Jennet Conant
Boston Globe
28 April 2005
Some deaths mark the end of an era, as with the passing of kings, presidents, and certain beloved pop stars, but seldom do they signal the end of a particular species, the last of their kind.
With the passing of Philip Morrison last Friday, however, so close on the heels of Hans Bethe and Robert Bacher, science has lost the last of the brilliant atomic pioneers who developed the first nuclear bomb, felt the blast of the terrifying test explosion at Trinity, and bore witness to the moral upheaval and unprecedented threat posed by the fiery display of force on that gray New Mexico morning on July 16, 1945.
Forged in the heat of that indelible explosion and the horrifying
destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a month later,
Morrison, like many of his Los Alamos colleagues, became a leading advocate of international arms control and a vigorous critic of the political and military leaders he had faithfully served.
He belonged to a generation of outspoken citizen scientists who came of age before the nuclear transformation of warfare, the repressive
politics of the Cold War, and the reliance of university research
laboratories on military funding. The chastening example of Los
Alamos's controversial director, J. Robert Oppenheimer -- who was investigated by the FBI for more than a decade before his opposition to the hydrogen bomb led to a humiliating hearing and his security clearance being revoked -- has stood for five decades as a lesson to scientists to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. Today it would be regarded as foolhardy for any ambitious young physicist to be an outspoken critic of US nuclear policy. Not surprisingly, few dissenting voices are heard.
Perhaps Morrison's passionate commitment to public life belonged to a
time when American scientists' experience of war was not limited to a
televised demonstration of shock and awe. Morrison was one of a handful of atomic experts sent to Japan to inspect the damage inflicted by their awesome new weaponry, and he accepted the assignment with the sense that he was completing his ''long witness to the entire tragedy," from the bomb's creation to its dreadful execution.
He traveled across the flattened country by train and saw cities large and small left in smoldering ruins by raids of up to 1,000 B-29
bombers. In Hiroshima he saw hundreds of wounded lying along the railway platform and realized that most of them would eventually die from radiation sickness.
''Yet there on the ground, among all those who had cruelly suffered and died, there was not all that much difference between old fire and new," he wrote. ''Both ways brought unimaginable inferno." The real difference was less in the nature or scale of the destruction than in the ease of the new kind of war and ''the chilling fact" that a single bomb could take out a good-sized city.
Morrison's death, along with that of the other Los Alamos veterans,
leaves not only a void but a troubling silence. Scientists have become a quiet, docile lot, and it has been left to the Los Alamos dragons like Morrison to have the temerity to say again and again what they first warned of as far back as August 1945.
''Secrecy will not defend us, for skill and atoms are everywhere,"
Morrison wrote in Scientific American in August 1995, reaffirming views he held to be as right today as they were at the end of the war. ''No defenses are likely to make up for the enormous energy release; it will never be practical to intercept every bomb, and even a few can bring grave disaster. No likely working margin of technical superiority will defend us, either, for even a smaller nuclear force can wreak its intolerable damage."
Morrison remained convinced that the idealistic goal of Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr was still the only viable course of action: a comprehensive international control pact for nuclear weapons. He was not naive about the diplomatic challenges involved in achieving such an agreement, and he resolutely continued to fight an against-the-tide battle for disarmament. ''The task is not simple," he wrote, ''but was any international goal more important than securing the future against nuclear war?"
Jennet Conant is the author of ''109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer
and the Secret City of Los Alamos," due to be published next week.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Jennet Conant. "Last of the outspoken scientists",Boston Globe, 28 April 2005.
This site is designed for use by researchers, educators, and students who seek access to its 2000+ military policy articles for research and/or educational purposes. Provided on a not-for-profit basis per 'fair use' rules.
28 April 2005
27 April 2005
World Terror Attacks Tripled in 2004 by U.S. Count
Arshad Mohammed
Reuters
26 April 2005.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. count of major world terrorist attacks more than tripled in 2004, a rise that may revive debate on whether the Bush administration is winning the war on terrorism, congressional aides said on Tuesday.
The number of "significant" international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed on the numbers by State Department and intelligence officials on Monday.
The aides were told the surge partly reflected an increased tally of violence in Kashmir, which is claimed by India and Pakistan, and the devotion of more manpower to U.S. monitoring efforts, which resulted in more attacks being counted overall.
The State Department last year initially released erroneous figures that understated the attacks, fatalities and casualties in 2003 and used the figures to claim the Bush administration was prevailing in the war on terrorism.
It later said the number killed and injured in 2003 was more than double its original count and said "significant" terrorist attacks --those that kill or seriously injure someone, cause more than $10,000 in damage or attempt to do either of those things -- rose to a 20-year high of 175.
The State Department last week unleashed a new debate about the numbers by saying it would no longer release them in its annual terrorism report but that the newly created National Counterterrorism Center that compiles the data would do so.
A spokesman for the CIA, which is handling media inquiries for the NCTC, last week said no decisions had been made although other officials expected the data to be made public.
Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, wrote to Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday asking her to release the data.
"The large increases in terrorist attacks reported in 2004 may undermine administration claims of success in the war on terror, but political inconvenience has never been a legitimate basis for withholding facts from the American people," Waxman said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.
Former intelligence official Larry Johnson last week first disclosed the 2004 increase in his Web log, saying the 2004 numbers would rise at least 655 from about 172 in 2003.
Waxman's letter said that of the about 650 significant attacks last year, about 300 reflected violence in India and Pakistan, leaving some 350 attacks elsewhere in the world -- double the total 2003 count.
He suggested this reflected enhanced U.S. efforts to monitor media reports of violence, thereby leading to the identification of "many more attacks in India and Pakistan related to Kashmir."
Congressional aides said about 10 full-time employees worked on the 2004 count, up from about three in past years, and that this produced a more complete count.
"What it effectively means is that the Bush administration and the CIA haven't been putting the staff resources necessary and have missed 80 percent of the world's terrorist incidents" in past years, said a Democratic congressional aide. "How can you have an effective counterterrorism policy from that?"
A Republican congressional aide said it would be unfair of Democrats to claim terrorism was getting worse under the Bush administration, stressing that the 2004 and 2003 numbers were not counted in the same way and hence were not comparable.
"That is a conclusion that cannot be drawn because we have no baseline and certainly last year's revised numbers offer no accurate baseline of the universe of terrorist incidents," he said. "Without that you cannot reach an accurate conclusion."
-------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Arshad Mohammed. "World Terror Attacks Tripled in 2004 by U.S. Count", Reuters, 26 April 2005. Original URL:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8301203
Reuters
26 April 2005.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. count of major world terrorist attacks more than tripled in 2004, a rise that may revive debate on whether the Bush administration is winning the war on terrorism, congressional aides said on Tuesday.
The number of "significant" international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed on the numbers by State Department and intelligence officials on Monday.
The aides were told the surge partly reflected an increased tally of violence in Kashmir, which is claimed by India and Pakistan, and the devotion of more manpower to U.S. monitoring efforts, which resulted in more attacks being counted overall.
The State Department last year initially released erroneous figures that understated the attacks, fatalities and casualties in 2003 and used the figures to claim the Bush administration was prevailing in the war on terrorism.
It later said the number killed and injured in 2003 was more than double its original count and said "significant" terrorist attacks --those that kill or seriously injure someone, cause more than $10,000 in damage or attempt to do either of those things -- rose to a 20-year high of 175.
The State Department last week unleashed a new debate about the numbers by saying it would no longer release them in its annual terrorism report but that the newly created National Counterterrorism Center that compiles the data would do so.
A spokesman for the CIA, which is handling media inquiries for the NCTC, last week said no decisions had been made although other officials expected the data to be made public.
Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, wrote to Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday asking her to release the data.
"The large increases in terrorist attacks reported in 2004 may undermine administration claims of success in the war on terror, but political inconvenience has never been a legitimate basis for withholding facts from the American people," Waxman said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.
Former intelligence official Larry Johnson last week first disclosed the 2004 increase in his Web log, saying the 2004 numbers would rise at least 655 from about 172 in 2003.
Waxman's letter said that of the about 650 significant attacks last year, about 300 reflected violence in India and Pakistan, leaving some 350 attacks elsewhere in the world -- double the total 2003 count.
He suggested this reflected enhanced U.S. efforts to monitor media reports of violence, thereby leading to the identification of "many more attacks in India and Pakistan related to Kashmir."
Congressional aides said about 10 full-time employees worked on the 2004 count, up from about three in past years, and that this produced a more complete count.
"What it effectively means is that the Bush administration and the CIA haven't been putting the staff resources necessary and have missed 80 percent of the world's terrorist incidents" in past years, said a Democratic congressional aide. "How can you have an effective counterterrorism policy from that?"
A Republican congressional aide said it would be unfair of Democrats to claim terrorism was getting worse under the Bush administration, stressing that the 2004 and 2003 numbers were not counted in the same way and hence were not comparable.
