream of “democratizing the middle-east.” Now we appear ready to spend months, or years, and billions more, picking up the garbage. There has to be a better plan for using our brave military personnel and our “put it on the national debt tab” dollars.
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April 22, 2008
In Sadr City, Basic Services Are Faltering
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

BAGHDAD — Even as American and Iraqi troops are fighting to establish control of the Sadr City section of this capital, the Iraqi government’s program to restore basic services like electricity, sewage and trash collection is lagging, jeopardizing the effort to win over the area’s wary residents.

For weeks, there have been reports that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is preparing to move ahead with a multimillion-dollar program to rebuild the southern swath of Sadr City, which is currently occupied by Iraqi and American troops.

But almost a month after American and Iraqi forces pushed into the area, there are no signs of reconstruction. Instead, the streets are filled with mounds of trash and bubbling pools of sewage. Many neighborhoods are still without electricity, and many residents are too afraid to brave the cross-fire to seek medical care. Iraqi public works officials, apparently fearful of the fighting, rarely seem to show up at work, and the Iraqi government insists the area is not safe enough for repairs to begin. . . .

Residents have repeatedly asked American troops during patrols why the garbage cannot be removed and basic repairs made in the areas the Americans control, especially since the most intense fighting appears to be over in these sectors. . . .

As a stopgap, the Americans are undertaking a $400,000 program to distribute large trash bins and employ up to 200 local Iraqis. More than 90 have been hired, but some of the workers have failed to show up and some of the results, Captain Carter acknowledged, have been poor.

The trash collectors are outfitted with yellow vests. On Monday morning, a soldier asked for an “eyes on” report over the tactical radio on how many workers were picking up trash along a major thoroughfare.

The reply over the radio was not encouraging: “They started at 20, but are down to 4.”

HERE for The New York Times article

WAR -- The Money [Part 17]

There is a natural inclination among the American people to want to trust their leaders and believe the experts reporting in the media. Presidents may come and go, but so-and-so is still “our President.” And the experts, especially when they are in uniform, or have worn a military uniform through a long career, are particularly easy to defer to. After all, they’ve seen this war business from the inside. They read all those big fat reports, those detailed manuals, those intricate maps. And they know our enemies. They can even pronounce their names.

But long wars, helped along by an economic recession and a hot political campaign, do serve to slap the people in the face, arouse them from their apathetic stupor in regard to Presidents and military experts and the shaping of the news by the media.

And now we have a detailed 7500 word report (this post is 900 words long) demonstrating to all how the administration’s Defense Department, select military experts and naive, lazy or inept network TV news producers over the past five years worked together to support the Iraq war. This crime happened in the pursuit of dreamy ideological foreign policy goals, personal and business connection interests, and by simply failing to uphold and practice basic standards of journalistic practice. We should all feel embarrassed by our gullibility. We have every right to feel anger about the betrayal of our trust. And we should remember our outrage at the non-performance of so-called professional journalists.

Below are some choice parts from this damning expose. Please read the full story HERE:

The New York Times

You will be reading a piece of investigative journalism that is a shoo-in for a Pulitzer Prize.

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The New York Times
April 20, 2008
Message Machine Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
By DAVID BARSTOW

. . . To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, . . .

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. . . .

Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon’s campaign have never been disclosed. But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings [for TV military analysts], trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation.

These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated. . . .

On Tuesday, April 18, some 17 analysts assembled at the Pentagon with Mr. Rumsfeld and General Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. . . . [these talking points were emphasized for the use by the military TV analysts]

“Focus on the Global War on Terror — not simply Iraq. The wider war — the long war.”

“Link Iraq to Iran. Iran is the concern. If we fail in Iraq or Afghanistan, it will help Iran.”

But if Mr. Rumsfeld found the session instructive, at least one participant, General Nash, the ABC analyst, was repulsed.

“I walked away from that session having total disrespect for my fellow commentators, with perhaps one or two exceptions,” he said. . . .

In an interview, General Marks said it was no secret at CNN that his job at McNeil Technologies was about winning contracts. “I mean, that’s what McNeil does,” he said.

General Marks said his work on the contract did not affect his commentary on CNN. “I’ve got zero challenge separating myself from a business interest,” he said.

But CNN said it had no idea about his role in the contract until July 2007, when it reviewed his most recent disclosure form, submitted months earlier, and finally made inquiries about his new job.

“We saw the extent of his dealings and determined at that time we should end our relationship with him,” CNN said.

CBS News declined to comment on what it knew about its military analysts’ business affiliations or what steps it took to guard against potential conflicts.

