Death
Toll Rises As
Iraq War Grinds On
By James Cogan
07 December 2006
World
Socialist Web
As
the bipartisan Iraq Study Group issues its report to President Bush,
and Republicans and Democrats come together to endorse former CIA director
Robert Gates as the administration’s new defence secretary, the
implications of the consensus to continue the Iraq war are underscored
by the ongoing fighting and slaughter of both Iraqis and American troops.
In the first five days of
December, 17 US soldiers have been killed and at least 130 wounded,
pushing the overall US death toll in Iraq past 2,900. US casualties
since the March 20, 2003 invasion now stand at 2,907 dead, 21,572 wounded
in action and a further 24,565 injured in non-hostile incidents or evacuated
due to disease. These figures do not include the tens of thousands of
veterans who have sought treatment for psychological conditions or succumbed
to illnesses since their return from the Middle East.
The US military is continuing
to suffer heavy casualties in Iraq’s western Anbar province. Ten
soldiers and marines have died there so far this month. Two marines
were killed on Saturday by hostile fire in Fallujah, the Sunni Arab
city where the Bush administration and the US military have repeatedly
claimed to have destroyed the anti-occupation resistance. Deflating
the propaganda, a Marine Corp report released in August declared that
“the social and political situation has deteriorated to a point”
where the occupation troops were “no longer capable of militarily
defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar”.
Over the weekend, a representative
of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, which was illegalised by the
US occupation and leads much of the insurgency in western Iraq, declared
from Syria there would be no negotiated settlement to end the fighting
unless a withdrawal of all American troops were announced. The spokesman,
identified as Khudiar al-Murshidi, a leading health official under Hussein’s
regime, told Associated Press: “We have made clear that this is
not a picnic. The Americans did not take a simple thing from us... They
have stolen our country and killed our people.”
The desperate position of
the US forces in Anbar was highlighted in mid-November by the deployment
of 2,200 marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit to the provincial
capital, Ramadi. The unit was a “reserve” force for the
US occupation, kept on ships in the Persian Gulf for use in emergency
circumstances.
The broader crisis of the
US occupation arising from the intractable character of the Iraqi resistance
is reflected in the death of four marines on Sunday in the crash landing
by a Sea Knight twin-rotor helicopter on the shores of an Anbar province
lake. The US military has blamed mechanical problems, not the actions
of insurgents. As an article in the Washington Post revealed yesterday,
American troops are at heightened risk of death or injury in such accidents
due to the run-down maintenance and over-use of aircraft, vehicles and
other equipment in Iraq.
The Post reported: “Helicopters
are flying two or three times their planned usage rates. Tank crews
are driving more than 4,000 miles a year—five times the normal
rate. Truck fleets that convoy supplies down Iraq’s bomb-laden
roads are running at six times the planned mileage, according to Army
data.” The US military is now spending $17 billion per year to
replace or repair equipment, compared with $2.5 to $3 billion before
the war.
Despite having thousands
of vehicles in warehouses awaiting repair, Army maintenance depots are
working at half-capacity due to a lack of funding. Maintenance and supply
is so far behind requirements that numerous units based in the US are
now rated as “unready” for deployment due to lack of equipment.
Inevitably, units will be deployed into combat zones with equipment
that a US officer described to the Post as “at the far end of
its expected life”.
Heavy fighting is taking
place in other Sunni Arab cities and towns. American troops have been
killed in Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, while the nearby town
of Siniya, near Samarra, was placed under siege on Thursday due to the
stepped-up operations of insurgents. Iraqi government troops opened
fire yesterday on local people demonstrating against the shortages of
food, water and medical supplies. The US military has also launched
an offensive to take back from guerillas control of Baqubah, just 55
kilometres from Baghdad.
As the insurgency against
US troops rages in the predominantly Sunni Arab provinces of western
and central Iraq, the bloody civil war between Sunni opponents of the
occupation and the Shiite fundamentalist parties that dominate the pro-US
Iraqi government is escalating with each passing month. Alongside rival
militias, the vacuum created by the collapse of any semblance of law
or security in Baghdad and other cities is being filled by warlords
and crime syndicates.