"That is a conclusion that cannot be drawn because we have no baseline and certainly last year's revised numbers offer no accurate baseline of the universe of terrorist incidents," he said. "Without that you cannot reach an accurate conclusion."
-------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Arshad Mohammed. "World Terror Attacks Tripled in 2004 by U.S. Count", Reuters, 26 April 2005. Original URL:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8301203
Philip Morrison, 89, Builder of First Atom Bomb, Dies
Dennis Overbye
April 26, 2005
Dr. Philip Morrison, who helped assemble the first atomic bomb with his own hands, and then campaigned for the rest of his life against weapons that could deliver such devastation, died Friday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 89.
He died in his sleep, his family said.
In four decades as a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Morrison was known as a spellbinding speaker and an inspirational popularizer of science, the original teacher of "physics for poets." He was known to the public though his PBS series "The Ring of Truth," and for a long-running and prolific stint as the book reviewer for Scientific American.
Among his legacies is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which sprang from a short paper in Nature that he wrote in 1959 with his colleague, Dr. Giuseppe Cocconi, at Cornell.
Dr. Charles Weiner, a historian of science at M.I.T., said, "The world has lost one of the major voices of social conscience in science."
On Dr. Morrison's 60th birthday, in 1975, Victor Weisskopf, another M.I.T. professor, said, "Nobody else has better demonstrated, or rather embodied, what it means to the human soul to perceive or recognize a new scientific discovery or a new theoretical insight."
In 1945, Dr. Morrison was among the scientists of the Manhattan Project preparing to try to detonate the world's first nuclear explosion. A lieutenant of his former graduate school teacher, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the project, Dr. Morrison rode in the back seat of a car from Los Alamos - where the physicists were working - to the Trinity test site, in Alamogordo, N.M., with the bomb's plutonium core beside him in a special carrying case studded with rubber bumpers.
A little later, when he poked his head up from behind a sand dune in time to catch sight of the explosion, he was surprised not by its brightness but by its heat, he later recalled.
Shortly afterward Dr. Morrison was one of a handful of physicists sent to the island of Tinian to assemble the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. A month later, he was part of a team that toured the city.
Conventional bombing had destroyed other Japanese cities in a checkerboard pattern, leaving red rust intermingled with gray roofs and vegetation, he recalled in an interview in The New Yorker. "Then we circled Hiroshima, and there was just one enormous flat, rust-red scar, and no green or gray, because there were no roofs or vegetation left."
He said, "I was pretty sure then that nothing I was going to see later would give me as much of a jolt."
Philip Morrison was born in 1915 in Somerville, N.J. When he was 4 he was stricken with polio, which left him partly handicapped. He grew up in Pittsburgh and attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon) and then the University of California, Berkeley, where he obtained a Ph.D. in physics under Oppenheimer's tutelage.
After teaching briefly, Dr. Morrison was recruited for the bomb project and was put in charge of testing. His duties included dangerous experiments called "tickling the dragon's tail," in which scientists slipped pieces of a bomb closer and closer together to study what happened as it approached the moment when the assembly went "critical."
Although Dr. Morrison approved of building the bomb, fearing that the Germans would build one first, he was alarmed by the decision to drop it without warning.
His firsthand experience of the entire cycle of creation and apocalypse "stamped him for life," Dr. Kosta Tsipis, an M.I.T. physicist and arms control expert, said in an interview yesterday.
In 1946, Dr. Morrison left Los Alamos and joined another bomb project leader, Hans Bethe, at Cornell, where his research interests gradually shifted from nuclear physics to astrophysics and cosmic rays to cosmology.
He became a forceful advocate of international arms control, helping to found the Federation of American Scientists, writing for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, appearing at meetings and signing statements with the likes of Albert Einstein and Paul Robeson opposing militarism.
In his undergraduate years, he joined the Communist Party, and at Berkeley he was labeled a "troublemaker." In 1953, Dr. Morrison was called before the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, where he testified that while he had indeed been a Communist long before, he was not one then and had not been since he was a young man.
Cornell quickly announced that he could keep his job. His boss, Dr. Robert R. Wilson, said, "He demonstrated his patriotism by the distinguished role he played in the wartime development of the atomic bomb."
Dr. Morrison never lost his fire. At M.I.T., where he moved in 1964, he was the author or co-author of several books and studies on arms control, often in collaboration with Dr. Tsipis. The most recent was "Reason to Hope," which discussed ways to overcome the problems of war and overpopulation.
Dr. Morrison's activities as a popularizer of science were of a piece with his work as an arms critic, said Dr. Weiner of M.I.T., who described his style as impassioned but not elitist. He began one important lecture at a symposium by walking in and dropping a big rock, a meteorite, on the stage with loud clunk. "This is my text," he started.
He helped write the script and narrated the 1977 film "Powers of Ten," also by Charles and Ray Eames, in which a camera zooms from a couple having a picnic in Chicago out to the limits of the cosmos and then back down through the woman's hand to the level of atoms and quarks. In 1992, he and his wife, Phyllis, with the Eameses, turned it into a book.
Dr. Morrison and his fast-talking raspy voice became familiar to millions of television viewers in 1987 when PBS aired his six-part series, "The Ring of Truth."
Dr. Morrison's first marriage, to Emily Morrison of Boston, ended in divorce. Phyllis, his second wife, died in 2002. He is survived by a stepson, Bert Singer, of Cambridge, and his wife, Angela Kimberk.
Dr. Morrison's interest in extraterrestrial intelligence arose from work on cosmic rays. While at Cornell, he concluded that these particles originated in cosmic cataclysms like exploding stars and even exploding galaxies.
Dr. Morrison wondered if a particular kind of cosmic ray, high-energy radiation known as gamma rays, could convey information across the universe. One day his colleague Dr. Cocconi suggested that such gamma rays would be a way for civilizations to communicate across the lonely gulfs between stars. The pair looked into it and decided that radio waves would be better still.
In a paper in Nature on Sept. 19, 1959, they suggested that radio astronomers could look for a signal. A year later, Dr. Frank Drake, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, W.Va., began the first search. He struck out. Today, thousands of stars and millions of dollars later, SETI (or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), which has endured political storms, has still not hit pay dirt, but the galaxy is vastly mysterious, and the words that Dr. Morrison and Dr. Cocconi used to end their paper are still apt.
After pointing out the profound effects of discovering such a signal, they wrote, "The probability of success is difficult to estimate; but if we never search, the chance of success is zero."
------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Dennis Overbye. "Philip Morrison, 89, Builder of First Atom Bomb, Dies", New York Times, 26 April 2005.
April 26, 2005
Dr. Philip Morrison, who helped assemble the first atomic bomb with his own hands, and then campaigned for the rest of his life against weapons that could deliver such devastation, died Friday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 89.
He died in his sleep, his family said.
In four decades as a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Morrison was known as a spellbinding speaker and an inspirational popularizer of science, the original teacher of "physics for poets." He was known to the public though his PBS series "The Ring of Truth," and for a long-running and prolific stint as the book reviewer for Scientific American.
Among his legacies is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which sprang from a short paper in Nature that he wrote in 1959 with his colleague, Dr. Giuseppe Cocconi, at Cornell.
Dr. Charles Weiner, a historian of science at M.I.T., said, "The world has lost one of the major voices of social conscience in science."
On Dr. Morrison's 60th birthday, in 1975, Victor Weisskopf, another M.I.T. professor, said, "Nobody else has better demonstrated, or rather embodied, what it means to the human soul to perceive or recognize a new scientific discovery or a new theoretical insight."
In 1945, Dr. Morrison was among the scientists of the Manhattan Project preparing to try to detonate the world's first nuclear explosion. A lieutenant of his former graduate school teacher, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the project, Dr. Morrison rode in the back seat of a car from Los Alamos - where the physicists were working - to the Trinity test site, in Alamogordo, N.M., with the bomb's plutonium core beside him in a special carrying case studded with rubber bumpers.
A little later, when he poked his head up from behind a sand dune in time to catch sight of the explosion, he was surprised not by its brightness but by its heat, he later recalled.
Shortly afterward Dr. Morrison was one of a handful of physicists sent to the island of Tinian to assemble the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. A month later, he was part of a team that toured the city.
Conventional bombing had destroyed other Japanese cities in a checkerboard pattern, leaving red rust intermingled with gray roofs and vegetation, he recalled in an interview in The New Yorker. "Then we circled Hiroshima, and there was just one enormous flat, rust-red scar, and no green or gray, because there were no roofs or vegetation left."
He said, "I was pretty sure then that nothing I was going to see later would give me as much of a jolt."
Philip Morrison was born in 1915 in Somerville, N.J. When he was 4 he was stricken with polio, which left him partly handicapped. He grew up in Pittsburgh and attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon) and then the University of California, Berkeley, where he obtained a Ph.D. in physics under Oppenheimer's tutelage.
After teaching briefly, Dr. Morrison was recruited for the bomb project and was put in charge of testing. His duties included dangerous experiments called "tickling the dragon's tail," in which scientists slipped pieces of a bomb closer and closer together to study what happened as it approached the moment when the assembly went "critical."
