Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
June 04, 2007

Iraq Outlook

The NYT reports on the progress of the "surge":

The American assessment, completed in late May, found that American and Iraqi forces were able to “protect the population” and “maintain physical influence over” only 146 of the 457 Baghdad neighborhoods.

In the remaining 311 neighborhoods, troops have either not begun operations aimed at rooting out insurgents or still face “resistance,” according to the one-page assessment, which was provided to The New York Times and summarized reports from brigade and battalion commanders in Baghdad.

The U.S. is only able to hold a third of Baghdad. But the NYT gives some false hope:

The last remaining American units in the troop increase are just now arriving.

But it neglects to say that the last arriving brigade is the 3rd Infantry Division's Combat Aviation Brigade with lots of helicopters but no feet on the ground. They may shoot up another primary school, but are not of much use for holding ground.

The number of troops could still be increased, but only by prolonging tours for GIs already in Iraq.

As others have pointed out here, U.S. General Sanchez and U.K. General Rose both assert that victory is impossible, a stalemate the best possible outcome and a defeat the most likely.

To hold more of Baghdad many more troops are needed. Baghdad by now has probably some 5 million inhabitants left, down from 6.5 millions before the war. A decent counterinsurgency rate would be one trooper for each 50 inhabitants. But currently there are only some 30,000 U.S. soldiers in Baghdad, less than half of those actually on the streets, plus an unreliable auxiliary force of some 20,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen.

"Clear and hold" is not achievable if the "hold"-forces are much smaller than the "clear"-force. Therefore this obviously does not pan out:

The battalion’s troops, augmented by more than 2,000 soldiers in armored Stryker vehicles, went block by block through the neighborhood, arresting suspected insurgents and destroying arms caches.

But since the Stryker unit has moved on to a different area of Baghdad, “there’s been a reinfiltration” by Shiite fighters and intimidation squads, who had left the area when the operation began, said Capt. Tim Wright, the company commander responsible for the neighborhood.

Where to go from here?

Over the next six month the insurgents will more and more unite against the occupation. There are already signs of Shia and Sunni cooperation in Diyala province north of Baghdad. The recent announcement of long term "Korea like" U.S. intentions will accelerate the process.

The small U.S. Forward Operation Bases (FOBs) will come under continues attacks, some will be overrun and with rising casualties the U.S. troops will retreat to the bigger bases. There is little chance that these big bases can be attacked by direct force. But they can be suffocated by cutting through their supply lines.

Already bridges seem to be a prefered target. The airforce will of course "guarantee" that it can supply the bases by air transport. Goering also promissed to do so for the enclosed Germans at Stalingrad.

There are a few wild cards. The U.S. might try to kill al-Sadr, currently the most likely attraction point for a united national insurgency. Turkey, already shelling accross the border, may be pushed by its right wing military into a deeper incursion into Iraq. As the U.S. has recently transfered responsibility in north Iraq to the Kurds, it may just wash its hands in innocence over this, but doing so will certainly not gain favor with the Kurdish fractions.

The biggest wild card is still Cheney's attempt to start a war with Iran. Any 9/11 like domestic incident or any serious naval accident near Iran may generate sufficient support for such a campaign. If that happens, all bets are off.

Posted by b on June 4, 2007 at 11:15 UTC | Permalink

Comments

On Turkey's problem: Needed in Iraqi Kurdistan: Charm offensive

For all these reasons, the Iraq dossier has come to represent the Turkish government's Achilles' heel. It is vulnerable to accusations of being soft on Iraqi Kurds, the US and the PKK presence in Iraq. Unable to undermine its overwhelming parliamentary majority, the anti-AKP establishment has tried to force the government's hand to initiate some kind of cross-border military operation against the express will of the US military in Iraq and Iraqi Kurds.

The Turkish government - especially Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan - has contributed to these tensions by adopting a combative stance of its own. Erdogan, to protect his nationalist flank, has publicly said Turkey will not remain a spectator to events in Kirkuk, thereby raising the specter of an intervention and outpacing the military.