The victims are the Iraqi
people. Last month, the UN released its estimate that 3,709 men, women
and children were killed during October—the highest official monthly
toll since the 2003 invasion. The scale of the killing is such that
even Kofi Annan, the outgoing UN secretary-general, felt compelled to
reject the Bush administration’s claims that there is no civil
war in Iraq. “When we had the strife in Lebanon and other places,
we called that a civil war; this is much worse,” he told the BBC,
adding that Iraqis were “right” who said they were better
off under Saddam Hussein.
All indications suggest that
the death toll in November was even higher than the October record.
According to Iraqi interior ministry statistics, at least 1,850 Iraqi
civilians were killed in November, a 44 percent increase over October.
The ministry only counts deaths in what it classifies as violent attacks.
It does not count “criminal deaths”—a broad category
that includes the dozens of bodies discovered every day of suspected
death squad victims. Many of these killing squads are allegedly operated
by Shiite factions within interior ministry itself.
The carnage continues. Each
day this week, the bodies of 40 to 50 people have been found in the
street, bound, tortured and shot. Car bombs detonated on Saturday in
the shopping area of a Shiite district of Baghdad, killing 51 people
and wounding 90. Just nine days earlier, more than 200 were slaughtered
by coordinated car bombs in Sadr City, a major Baghdad Shiite suburb.
The editorial of the Iraqi
newspaper Azzaman commented on Monday: “Every one of the nearly
six million people of Baghdad has a horrendous story to tell. Shiites
kill Sunnis, rebels kill Americans and Iraqi troops, US and Iraqi troops
kill rebels and civilians and so forth. Baghdad has become a killing
ground... Reports of killings, kidnappings and bullet-riddled bodies
dumped in public places and streets keep pouring into the newspapers.
If published, they would fill the news pages of Azzaman each day.”
Despite the catastrophe facing
the Iraqi masses and US occupation forces, both parties of the American
elite have made clear they will continue the war. The will of the American
people, expressed in their repudiation of the militarist policies of
the Bush administration in the congressional election, is being treated
with contempt. The concern of both Republicans and Democrats is to make
tactical changes to ensure the US occupation continues and the real
aims of the war—dominating the country’s territory and vast
oil resources—are realised.
Republican powerbroker James
Baker, who co-chairs the Iraq Study Group (ISG) with Democrat Lee Hamilton,
has already stated that US withdrawal from Iraq is “not an option”.
Whatever its exact recommendations, the ISG report due out today is
predicated on American troops remaining in Iraq for the indefinite future.
In fact, the most likely outcome of the bipartisan discussions on a
“change of course” in Iraq is an increase in US troop numbers.
Likewise, Robert Gates, who
was a member of the ISG, declared during formal questioning on Tuesday
before the Senate Armed Services Committee that any withdrawal of US
troops from Iraq was conditional on the Bush administration’s
agenda being “successful”. No Democrat challenged his statement
and the committee unanimously endorsed his installation as defence secretary.
The White House has already
put into motion plans for a brutal crackdown to silence the Shiite movement
of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has steadily built mass support through
his demand for a timetable for the withdrawal of all American forces.
An unnamed US intelligence official told the Washington Post late last
month that support for the Sadrists had grown to such an extent that,
were elections held, they would “sweep most of the south and also
take Baghdad”. The Sadrist militia, the Mahdi Army, is now assessed
to number between 40,000 and 60,000 and to be more motivated than the
American-created Iraqi forces.
US forces are steadily being
prepared for an offensive against Sadr City, the Mahdi Army stronghold
in Baghdad. At the end of November, the US military announced that the
3rd Stryker Brigade is moving to Baghdad from the northern city of Mosul
to join the 4th Brigade of the Texas-based 1st Cavalry Division and
replace an Alaskan-based Stryker brigade which is returning to the US
after a 16-month deployment. Overall US troop numbers in the capital
have been beefed up to over 15,000.
With Iraqi deaths already
estimated at around 650,000 and the American death toll moving toward
3,000, the US ruling elite’s actions will necessarily intensify
the violence in Iraq, resulting in even greater casualties.
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