Although Dr. Morrison approved of building the bomb, fearing that the Germans would build one first, he was alarmed by the decision to drop it without warning.
His firsthand experience of the entire cycle of creation and apocalypse "stamped him for life," Dr. Kosta Tsipis, an M.I.T. physicist and arms control expert, said in an interview yesterday.
In 1946, Dr. Morrison left Los Alamos and joined another bomb project leader, Hans Bethe, at Cornell, where his research interests gradually shifted from nuclear physics to astrophysics and cosmic rays to cosmology.
He became a forceful advocate of international arms control, helping to found the Federation of American Scientists, writing for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, appearing at meetings and signing statements with the likes of Albert Einstein and Paul Robeson opposing militarism.
In his undergraduate years, he joined the Communist Party, and at Berkeley he was labeled a "troublemaker." In 1953, Dr. Morrison was called before the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, where he testified that while he had indeed been a Communist long before, he was not one then and had not been since he was a young man.
Cornell quickly announced that he could keep his job. His boss, Dr. Robert R. Wilson, said, "He demonstrated his patriotism by the distinguished role he played in the wartime development of the atomic bomb."
Dr. Morrison never lost his fire. At M.I.T., where he moved in 1964, he was the author or co-author of several books and studies on arms control, often in collaboration with Dr. Tsipis. The most recent was "Reason to Hope," which discussed ways to overcome the problems of war and overpopulation.
Dr. Morrison's activities as a popularizer of science were of a piece with his work as an arms critic, said Dr. Weiner of M.I.T., who described his style as impassioned but not elitist. He began one important lecture at a symposium by walking in and dropping a big rock, a meteorite, on the stage with loud clunk. "This is my text," he started.
He helped write the script and narrated the 1977 film "Powers of Ten," also by Charles and Ray Eames, in which a camera zooms from a couple having a picnic in Chicago out to the limits of the cosmos and then back down through the woman's hand to the level of atoms and quarks. In 1992, he and his wife, Phyllis, with the Eameses, turned it into a book.
Dr. Morrison and his fast-talking raspy voice became familiar to millions of television viewers in 1987 when PBS aired his six-part series, "The Ring of Truth."
Dr. Morrison's first marriage, to Emily Morrison of Boston, ended in divorce. Phyllis, his second wife, died in 2002. He is survived by a stepson, Bert Singer, of Cambridge, and his wife, Angela Kimberk.
Dr. Morrison's interest in extraterrestrial intelligence arose from work on cosmic rays. While at Cornell, he concluded that these particles originated in cosmic cataclysms like exploding stars and even exploding galaxies.
Dr. Morrison wondered if a particular kind of cosmic ray, high-energy radiation known as gamma rays, could convey information across the universe. One day his colleague Dr. Cocconi suggested that such gamma rays would be a way for civilizations to communicate across the lonely gulfs between stars. The pair looked into it and decided that radio waves would be better still.
In a paper in Nature on Sept. 19, 1959, they suggested that radio astronomers could look for a signal. A year later, Dr. Frank Drake, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, W.Va., began the first search. He struck out. Today, thousands of stars and millions of dollars later, SETI (or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), which has endured political storms, has still not hit pay dirt, but the galaxy is vastly mysterious, and the words that Dr. Morrison and Dr. Cocconi used to end their paper are still apt.
After pointing out the profound effects of discovering such a signal, they wrote, "The probability of success is difficult to estimate; but if we never search, the chance of success is zero."
------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Dennis Overbye. "Philip Morrison, 89, Builder of First Atom Bomb, Dies", New York Times, 26 April 2005.
25 April 2005
Terrified US soldiers are still killing civilians with impunity, while the dead go uncounted
Patrick Cockburn
The Independent
24 April 2005
An American patrol roared past us with the soldiers gesturing furiously with their guns for traffic to keep back on an overpass in central Baghdad. A black car with three young men in it did not stop in time and a soldier fired several shots from his machine gun into its engine. The driver and his friends were not hit, but many Iraqis do not survive casual encounters with US soldiers. It is very easy to be accidentally killed in Iraq. US soldiers treat everybody as a potential suicide bomber. If they are right they have saved their lives and if they are wrong they face no penalty.
"We should end the immunity of US soldiers here," says Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish politician who argues that the failure to
prosecute American soldiers who have killed civilians is one of the reasons why the occupation became so unpopular so fast. He admits,
however, that this is extremely unlikely to happen given the US attitude to any sanctions against its own forces.
Every Iraqi has stories of friends or relatives killed by US troops for no adequate reason. Often they do not know if they were shot by regular soldiers or by members of western security companies whose burly employees, usually ex-soldiers, are everywhere in Iraq.
A member of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi's party, was passing through an American checkpoint last year when a single
shot rang out from a sniper. No US soldier was hit, but the troops at the checkpoint hosed down the area with fire, wounding the INC
member and killing his driver.
The rector of Al-Nahrain University in south Baghdad was travelling to a degree ceremony on the other side of the city when white men in a four-wheel drive suddenly opened fire, hitting him in the stomach. Presumably they thought he was on a suicide mission.
It was obvious to many American officers from an early stage in the conflict that the Pentagon's claim that it did not count civilian casualties was seen by many Iraqis as proof that the US did not care about how many of them were killed. The failure to take Iraqi civilian dead into account was particularly foolish in a culture where relatives of the slain are obligated by custom to seek revenge.
The secrecy surrounding the numbers of civilians killed reveals another important facet of the war. The White House was always more
interested in the impact of events in Iraq on the American voter than it was in the effect on Iraqis. From the beginning of the conflict the US and British armies had difficulty in working out who in Iraq really was a civilian. Marla Ruzicka, the American humanitarian worker who was buried yesterday in California, had established in her last weeks in Iraq that figures were kept based on after-action reports. Officially, she found, 29 civilians were killed in fire fights between US forces and insurgents between 28 February and 5 April. But these figures are likely to be gross underestimates. US soldiers are notorious in Iraq for departing immediately after a skirmish, taking their own casualties but sometimes leaving damaged
vehicles. They would not have time to find out how many Iraqis were killed or injured.
The Health Ministry in Baghdad did produce figures and then stopped doing so, saying they had not been properly collated. Iraqi Body Count, a group monitoring casualties by looking at media sources, puts the total at 17,384. But most Iraqis die obscurely; it is dangerous for
reporters, Iraqi or foreign, to try to find out who is being killed. Much of Iraq is a bandit-ridden no-man's land.
Even in Baghdad it is evident from the hundreds of bodies arriving at the mortuary that this has become one of the most violent societies on earth. The Iraqi Body Count figure is probably much too low, because US military tactics ensure high civilian losses a bizarre aspect of the war is that US commanders often do not understand the damage done by their weapons in Iraq's close-packed cities.
US firepower, designed to combat the Soviet army, cannot be used in built up areas without killing or injuring civilians. Nevertheless, a study published in the Lancet saying that 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq appears to be too high. But the lack of definitive figures continues to dehumanise the uncounted Iraqi dead. As Dr Richard Garfield, a professor of nursing at Columbia University and an author of the Lancet report, wrote: "We are still fighting to record the Armenian genocide. Until people have names and are counted they don't exist in a policy sense."
The immunity of US troops means that there is nothing to inhibit them opening fire in what for them is a terrifying situation. For all their modern armament they are vulnerable to suicide bombers and roadside bombs. In the first case the attacker is already dead and in the second the man who detonates the bomb is probably several hundred yards away and in cover. With nobody else to shoot at it is the civilians who pay the price.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Patrick Cockburn. "Terrified US soldiers are still killing civilians with impunity, while the dead go uncounted", The Independent, 24 April 2005. Retrieved 25 April 2005 from:
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=632439&host=3&dir=75
The Independent
24 April 2005
An American patrol roared past us with the soldiers gesturing furiously with their guns for traffic to keep back on an overpass in central Baghdad. A black car with three young men in it did not stop in time and a soldier fired several shots from his machine gun into its engine. The driver and his friends were not hit, but many Iraqis do not survive casual encounters with US soldiers. It is very easy to be accidentally killed in Iraq. US soldiers treat everybody as a potential suicide bomber. If they are right they have saved their lives and if they are wrong they face no penalty.
"We should end the immunity of US soldiers here," says Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish politician who argues that the failure to
prosecute American soldiers who have killed civilians is one of the reasons why the occupation became so unpopular so fast. He admits,
however, that this is extremely unlikely to happen given the US attitude to any sanctions against its own forces.
Every Iraqi has stories of friends or relatives killed by US troops for no adequate reason. Often they do not know if they were shot by regular soldiers or by members of western security companies whose burly employees, usually ex-soldiers, are everywhere in Iraq.
A member of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi's party, was passing through an American checkpoint last year when a single
shot rang out from a sniper. No US soldier was hit, but the troops at the checkpoint hosed down the area with fire, wounding the INC
member and killing his driver.