The Kurds have assumed erroneously that their privileged position in Iraq protects them from the vagaries of both US and Turkish policies. Barzani's discourse has had an inflammatory impact on the Turkish domestic political scene, and Washington not only has to impress on the Kurds the precariousness of their current situation but also make use of its considerable influence with the KRG to change its tactics.

The KRG's strategic imperative requires it to get along with Ankara, and it is in serious need of a "charm offensive" there.

That "charm offensive" is unlikely to happen, so I expect some fighting in northern Iraq pretty soon.

Posted by: b | Jun 4 2007 16:07 utc | 1

i am not hopeful at all. the news of 2000(i am sure it is many more) confirmed civilian deaths in baghdad last month it hideous. i believe this framing of the escalation as a 'surge' to 'protect' citizens is total bs. i imagine things are going to be getting much much worse and we are approaching full scale military battles w/multiple air bombings etc. this is a nightmare.

Posted by: annie | Jun 4 2007 16:10 utc | 2

Here is another contribution from a skeptic military man:

Iraq Surge is a Slippery Slope

Posted by: Bea | Jun 4 2007 18:02 utc | 3

The Destruction of Iraqi Healthcare Infrastructure

Reproduced in full below.

Ten thousand doctors have fled the country. Two thousand have been killed. Some hospitals lack the rudimentary elements of care: hygiene, clean water, antibiotics, anesthetics and other basic drugs. Oxygen, gauze, rubber gloves, and diagnostic instruments such as X-rays are absent or rarely evident. This is Iraq today.

Before Iraq suffered through an embargo and two wars with the United States starting in 1990, its healthcare system was considered one of the best in the Middle East. Iraq had well-trained physicians and modern facilities. Today, the healthcare system barely exists at all, with few healthcare workers and hospitals that are battlegrounds.

According to Save the Children, an independent non-profit humanitarian organization, in 2005, 122,000 Iraqi children died before they reached their fifth birthday. Since 1990, there has been a 150 percent increase in the mortality rate for Iraqi children. The under-5 mortality rate per one thousand live births in Iraq is 125; in Egypt it is just 33. Iraq’s record in children’s healthcare now ranks in the bottom three countries in the world.

With the current conditions of Iraq at war, the death statistics continue to spiral upward. The diseases of the developing world are affecting Iraq’s children – pneumonia and diarrhea. Malnutrition is wreaking havoc with the growth of Iraq’s next generation. The London Guardian reports that in addition to these many physical traumas, millions of Iraqi children have been psychologically traumatized by the war.

The body count estimates of Iraqi deaths are often cited to be over one hundred thousand. From this number one can estimate that the number of injured and disabled Iraqis must be in the hundreds of thousands. While there are no definitive data on Iraqi adult patients seeking medical help, one recent report from the Washington Post notes that the thousands of injured Iraqi security forces have no place to go for immediate treatment and no long term rehabilitation for their loss of limbs or other physical injuries. This lack of treatment for Iraqi patients is surpassed only by the lack of psychiatric and psychological treatment. Compounded by the inherent societal stigma associated with mental illness (which is prevalent even in developed countries such as ours), these Iraqis endure suffering beyond our western comprehension of the recovering soldier or child.

Nearly one billion dollars has been allotted for healthcare reconstruction. While that seems like a sum large enough to fix the problems, no one really knows where that money has gone. The healthcare infrastructure in general is crumbling. Ordering anything for healthcare facilities takes months upon months. Hospital buildings remain in disrepair. The inflow of new doctors is down to a trickle. Many teaching hospitals are not functioning for lack of teaching physicians. Most of these faculties of the medical school have fled the country for fear for their lives. This is compounded by the fact that many medical students either are leaving the country or changing their course of study to other fields.

What is even worse and inhumane is that patients in hospitals are not safe – they are potential hostages for kidnapping and murder. As a result, many injured Iraqis do not seek hospitalization for either fear from insurgents or sometimes arrest by Iraqi or U.S. forces. No one respects the sanctity of hospitals in violation of the Geneva Convention.