NBC News also declined to discuss its procedures for hiring and monitoring military analysts. The network issued a short statement: “We have clear policies in place to assure that the people who appear on our air have been appropriately vetted and that nothing in their profile would lead to even a perception of a conflict of interest.”

Jeffrey W. Schneider, a spokesman for ABC , said that while the network’s military consultants were not held to the same ethical rules as its full-time journalists, they were expected to keep the network informed about any outside business entanglements. “We make it clear to them we expect them to keep us closely apprised,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Fox News said executives “refused to participate” in this article.”

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These brief excerpts only scratch the surface of this report.
Again, read the full report, complete with names and pictures of your favorite TV Majors, Colonels and Generals (retired, and usually working in the lucrative military contracts business) Go here:
The New York Times

WAR -- The Money [Part 16]

The economy of Iraq is in ruins. Reading this story about a brave and very persistent Iraqi businessman is bitter sweet. His life is changed forever, nothing the United States does or doesn’t do can change that. Our contribution to change in Iraq has already been made. It has been a disaster. China sees the writing on the wall. The Bush/McCain war, with its no end-game strategy, remains a policy of arrogant blindness.
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The New York Times
April 15, 2008
Devising Survival at Factory in Iraq
By JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD — Before April 2003, when the maze of crooked lanes that branch away from Rasheed Street downtown were crammed with hundreds of small leather goods factories, Hassan Attiya, now 43, designed fancy women’s shoes under his signature “Cowboy” label. And his workers manufactured and sold them by the thousands.

Now Mr. Attiya, humbled by security fears, the shuttering of Iraqi tanning factories that provided his raw materials and an avalanche of cheap imports from China and Syria since the invasion, hangs on in a crumbling former dentist’s office with a handful of workers.

If all that were not crushing enough, as widespread violence generated by fighting in the south last month forced Mr. Attiya to close his factory, policemen in Baghdad stopped a car carrying goods he had ordered from Syria. The policemen said they were looking for weaponry, but when the search was over a package containing good-quality faux diamonds for his shoes had vanished. It was worth $1,200, perhaps a quarter of Mr. Attiya’s working capital.

“Wallahi,” Mr. Attiya said in an Arabic expression of woe. “The business is not as it used to be. It is like the survival of the fittest.” . . .

The hard realities of the shoe business have forced some former factory owners to adapt in a way that pains even themselves: turning to the import trade. One of them is Haider H. Jawad al-Madamgha, 46, who shut his factory when the cost for generator fuel became too high and who now makes regular trips to China to order the shoes that sit atop boxes behind the plate-glass windows of his Rasheed Street shop. He does not deny that many of his former colleagues regard him as something of a turncoat.

“That is right,” Mr. Madamgha said of the influence of his trade. “By importing Chinese shoes, in a way we are destroying the Iraqi industry.”

But Mr. Madamgha noted that everyone needs shoes, and that Iraqi factories are no longer capable of keeping up with that demand, even if they all work at full capacity. And he called upon another market truism to justify his move.

“If I stop importing Chinese shoes, then Iraqi shoes would be $100 a pair,” Mr. Madamgha said, before offering a visitor tea.

HERE for full article.

WAR -- The Money [Part 15]

As stated a number of times in these reports on "The Money," there is no real way to draw a firm line between the human costs and the dollar costs of this war. Lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan are beyond replacing. The dollars that we throw into the bottomless pit of national debt are only dollars. But there is no denying that those lives and those dollars could do and pay for much of what life in America and the world needs desperately. It's a form of double waste and it's enormous in size.

This breaking story brings together the tragic human cost of the war with a possible price tag (probably under-estimated) tied to it. What it does not spell out in detail are the human and material costs to a nation when so many of your finest and their families are tied to pain and suffering for years, possibly lifetimes. What is lost due to these injuries can never be added up on a spread sheet. Angry artists--poets, novelists, musicians, film makers and others--will be trying to provide an understanding of these losses and costs for decades to come.

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Nearly 1 in 5 Iraq Vets Reports Signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
April 17, 2008

The first large-scale, nongovernmental assessment of the psychological needs of U.S. troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past six years finds that 20 percent of military troops who have returned from war—some 300,000 total—report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression. Slightly more than half have sought treatment, according to the study by Rand.

Rand researchers estimate that PTSD and depression among returning U.S. troops will cost America some $5.2 billion in the first two years after their return. Since 2001, about 1.6 million U.S. troops have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan.

According to the study, early evidence suggests that the psychological toll of the deployments may be disproportionately high compared with the physical injuries.

Researchers surveyed 1,965 U.S. troops across the country. Half said they had a friend who was seriously wounded or killed, 45 percent said they saw dead or seriously injured civilians, and over 10 percent said they were personally injured and required hospitalization.

—Anna Mulrine

U. S. News