The rector of Al-Nahrain University in south Baghdad was travelling to a degree ceremony on the other side of the city when white men in a four-wheel drive suddenly opened fire, hitting him in the stomach. Presumably they thought he was on a suicide mission.
It was obvious to many American officers from an early stage in the conflict that the Pentagon's claim that it did not count civilian casualties was seen by many Iraqis as proof that the US did not care about how many of them were killed. The failure to take Iraqi civilian dead into account was particularly foolish in a culture where relatives of the slain are obligated by custom to seek revenge.
The secrecy surrounding the numbers of civilians killed reveals another important facet of the war. The White House was always more
interested in the impact of events in Iraq on the American voter than it was in the effect on Iraqis. From the beginning of the conflict the US and British armies had difficulty in working out who in Iraq really was a civilian. Marla Ruzicka, the American humanitarian worker who was buried yesterday in California, had established in her last weeks in Iraq that figures were kept based on after-action reports. Officially, she found, 29 civilians were killed in fire fights between US forces and insurgents between 28 February and 5 April. But these figures are likely to be gross underestimates. US soldiers are notorious in Iraq for departing immediately after a skirmish, taking their own casualties but sometimes leaving damaged
vehicles. They would not have time to find out how many Iraqis were killed or injured.
The Health Ministry in Baghdad did produce figures and then stopped doing so, saying they had not been properly collated. Iraqi Body Count, a group monitoring casualties by looking at media sources, puts the total at 17,384. But most Iraqis die obscurely; it is dangerous for
reporters, Iraqi or foreign, to try to find out who is being killed. Much of Iraq is a bandit-ridden no-man's land.
Even in Baghdad it is evident from the hundreds of bodies arriving at the mortuary that this has become one of the most violent societies on earth. The Iraqi Body Count figure is probably much too low, because US military tactics ensure high civilian losses a bizarre aspect of the war is that US commanders often do not understand the damage done by their weapons in Iraq's close-packed cities.
US firepower, designed to combat the Soviet army, cannot be used in built up areas without killing or injuring civilians. Nevertheless, a study published in the Lancet saying that 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq appears to be too high. But the lack of definitive figures continues to dehumanise the uncounted Iraqi dead. As Dr Richard Garfield, a professor of nursing at Columbia University and an author of the Lancet report, wrote: "We are still fighting to record the Armenian genocide. Until people have names and are counted they don't exist in a policy sense."
The immunity of US troops means that there is nothing to inhibit them opening fire in what for them is a terrifying situation. For all their modern armament they are vulnerable to suicide bombers and roadside bombs. In the first case the attacker is already dead and in the second the man who detonates the bomb is probably several hundred yards away and in cover. With nobody else to shoot at it is the civilians who pay the price.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Patrick Cockburn. "Terrified US soldiers are still killing civilians with impunity, while the dead go uncounted", The Independent, 24 April 2005. Retrieved 25 April 2005 from:
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=632439&host=3&dir=75
18 April 2005
Violent Upsurge in Iraq Destroys Us Claims of a Return to Normality
Patrick Cockburn
The Independent
17 April 2005
Patrick Cockburn
The Independent
17 April 2005
Insurgents firing from speeding vehicles killed two Iraqi soldiers and a policeman in two separate attacks in the oil city of Kirkuk yesterday. In Mosul, an American convoy was attacked by a car bomb and one vehicle damaged. Fears of sectarian conflict are growing, following the threat by Sunni militants in the town of Madaen, south of Baghdad, to execute 60 Shia hostages unless Shias leave the area.
The upsurge in violence across Iraq in the past four days has left Pentagon claims that the tide is turning in Iraq and there are hopeful signs of a return to normality in tatters. Ironically, one reason why Washington can persuade the outside world that its venture in Iraq is finally coming right is that it is too dangerous for reporters to travel outside Baghdad or stray far from their hotels in the capital. The threat to all foreigners was underlined last week when an American contractor was snatched by kidnappers.
When I was travelling in the northern capital of Mosul this week, my guards " Kurdish members of the Iraqi National Guard " said it was too dangerous for them to travel with me in uniform in official vehicles. They donned Arab uniforms, hid their weapons and drove through the city in a civilian car.
Most violent incidents in Iraq go unreported. We saw one suicide bomb explosion, clouds of smoke and dust erupting into the air, and heard another in the space of an hour. Neither was mentioned in official reports. Last year US soldiers told the IoS that they do not tell their superiors about attacks on them unless they suffer casualties. This avoids bureaucratic hassle and 'our generals want to hear about the number of attacks going down not up'. This makes the official Pentagon claim that the number of insurgent attacks is down from 140 a day in January to 40 a day this month dubious.
US casualties have fallen to about one dead a day in March compared to four a day in January and five a day in November. But this is the result of a switch in American strategy rather than a sign of a collapse in the insurgency. US military spokesmen make plain that America's military priority has changed from offensive operations to training Iraqi troops and police. More than 2,000 US military advisers are working directly with Iraqi forces.
With US networks largely confined to their hotels in Baghdad by fear of kidnapping it is possible to sell the American public the idea that no news is good news. General George W Casey, the top US commander in Iraq, said recently that if all goes well 'we shall make fairly substantial reductions in the size of our forces'. Other senior US officers say this will be of the order of four brigades, from 17 to 13, or a fall in the number of US troops in Iraq from 142,000 to 105,000 by next year.
The real change leading to the US troop reduction is probably more in the US than in Iraq. The White House finds its military commitment in Iraq politically damaging at home. The easiest way to bring the troops home is, as in Vietnam, to declare a victory and full confidence in US- trained Iraqi forces to win the war. These soldiers and police supposedly number 152,000, but it is not clear who is being counted. The figure may include the 14,000 blue-uniformed Iraqi police in Nineveh province, the capital of which is Mosul, with a population of 2.7 million. But Khasro Goran, the deputy governor and Kurdistan Democratic Party leader in Mosul, told the IoS that the police had helped insurgents assassinate the previous governor.
Mr Goran said that when guerrillas captured almost all of Mosul on 11 November last year, the police had collaborated, abandoning 30 police stations without a fight. 'They didn't fire on terrorists because they were terrorists themselves,' he said. Some $ 40m-worth of arms and equipment was captured by the insurgents. It is a measure of how far the reality of the war in Iraq now differs from the rosy picture presented by the media that the fall of Mosul to the insurgents went almost unreported abroad because most journalists were covering the assault by the US marines on Fallujah.
Despite the elections on 30 January, the US problem in Iraq remains unchanged. It has not been defeated by the Sunni Arab guerrillas but it has not defeated them either. The US army and Iraqi armed forces control islands of territory while much of Iraq is a dangerous no-man's land.
After overthrowing Saddam Hussein in 2003 the US tried direct rule, dissolving the Iraqi army and state. This provoked the Sunni rebellion. By early 2004 there was a danger that part of the Shia community would also rise up. Elections were promised. The victors at the polls in January were Shia parties, mostly militantly Islamic and often sympathetic to Iran. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, visited Baghdad this week to stop Shia radicals taking over the Interior and Defence Ministries, both under US influence.
Iraq is now more sectarian. The Sunni boycotted the elections. The Kurds and Shias triumphed. The interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, despite heavy US support, got only 14 per cent. If the 60 Shia hostages taken on Friday are executed or Shias are forced to flee then we are closer to a sectarian civil war.
The Sunni insurgency is not going to go away. US generals say there are only 12,000 to 20,000 guerrillas. But the real lesson of the last two years is that, though many of the groups in the resistance are fanatical or semi-criminal, they will still be sheltered by the Sunni community because of antipathy to the US.
If the new Iraqi government succeeds in establishing itself it will be a largely Shia state with no more interest than the Sunni in retaining an American presence. Iraqis say they sense that the US wants Iraq to be a weak state, and this they are bound to oppose.
***********************
Citation: Patrick Cockburn, "Violent Upsurge in Iraq Destroys Us Claims of a Return to Normality," The Independent, 17 April 2005
One (Especially) Sad Death in Iraq
David Corn
The Nation
18 April 2005
Marla Ruzicka deserves the presidential medal of freedom. Unlike Paul Wolfowitz or George Tenet, she shouldn't get it for botching
the job in Iraq. No, she ought to receive it for trying damn hard to make America live up to its ideals in Iraq and elsewhere. But the
medal would have to be awarded posthumously--because on Saturday, Marla, an irrepressible 28-year-old from California, was killed
by a bomb when a suicide bomber, who was apparently trying to strike a US convoy on the highway to Baghdad International
Airport, pulled up alongside her car pulled and detonated the explosives. Faiz Ali Salaam, her 43-year-old associate and the father of
a two-month-old daughter, was also killed.