International law places the burden of maintaining order, safety, and well-being of an occupied nation on the shoulders of the occupying power. Our political and military leaders estimate the number of our soldiers that will die or be injured due to an invasion. However, an additional element our leaders need to consider is the well-being of the nation we conquer. The human suffering of the invaded nation is detriment to our moral standing in the world.

Adil E. Shamoo born and raised in Baghdad is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. He writes on ethics and public policy and can be reached at: [email protected].

This is nothing less than "patria-cide" -- the deliberate and utter destruction of a country ("patria") and a people. Bordering very very closely on genocide. Do any Americans really fully understand the extent of what we have wrought?

Posted by: Bea | Jun 4 2007 18:20 utc | 4

the 'surge', will of course do nothing except augment the murder of innocents

as a military strategy - it was doomed to failure because there was always going to be a corresponding centring of the resistance which day by day develops both force & concentration

as someone else has posted - it is murder common murder that will increase - what the world does not see are the continual aerial bombardment - which despite illusions to targeting - kills inevitablly - innocents

but then the u s, never saw the people of iraq as innocents, as they never saw the people of vietnam as innocents or the people of chile. their murder is of no consequence to war planners & practitioners. it is evidently of no concern to the media who mourn only their own (& then with difficulty) & unfortuantely the people of the u s who are not being bombed cannot feel the skin searing of the soverign nation of iraq

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 4 2007 18:21 utc | 5

The surge has added a major load to logistical support, and shortages of some types of food are already showing up in the Green Zone and at some of our permanent bases.

What will happen when the British simply leave by this Christmas, 2007, as they are openly discussing and planning on doing (under Blair's replacement).

The British hold the southern half of Iraq, and keep the trucking lanes open.

The entire American occupation runs on water, fuel and food and ammo, almost all of it trucked up from Kuwait. What will become of the occupation when there's not much of the above coming in?

Oh, well. The troops can always go native, I suppose.

Posted by: Antifa | Jun 4 2007 19:42 utc | 6

@6:

there is always KBR ... they'll be there for you ....

KBR Announces First Quarter Results

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=198137&p=irol-IRHome

Posted by: dolce | Jun 4 2007 20:13 utc | 7

All military matters, as all civil matters, will suffer sea change 7/7/07.

"others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism where they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves" http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/usa/1997/bmd970429d.htm>said then Defense Secretary William S. Cohen on 4/28/97.

Combine this with inevitability of earthquakes under lessening ice in melting parts of Arctic & Antarctic and decades of ignorance of same by Gore,Greenpeace, Sierra Club etc. and Gore's 24 hour concerts projected/expected ("planned" is different) worldwide on Sabbath 7/7/07.
Here's http://www.liveearth.org/sign_up.php>countdown to midnight of date.

Posted by: plushtown | Jun 4 2007 20:34 utc | 8

7/7/07 is just a date on the calendar and I seriously doubt anyone is remotely altering anything - too much energy required

Posted by: jcairo | Jun 4 2007 22:31 utc | 9

Ol' Joe Hill (RIP) on when the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGplXWiY-Lc&mode=related&search=>TWO SEVENS CLASH.

Posted by: anna missed | Jun 4 2007 22:35 utc | 10

joe hill

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 4 2007 23:38 utc | 11

Kurdish rebels attack Turkish outpost

Kurdish rebels fired rockets and grenades at a Turkish military outpost Monday, killing seven soldiers in an attack that heightened tension at a time when Ankara has threatened military action against the rebels in northern Iraq.

The army sent helicopter gunships and reinforcements to Tunceli province in southeastern Turkey after two guerrillas rammed a vehicle into the military post, threw hand grenades and opened fire with automatic weapons, the governor's office said.

Soldiers returned fire, killing one attacker who authorities said had explosives strapped to his body. Local media said the second attacker escaped injured.

Several other guerrillas simultaneously opened fire on the outpost from a nearby forest, the governor's office said. The attack left seven soldiers dead and seven injured. One of the injured was in critical condition, authorities said.

The Turkish "answer" will not be pretty ...