I met Marla several years ago. During the early months of the (still unfinished) war in Afghanistan, I became obsessed with the idea
of providing compensation for the civilians killed or injured in Afghanistan as the result of the US military action. Few others--in the
media, on Capitol Hill, in the foreign policy community--shared my concern, which rose from both a humanitarian sentiment and a
sense of national self-interest. If the United States was killing and maiming civilians in Afghanistan to protect ourselves--even if
inadvertently--it seemed to me Washington should do whatever it could not to piss off further the people in Afghanistan (and other
countries) by ignoring the plight of the noncombatants. Soon after writing about this, I was contacted by Marla. She had been in
Kabul, where she had conducted surveys to assess the extent of civilian casualties, and she was now in Washington pressing for
US assistance to the families harmed. She had been doing the hard--and dangerous--on-the-ground work.
I was much impressed by her, as were others in Washington. She was a passionate, facts-driven advocate who cared about the
individual lives of victims so often kept out of our collective conscience by being described as "collateral damage." No, she urged,
they count, too. As much as our fallen neighbors struck down on September 11. And she meant that quite literally. She argued that
these people ought to be counted; their deaths should be recorded by someone, especially since the Bush administration showed a
particular disinterest in mounting such calculations or even acknowledging the damage done to civilians. Marla wanted to chronicle
the truth and aid the afflicted. She was brave. She was concerned. She was a hero.
During one of our conversations after the major fighting was done in Afghanistan, we discussed her future. She was not finished with
her Afghanistan work, but she sensed there was a bigger issue afoot: the general attitude toward civilian victims of war. She was
right. We both saw that a war in Iraq was on its way. There will be antiwar activists raising hell, I told her, and Marla easily could be
one of their leaders. But she had identified and filled a crucial need overlooked by so many others in the antiwar movement. She had
made herself indispensable to the cause of social justice, and she had, in a way, transcended the typical ideological and policy
disputes. I encouraged her to continue and expand her efforts.
Marla did engage in organizing against the war in Iraq, but once Bush launched the invasion, she created a small, nonprofit outfit
called the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC). Shortly after the invasion, she quickly organized a team of 160 Iraqis to
conduct a survey. These researchers interviewed thousands and documented nearly 2,000 civilian deaths from the start of the
invasion to May 1, 2003--the day Bush prematurely declared the end of major military operations in Iraq. "The purpose of the survey
is not to quantify the total humanitarian impact of the war in Iraq, but rather to identify victims and families of those in need of
recognition and assistance," CIVIC later noted. "... Each death, injury and house that was destroyed represents a story and a need."
After her death, Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, told the Associated Press that it had been Ruzicka's idea to create a
special fund in last year's multibillion-dollar foreign aid bill to help Iraqis whose businesses had been damaged by US bombs.
The innocent casualties of war were too real for Marla. In November 2003, she sent an email to Alternet in which she described one
small tragedy in Iraq:
Friends:
As terrorists wreak havoc on life in Baghdad, innocent families are getting caught in the crossfire.
On the 24th of October, former teacher Mohammad Kadhum Mansoor, 59, and his wife, Hamdia Radhi Kadhum, 45, were traveling
with their three daughters -- Beraa, 21, Fatima, 8, and Ayat, 5 years old -- when they were tragically run over by an American tank.
A small grenade was thrown at the tank, causing it to loose control and veer onto the highway, over the family's small Volkswagen.
Mohammad and Hamdia were killed instantly, orphaning the three girls in the backseat. The girls survived, but with broken and
fractured bodies. We are not sure of Ayat's fate; her backbone is broken.
CIVIC staff member Faiz Al Salaam monitors the girls' condition each day. Nobody in the military or the U.S. Army has visited
them, nor has anyone offered to help this very poor family.
The only assistance from U.S. forces in Iraq is via the neighborhood Central Military Operations Center (CMOC). If the girls can get
to their offices, their case will be filed and heard via a town council. This offers little hope for these girls, who are faced with
immediate needs and a broken future.
The U.S. needs to have a clear procedure to respond to cases like Ayat's. CIVIC is working to try to establish such a system of
assistance, but for now, the very least we can do to show our sympathy is to help Ayat and her sisters ourselves.
Thank you, and let's hope and pray for a peaceful Iraq.
--Marla
The task that Marla had assumed for herself was to make America better--even when she disagreed with the government. She
opposed the war in Iraq. But once the United States began killing people in Iraq, she wanted this mission conducted with true
concern for those errantly harmed. In December 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle published an accurate profile of her. It noted:
Marla Ruzicka's life is driven by numbers. The numbers of Iraqi civilians dead, the numbers of the wounded. How many of their
homes have been destroyed?
As founder of CIVIC (Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict), Ruzicka works 15-hour days in the thick of the war zone, going
door to door to assess the harm done to innocent Iraqis caught in the line of fire. Ruzicka then uses that information to lobby the
U.S. government for assistance....
While the Defense Department keeps official records of U.S. troops killed and wounded (440 and 2,470 as of Dec. 1), no one has
stepped forward to do the same for Iraqi civilians but Ruzicka, the self-appointed watchdog of civilians harmed in recent Middle East
conflicts....
An unofficial survey she undertook in Afghanistan confirmed 824 dead. Returning to the United States, she lobbied Sen. Patrick
Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., to insert language in an appropriations bill that would provide $3.75 million to help victims. In
July, the money started trickling in to the devastated country....
"Marla is an exceptionally determined, energetic and brave young woman who has traveled to the front lines to focus attention on an
issue that too often gets ignored," he said. "Civilians bear the brunt of the suffering in wars today, but there is no policy to help
them. Marla and her organization have helped put a human face on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by identifying the victims and
their needs, and by lobbying for assistance."
...Would she ever consider doing something a little ... safer?
"To have a job where you can make things better for people? That's a blessing," she said. "Why would I do anything else?"
*****
Don't forget about DAVID CORN's BLOG at www.davidcorn.com. Read recent postings on the lame questions newspaper editors
tossed at Bush, John Negroponte's lazy reading skills, Bush's bad math reagrding Iraq, and the latest on the banned-in Arkansas
controversy.
*******
Author Peter Bergen, a friend of hers, noted yesterday,
One really interesting thing is that Marla was very opposed to the Iraq war before it began, but once the war started I never heard her
express any opinion about the war itself. Once the war started she just wanted to help people who were hurt, not engage in a debate
about the merits of the war. Beneath her Californian happy-go-luck demeanor Marla was a very hardheaded realist about what
needed to be done. The war happened. People were hurt. She wanted to help them. And an example of her realistic approach is how
she worked in Afghanistan and Iraq compensating the families who died. Marla had no patience for people who demonstrated
against the war, and did nothing else.
Marla told one interviewer, "My long-term goal is to get a desk at the State Department that looks at civilian casualties." It seems
like that would be a natural. Shouldn't a nation keep track of and be concerned about the damage done to civilians when it engages
in military actions? Yet what a dream that was--and remains.
There will be memorials for Marla Ruzicka. Senators Patrick Leahy and Barbara Boxer have said they will offer tributes to her on the
Senate floor. Last night after I heard the news of her death, I looked in on my two daughters--age four and five-and-a-half. Thinking of
Marla's parents, Nancy and Clifford Ruzicka, I imagined how proud I will be if my children grow up to be women who have the sort of
strength and conviction Marla possessed. And how scared I will be.
CIVIC was the brainchild of one helluva woman. But the idea, the simple idea--that we care about the innocent people killed in our
name--was much larger than one person. Or it should be. Unlike the leaders of the US government, Marla knew that America--for
humanitarian and security reasons--had an obligation to help noncombatants injured by US forces. Marla deserved many more
years. And the people she helped and tried to help deserved more assistance from this idealistic American.
She will, of course, not be receiving the Medal of Freedom from a president who leads an administration that has said it does not
bother to collect data on civilians killed or injured by its military and that has been tremendously slow to compensate the innocent
Afghan and Iraqi civilians who have lost loved ones, limbs, homes and businesses due to US military actions. In fact, according to an
article in The Washington Post, Marla had "stayed in Baghdad longer than she had planned because she believed she had found the
key to establishing that the U.S. military kept records of its civilian victims, despite its official statements otherwise, colleagues
said."
In the years I have written this column I don't think I have ever asked a reader to make a donation to an organization. But please
consider contributing to CIVIC. You can do so by clicking here. It won't be just for Marla. It will be for the people she lived and died
for--and for a principle that all Americans ought to consider seriously: when we fight a war, we are responsible for the triumphs and for the costs.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
David Corn, "One (Especially) Sad Death in Iraq", The Nation, 18 April 2005. Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2281&u=/thenation/20050418/cm_thenation/32331&printer=1
The Nation
18 April 2005
Marla Ruzicka deserves the presidential medal of freedom. Unlike Paul Wolfowitz or George Tenet, she shouldn't get it for botching
the job in Iraq. No, she ought to receive it for trying damn hard to make America live up to its ideals in Iraq and elsewhere. But the
medal would have to be awarded posthumously--because on Saturday, Marla, an irrepressible 28-year-old from California, was killed
by a bomb when a suicide bomber, who was apparently trying to strike a US convoy on the highway to Baghdad International
Airport, pulled up alongside her car pulled and detonated the explosives. Faiz Ali Salaam, her 43-year-old associate and the father of
a two-month-old daughter, was also killed.