Posted by: b | Jun 5 2007 7:41 utc | 12

U.S. Doubles Air Attacks in Iraq

Four years into the war that opened with ''shock and awe,'' U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago.
...
In the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to U.S. Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press.
...
At the same time, the number of civilian Iraqi casualties from U.S. airstrikes appears to have risen sharply, according to Iraq Body Count, a London-based, anti-war research group that maintains a database compiling news media reports on Iraqi war deaths.

The rate of such reported civilian deaths appeared to climb steadily through 2006, the group reports, averaging just a few a month in early 2006, hitting some 40 a month by year's end, and averaging more than 50 a month so far this year.

Those are maximum tolls based on news reports, and they count those killed by Army helicopter fire as well as by warplanes, Iraq Body Count's John Sloboda said. The count is regarded as conservative, since it doesn't include deaths missed by the international media.
...
Air Force figures show that, after the thousands of bombs and missiles used in the 2003 ''shock and awe'' invasion, U.S. airpower settled down to a slow bombing pace: 285 munitions dropped in 2004, 404 in 2005 and 229 in 2006, totals that don't include warplanes' often-devastating 20mm and 30mm cannon or rocket fire, or Marine Corps aircraft.
...
Air attacks in Iraq are still relatively low compared with the numbers of weapons dropped in Afghanistan -- 929 this year as of May 15.

Posted by: b | Jun 5 2007 20:44 utc | 13

b,

I thought there was suppose to be a new counterinsurgency plan in effect -- wasn't this suppose to be Petreaus's new hearts&minds easy on the locals offensive? Just goes to show that even the latest "best&brightest" great white hope can't resist the temptation of cutting the left hand off with the right.

It was his call, right? To double the the bomb tonnage dropped on Iraqi civilian infrastructure.

Posted by: anna missed | Jun 5 2007 23:05 utc | 14

What If Our Mercenaries Turn On Us?

...
The privatization of war hands an incentive to American corporations, many with tremendous political clout, to keep us mired down in Iraq. But even more disturbing is the steady rise of this modern Praetorian Guard. The Praetorian Guard in ancient Rome was a paramilitary force that defied legal constraints, made violence part of the political discourse, and eventually plunged the Roman Republic into tyranny and despotism. Despotic movements need paramilitary forces that operate outside the law, forces that sow fear among potential opponents, and are capable of physically silencing those branded by their leaders as traitors. And in the wrong hands, a Blackwater could well become that force.
...

Posted by: Alamet | Jun 5 2007 23:56 utc | 15

This is the End?

Iraqi lawmakers pass resolution that may force end of occupation this year.

Posted by: beq | Jun 6 2007 1:41 utc | 16

From a comment: Explaining Iraq's New Hydrocarbon Law"...

Posted by: beq | Jun 6 2007 1:58 utc | 17

b-, Ask & you shall receive. P.C. Roberts 6/6 post is a must read on precisely this subject.

...

After five years of war the U.S. controls one-third of one city and nothing else.

...

Col. Andy Bacevich, America's foremost writer on military affairs, documents in the current issue of The American Conservative that Bush's insane war has depleted and exhausted the U.S. Army and Marine Corps:

...

There is no equipment for training. Bacevich reports that "some $212 billion worth has been destroyed, damaged, or just plain worn out." What remains is in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Under these circumstances, "staying the course" means total defeat.


Even the neoconservative warmongers, who deceived Americans with the promise of a "cakewalk war" that would be over in six weeks, believe that the war is lost. But they have not given up. They have a last desperate plan: Bomb Iran. ...
If You Think Bush Is Evil Now, Wait Until He Nukes Iran

It's easier to read the original that a long excerpt here. The gist is that bombing Iran will lead to complete defeat in Iraq, which they'll avert by nuking Iran to convince Muslims they must cower before xAm. force. Military aghast at the war crimes being contemplated, but Cheney telling Bush it's his only hope of avoid "losing a war".

{Yippee ... bloggers beloved JackAss Party, supposedly elected last fall to "end the war" is completely complicit. God knows how anyone got the idea that they had any interest whatever in having Am. forces leave all that yummy oil, etc. behind, but that's for another day...}

Posted by: jj | Jun 6 2007 7:50 utc | 18

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