I met Marla several years ago. During the early months of the (still unfinished) war in Afghanistan, I became obsessed with the idea
of providing compensation for the civilians killed or injured in Afghanistan as the result of the US military action. Few others--in the
media, on Capitol Hill, in the foreign policy community--shared my concern, which rose from both a humanitarian sentiment and a
sense of national self-interest. If the United States was killing and maiming civilians in Afghanistan to protect ourselves--even if
inadvertently--it seemed to me Washington should do whatever it could not to piss off further the people in Afghanistan (and other
countries) by ignoring the plight of the noncombatants. Soon after writing about this, I was contacted by Marla. She had been in
Kabul, where she had conducted surveys to assess the extent of civilian casualties, and she was now in Washington pressing for
US assistance to the families harmed. She had been doing the hard--and dangerous--on-the-ground work.
I was much impressed by her, as were others in Washington. She was a passionate, facts-driven advocate who cared about the
individual lives of victims so often kept out of our collective conscience by being described as "collateral damage." No, she urged,
they count, too. As much as our fallen neighbors struck down on September 11. And she meant that quite literally. She argued that
these people ought to be counted; their deaths should be recorded by someone, especially since the Bush administration showed a
particular disinterest in mounting such calculations or even acknowledging the damage done to civilians. Marla wanted to chronicle
the truth and aid the afflicted. She was brave. She was concerned. She was a hero.
During one of our conversations after the major fighting was done in Afghanistan, we discussed her future. She was not finished with
her Afghanistan work, but she sensed there was a bigger issue afoot: the general attitude toward civilian victims of war. She was
right. We both saw that a war in Iraq was on its way. There will be antiwar activists raising hell, I told her, and Marla easily could be
one of their leaders. But she had identified and filled a crucial need overlooked by so many others in the antiwar movement. She had
made herself indispensable to the cause of social justice, and she had, in a way, transcended the typical ideological and policy
disputes. I encouraged her to continue and expand her efforts.
Marla did engage in organizing against the war in Iraq, but once Bush launched the invasion, she created a small, nonprofit outfit
called the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC). Shortly after the invasion, she quickly organized a team of 160 Iraqis to
conduct a survey. These researchers interviewed thousands and documented nearly 2,000 civilian deaths from the start of the
invasion to May 1, 2003--the day Bush prematurely declared the end of major military operations in Iraq. "The purpose of the survey
is not to quantify the total humanitarian impact of the war in Iraq, but rather to identify victims and families of those in need of
recognition and assistance," CIVIC later noted. "... Each death, injury and house that was destroyed represents a story and a need."
After her death, Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, told the Associated Press that it had been Ruzicka's idea to create a
special fund in last year's multibillion-dollar foreign aid bill to help Iraqis whose businesses had been damaged by US bombs.
The innocent casualties of war were too real for Marla. In November 2003, she sent an email to Alternet in which she described one
small tragedy in Iraq:
Friends:
As terrorists wreak havoc on life in Baghdad, innocent families are getting caught in the crossfire.
On the 24th of October, former teacher Mohammad Kadhum Mansoor, 59, and his wife, Hamdia Radhi Kadhum, 45, were traveling
with their three daughters -- Beraa, 21, Fatima, 8, and Ayat, 5 years old -- when they were tragically run over by an American tank.
A small grenade was thrown at the tank, causing it to loose control and veer onto the highway, over the family's small Volkswagen.
Mohammad and Hamdia were killed instantly, orphaning the three girls in the backseat. The girls survived, but with broken and
fractured bodies. We are not sure of Ayat's fate; her backbone is broken.
CIVIC staff member Faiz Al Salaam monitors the girls' condition each day. Nobody in the military or the U.S. Army has visited
them, nor has anyone offered to help this very poor family.
The only assistance from U.S. forces in Iraq is via the neighborhood Central Military Operations Center (CMOC). If the girls can get
to their offices, their case will be filed and heard via a town council. This offers little hope for these girls, who are faced with
immediate needs and a broken future.
The U.S. needs to have a clear procedure to respond to cases like Ayat's. CIVIC is working to try to establish such a system of
assistance, but for now, the very least we can do to show our sympathy is to help Ayat and her sisters ourselves.
Thank you, and let's hope and pray for a peaceful Iraq.
--Marla
The task that Marla had assumed for herself was to make America better--even when she disagreed with the government. She
opposed the war in Iraq. But once the United States began killing people in Iraq, she wanted this mission conducted with true
concern for those errantly harmed. In December 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle published an accurate profile of her. It noted:
Marla Ruzicka's life is driven by numbers. The numbers of Iraqi civilians dead, the numbers of the wounded. How many of their
homes have been destroyed?
As founder of CIVIC (Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict), Ruzicka works 15-hour days in the thick of the war zone, going
door to door to assess the harm done to innocent Iraqis caught in the line of fire. Ruzicka then uses that information to lobby the
U.S. government for assistance....
While the Defense Department keeps official records of U.S. troops killed and wounded (440 and 2,470 as of Dec. 1), no one has
stepped forward to do the same for Iraqi civilians but Ruzicka, the self-appointed watchdog of civilians harmed in recent Middle East
conflicts....
An unofficial survey she undertook in Afghanistan confirmed 824 dead. Returning to the United States, she lobbied Sen. Patrick
Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., to insert language in an appropriations bill that would provide $3.75 million to help victims. In
July, the money started trickling in to the devastated country....
"Marla is an exceptionally determined, energetic and brave young woman who has traveled to the front lines to focus attention on an
issue that too often gets ignored," he said. "Civilians bear the brunt of the suffering in wars today, but there is no policy to help
them. Marla and her organization have helped put a human face on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by identifying the victims and
their needs, and by lobbying for assistance."
...Would she ever consider doing something a little ... safer?
"To have a job where you can make things better for people? That's a blessing," she said. "Why would I do anything else?"
*****
Don't forget about DAVID CORN's BLOG at www.davidcorn.com. Read recent postings on the lame questions newspaper editors
tossed at Bush, John Negroponte's lazy reading skills, Bush's bad math reagrding Iraq, and the latest on the banned-in Arkansas
controversy.
*******
Author Peter Bergen, a friend of hers, noted yesterday,
One really interesting thing is that Marla was very opposed to the Iraq war before it began, but once the war started I never heard her
express any opinion about the war itself. Once the war started she just wanted to help people who were hurt, not engage in a debate
about the merits of the war. Beneath her Californian happy-go-luck demeanor Marla was a very hardheaded realist about what
needed to be done. The war happened. People were hurt. She wanted to help them. And an example of her realistic approach is how
she worked in Afghanistan and Iraq compensating the families who died. Marla had no patience for people who demonstrated
against the war, and did nothing else.
Marla told one interviewer, "My long-term goal is to get a desk at the State Department that looks at civilian casualties." It seems
like that would be a natural. Shouldn't a nation keep track of and be concerned about the damage done to civilians when it engages
in military actions? Yet what a dream that was--and remains.
There will be memorials for Marla Ruzicka. Senators Patrick Leahy and Barbara Boxer have said they will offer tributes to her on the
Senate floor. Last night after I heard the news of her death, I looked in on my two daughters--age four and five-and-a-half. Thinking of
Marla's parents, Nancy and Clifford Ruzicka, I imagined how proud I will be if my children grow up to be women who have the sort of
strength and conviction Marla possessed. And how scared I will be.
CIVIC was the brainchild of one helluva woman. But the idea, the simple idea--that we care about the innocent people killed in our
name--was much larger than one person. Or it should be. Unlike the leaders of the US government, Marla knew that America--for
humanitarian and security reasons--had an obligation to help noncombatants injured by US forces. Marla deserved many more
years. And the people she helped and tried to help deserved more assistance from this idealistic American.
She will, of course, not be receiving the Medal of Freedom from a president who leads an administration that has said it does not
bother to collect data on civilians killed or injured by its military and that has been tremendously slow to compensate the innocent
Afghan and Iraqi civilians who have lost loved ones, limbs, homes and businesses due to US military actions. In fact, according to an
article in The Washington Post, Marla had "stayed in Baghdad longer than she had planned because she believed she had found the
key to establishing that the U.S. military kept records of its civilian victims, despite its official statements otherwise, colleagues
said."
In the years I have written this column I don't think I have ever asked a reader to make a donation to an organization. But please
consider contributing to CIVIC. You can do so by clicking here. It won't be just for Marla. It will be for the people she lived and died
for--and for a principle that all Americans ought to consider seriously: when we fight a war, we are responsible for the triumphs and for the costs.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
David Corn, "One (Especially) Sad Death in Iraq", The Nation, 18 April 2005. Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2281&u=/thenation/20050418/cm_thenation/32331&printer=1
Bush administration eliminating 19-year-old international terrorism report
Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers
15 April 2005
WASHINGTON - The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.
Several U.S. officials defended the abrupt decision, saying the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate statistics for the report may have been faulty, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.
Last year, the number of incidents in 2003 was undercounted, forcing a revision of the report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism."
But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office ordered "Patterns of Global Terrorism" eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the Bush's administration's frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism.
"Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public," charged Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who first disclosed the decision to eliminate the report in The Counterterrorism Blog, an online journal.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who was among the leading critics of last year's mix-up, reacted angrily to the decision.
"This is the definitive report on the incidence of terrorism around the world. It should be unthinkable that there would be an effort to withhold it - or any of the key data - from the public. The Bush administration should stop playing politics with this critical report."
A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed that the publication was being eliminated, but said the allegation that it was being done for political reasons was "categorically untrue."
According to Johnson and U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the issue, statistics that the National Counterterrorism Center provided to the State Department reported 625 "significant" terrorist attacks in 2004.
That compared with 175 such incidents in 2003, the highest number in two decades.
The statistics didn't include attacks on American troops in Iraq, which President Bush as recently as Tuesday called "a central front in the war on terror."
The intelligence officials requested anonymity because the information is classified and because, they said, they feared White House retribution. Johnson declined to say how he obtained the figures.
Another U.S. official, who also requested anonymity, said analysts from the counterterrorism center were especially careful in amassing and reviewing the data because of the political turmoil created by last year's errors.
Last June, the administration was forced to issue a revised version of the report for 2003 that showed a higher number of significant terrorist attacks and more than twice the number of fatalities than had been presented in the original report two months earlier.
The snafu was embarrassing for the White House, which had used the original version to bolster President Bush's election-campaign claim that the war in Iraq had advanced the fight against terrorism.
U.S. officials blamed last year's mix-up on bureaucratic mistakes involving the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the forerunner of the National Counterterrorism Center.
Created last year on the recommendation of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the center is the government's primary organization for analyzing and integrating all U.S. government intelligence on terrorism.
The State Department published "Patterns of Global Terrorism" under a law that requires it to submit to the House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a country-by-country terrorism assessment by April 30 each year.
A declassified version of the report has been made public since 1986 in the form of a glossy booklet, even though there was no legal requirement to produce one.
The senior State Department official said a report on global terrorism would be sent this year to lawmakers and made available to the public in place of "Patterns of Global Terrorism," but that it wouldn't contain statistical data.
He said that decision was taken because the State Department believed that the National Counterterrorism Center "is now the authoritative government agency for the analysis of global terrorism. We believe that the NCTC should compile and publish the relevant data on that subject."
He didn't answer questions about whether the data would be made available to the public, saying, "We will be consulting (with Congress) ... on who should publish and in what form."
Another U.S. official said Rice's office was leery of the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate the data for 2004, believing that analysts anxious to avoid a repetition of last year's undercount included incidents that may not have been terrorist attacks.
But the U.S. intelligence officials said Rice's office decided to eliminate "Patterns of Global Terrorism" when the counterterrorism center declined to use alternative methodology that would have reported fewer significant attacks.
The officials said they interpreted Rice's action as an attempt to avoid releasing statistics that would contradict the administration's claims that it's winning the war against terrorism.
To read past "Patterns of Global Terrorism" reports online, go to www.mipt.org/Patterns-of-Global-Terrorism.asp
----------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Jonathan Landay, "Bush administration eliminating 19-year-old international terrorism report", Knight-Ridder Newspapers, 15 April 2005. Original URL: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11407689.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Knight Ridder Newspapers
15 April 2005
WASHINGTON - The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.
Several U.S. officials defended the abrupt decision, saying the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate statistics for the report may have been faulty, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.
Last year, the number of incidents in 2003 was undercounted, forcing a revision of the report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism."
But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office ordered "Patterns of Global Terrorism" eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the Bush's administration's frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism.
"Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public," charged Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who first disclosed the decision to eliminate the report in The Counterterrorism Blog, an online journal.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who was among the leading critics of last year's mix-up, reacted angrily to the decision.
"This is the definitive report on the incidence of terrorism around the world. It should be unthinkable that there would be an effort to withhold it - or any of the key data - from the public. The Bush administration should stop playing politics with this critical report."
A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed that the publication was being eliminated, but said the allegation that it was being done for political reasons was "categorically untrue."
According to Johnson and U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the issue, statistics that the National Counterterrorism Center provided to the State Department reported 625 "significant" terrorist attacks in 2004.
That compared with 175 such incidents in 2003, the highest number in two decades.
The statistics didn't include attacks on American troops in Iraq, which President Bush as recently as Tuesday called "a central front in the war on terror."
The intelligence officials requested anonymity because the information is classified and because, they said, they feared White House retribution. Johnson declined to say how he obtained the figures.
Another U.S. official, who also requested anonymity, said analysts from the counterterrorism center were especially careful in amassing and reviewing the data because of the political turmoil created by last year's errors.
Last June, the administration was forced to issue a revised version of the report for 2003 that showed a higher number of significant terrorist attacks and more than twice the number of fatalities than had been presented in the original report two months earlier.
The snafu was embarrassing for the White House, which had used the original version to bolster President Bush's election-campaign claim that the war in Iraq had advanced the fight against terrorism.
U.S. officials blamed last year's mix-up on bureaucratic mistakes involving the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the forerunner of the National Counterterrorism Center.
Created last year on the recommendation of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the center is the government's primary organization for analyzing and integrating all U.S. government intelligence on terrorism.
The State Department published "Patterns of Global Terrorism" under a law that requires it to submit to the House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a country-by-country terrorism assessment by April 30 each year.
A declassified version of the report has been made public since 1986 in the form of a glossy booklet, even though there was no legal requirement to produce one.
The senior State Department official said a report on global terrorism would be sent this year to lawmakers and made available to the public in place of "Patterns of Global Terrorism," but that it wouldn't contain statistical data.
He said that decision was taken because the State Department believed that the National Counterterrorism Center "is now the authoritative government agency for the analysis of global terrorism. We believe that the NCTC should compile and publish the relevant data on that subject."
He didn't answer questions about whether the data would be made available to the public, saying, "We will be consulting (with Congress) ... on who should publish and in what form."
Another U.S. official said Rice's office was leery of the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate the data for 2004, believing that analysts anxious to avoid a repetition of last year's undercount included incidents that may not have been terrorist attacks.
But the U.S. intelligence officials said Rice's office decided to eliminate "Patterns of Global Terrorism" when the counterterrorism center declined to use alternative methodology that would have reported fewer significant attacks.
The officials said they interpreted Rice's action as an attempt to avoid releasing statistics that would contradict the administration's claims that it's winning the war against terrorism.
To read past "Patterns of Global Terrorism" reports online, go to www.mipt.org/Patterns-of-Global-Terrorism.asp
----------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Jonathan Landay, "Bush administration eliminating 19-year-old international terrorism report", Knight-Ridder Newspapers, 15 April 2005. Original URL: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11407689.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
15 April 2005
Surge in Iraqi violence kills 24
Steve Negus
Financial Times
April 15 2005
Guerrillas launched a series of strikes against Iraqi police and other targets yesterday, killing more than 24 people on the
second day of a surge in deadly attacks.
In the bloodiest attack, two car bombs in the south Baghdad district of al-Jadriya killed at least 18 Iraqis, including one
policeman.
An internet statement in the name of al-Qaeda in Iraq, affiliated with Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed
responsibility for the blasts, which it said were suicide attacks against a passing police convoy and guards at a nearby interior
ministry facility.
Most victims, however, appeared to be either civilian motorists or roadside workers, in a possible indication of what some US
military officials say is a decline in the training of suicide bombers.
US forces discovered and detonated a third car bomb in the area, possibly rigged to hit soldiers and police responding to the
first two bombs.
The radical Ansar al-Sunna group has claimed that a similar trap, consisting of several bombs buried under a decoy near an oil
pipeline, was responsible for killing 12 Iraqi police near the northern city of Kirkuk on Wednesday.
At least 40 Iraqis have been reported killed in insurgent vehicle bombings, drive-by shootings and ambushes during the past
two days, although casualty counts from some of the incidents differ. At least six died in shootings and assassinations yesterday.
US and Iraqi officials claim there has been a fall in guerrilla attacks since January's elections, and further suggest that many
former members of Saddam Hussein's ruling Ba'ath party now believe that they have little chance of ousting Iraq's current
US-backed government.
Mr Zarqawi's followers, however, remain active and have claimed responsibility for several high-profile operations, including an
assault this month on the US-run Abu Ghraib prison, in what may be an attempt to score a propaganda victory to revive the
insurgency's fortunes.
Some US and Iraqi officials say that Mr Zarqawi's network may also feel pressure to keep up the number of attacks to assure
donors based outside Iraq, who may include both militant Islamists and former Ba'athists, that it remains effective.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Steve Negus, "Surge in Iraqi violence kills 24", Financial Times, April 15 2005. Original URL: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c4ff667e-ad4b-11d9-ad92-00000e2511c8.html
Financial Times
April 15 2005
Guerrillas launched a series of strikes against Iraqi police and other targets yesterday, killing more than 24 people on the
second day of a surge in deadly attacks.
In the bloodiest attack, two car bombs in the south Baghdad district of al-Jadriya killed at least 18 Iraqis, including one
policeman.
An internet statement in the name of al-Qaeda in Iraq, affiliated with Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed
responsibility for the blasts, which it said were suicide attacks against a passing police convoy and guards at a nearby interior
ministry facility.
Most victims, however, appeared to be either civilian motorists or roadside workers, in a possible indication of what some US
military officials say is a decline in the training of suicide bombers.
US forces discovered and detonated a third car bomb in the area, possibly rigged to hit soldiers and police responding to the
first two bombs.
The radical Ansar al-Sunna group has claimed that a similar trap, consisting of several bombs buried under a decoy near an oil
pipeline, was responsible for killing 12 Iraqi police near the northern city of Kirkuk on Wednesday.
At least 40 Iraqis have been reported killed in insurgent vehicle bombings, drive-by shootings and ambushes during the past
two days, although casualty counts from some of the incidents differ. At least six died in shootings and assassinations yesterday.
US and Iraqi officials claim there has been a fall in guerrilla attacks since January's elections, and further suggest that many
former members of Saddam Hussein's ruling Ba'ath party now believe that they have little chance of ousting Iraq's current
US-backed government.
Mr Zarqawi's followers, however, remain active and have claimed responsibility for several high-profile operations, including an
assault this month on the US-run Abu Ghraib prison, in what may be an attempt to score a propaganda victory to revive the
insurgency's fortunes.
Some US and Iraqi officials say that Mr Zarqawi's network may also feel pressure to keep up the number of attacks to assure
donors based outside Iraq, who may include both militant Islamists and former Ba'athists, that it remains effective.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Steve Negus, "Surge in Iraqi violence kills 24", Financial Times, April 15 2005. Original URL: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c4ff667e-ad4b-11d9-ad92-00000e2511c8.html
12 April 2005
US plans retreat from Iraq as Pentagon claims progress
Andrew Buncombe
The Independent
12 April 2005
Iraq: is the tide turning?
The United States is planning to withdraw up to a third of its forces from Iraq - possibly as early as next year.
Reports suggest military commanders believe they are making sufficient progress against insurgents and in training Iraqi security forces that the Pentagon has starting drawing up plans to reduce US forces from the current 142,000 to as few as 105,000.
Officials have looked at up to 70 separate indicators, including such variables as the number of assassination attempts on Iraqi officials. But the most important indicator is the sharp decline in the number of US troops being killed in action and the reduction in the number of daily attacks from insurgents.
"We had been expecting this for some time," said John Pike, director of the Washington- based think- tank GlobalSecurity.Org. "The KIA [killed in action] numbers have been very good and there is no doubt that the situation has been improving. One reason for this is that the enemy expended maximum effort against the election last January, in the sense that if you wanted to mount an attack it would be far more effective before the election than afterwards. I think they have worn themselves out, so to speak.
"The question is whether this is simply a lull and whether, once they have regrouped, it will be back to business as usual. That could very well be the case."
Although daily reports of violence and kidnapping continue, commanders say they have been heartened by figures that show a downward trend in the number of insurgent attacks on US forces. In March the number of US troops killed was 36 - the lowest for more than 12 months and a sharp decrease from the 107 killed during January. At the same time attacks on US forces have fallen to around 40 a day, down from a pre- election high of 140. Insurgents appear to be concentrating more on attacking Iraqi security forces.
General George Casey, the senior US commander in Iraq, recently told CNN that the withdrawal of troops depended on several factors, including the wishes of the recently elected Iraqi government. He said that if "all went well we should be able to take some fairly substantial reductions in the size of our forces by next year".
Iraq's President Jalal Talabani talks of a complete withdrawal of foreign troops in two years. "We are in great need to have American and other allied forces in Iraq until we will be able to rebuild our military forces," he said. "I think within two years we can do it, and we will remain in full consultation and co- ordination with our American friends who came to liberate our country."
The political bounty for Republicans from a reduction of even a third of the US troops based in Iraq would be considerable - especially in a year that will see Democrats trying to regain some ground in the mid- term elections of November 2006.
Indeed, the US has been looking for a way to get out of Iraq from almost the very moment it invaded. Throughout last year's presidential election campaign, President Bush and his senior officials refused to put a firm date to the much- talked- of "exit strategy". If military commanders now believe the situation in Iraq has eased to the extent that the Pentagon can start planning for a troop reduction, there is no doubt that Mr Bush and his colleagues will be shouting the news very loudly. Even though more than 1,540 US troops have been killed, more than 12,000 injured and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have lost their lives, the administration has been arguing that the invasion, along with January's election, was a victory for the forces of democracy.
Whether the Pentagon's assessment proves true is impossible to say. It is also unclear whether planners have considered whether the lives of ordinary Iraqis remain anything less than perilous. Just two weeks ago, Jean Ziegler, the UN Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, said malnutrition rates for Iraqi children under the age of five have nearly doubled since the ousting of Saddam Hussein. "The silent daily massacre by hunger is a form of murder," he said.
Senior officials agree one key factor will be the ability to train and recruit sufficient Iraqi security forces. The Pentagon says it has trained 70 per cent of the 95,000 Iraqi troops it believes will be required to deal with insurgents and 40 per cent of the required 140,000 Iraqi police. Critics say, however, these numbers include forces that have only received minimal training.
Lt-Gen David Petreaus, the senior US officer in charge of training Iraqi recruits, told The New York Times: "There has been a steady increase, particularly since the elections, in the capabilities and numbers of Iraqi units. However, there is still a huge amount of work to be done to help them achieve the capability of conducting independent counter-insurgency operations."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Andrew Buncombe, "US plans retreat from Iraq as Pentagon claims progress", The Independent, 12 April 2005.
The Independent
12 April 2005
Iraq: is the tide turning?
The United States is planning to withdraw up to a third of its forces from Iraq - possibly as early as next year.
Reports suggest military commanders believe they are making sufficient progress against insurgents and in training Iraqi security forces that the Pentagon has starting drawing up plans to reduce US forces from the current 142,000 to as few as 105,000.
Officials have looked at up to 70 separate indicators, including such variables as the number of assassination attempts on Iraqi officials. But the most important indicator is the sharp decline in the number of US troops being killed in action and the reduction in the number of daily attacks from insurgents.
"We had been expecting this for some time," said John Pike, director of the Washington- based think- tank GlobalSecurity.Org. "The KIA [killed in action] numbers have been very good and there is no doubt that the situation has been improving. One reason for this is that the enemy expended maximum effort against the election last January, in the sense that if you wanted to mount an attack it would be far more effective before the election than afterwards. I think they have worn themselves out, so to speak.
"The question is whether this is simply a lull and whether, once they have regrouped, it will be back to business as usual. That could very well be the case."
Although daily reports of violence and kidnapping continue, commanders say they have been heartened by figures that show a downward trend in the number of insurgent attacks on US forces. In March the number of US troops killed was 36 - the lowest for more than 12 months and a sharp decrease from the 107 killed during January. At the same time attacks on US forces have fallen to around 40 a day, down from a pre- election high of 140. Insurgents appear to be concentrating more on attacking Iraqi security forces.
General George Casey, the senior US commander in Iraq, recently told CNN that the withdrawal of troops depended on several factors, including the wishes of the recently elected Iraqi government. He said that if "all went well we should be able to take some fairly substantial reductions in the size of our forces by next year".
Iraq's President Jalal Talabani talks of a complete withdrawal of foreign troops in two years. "We are in great need to have American and other allied forces in Iraq until we will be able to rebuild our military forces," he said. "I think within two years we can do it, and we will remain in full consultation and co- ordination with our American friends who came to liberate our country."
The political bounty for Republicans from a reduction of even a third of the US troops based in Iraq would be considerable - especially in a year that will see Democrats trying to regain some ground in the mid- term elections of November 2006.
Indeed, the US has been looking for a way to get out of Iraq from almost the very moment it invaded. Throughout last year's presidential election campaign, President Bush and his senior officials refused to put a firm date to the much- talked- of "exit strategy". If military commanders now believe the situation in Iraq has eased to the extent that the Pentagon can start planning for a troop reduction, there is no doubt that Mr Bush and his colleagues will be shouting the news very loudly. Even though more than 1,540 US troops have been killed, more than 12,000 injured and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have lost their lives, the administration has been arguing that the invasion, along with January's election, was a victory for the forces of democracy.
Whether the Pentagon's assessment proves true is impossible to say. It is also unclear whether planners have considered whether the lives of ordinary Iraqis remain anything less than perilous. Just two weeks ago, Jean Ziegler, the UN Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, said malnutrition rates for Iraqi children under the age of five have nearly doubled since the ousting of Saddam Hussein. "The silent daily massacre by hunger is a form of murder," he said.
Senior officials agree one key factor will be the ability to train and recruit sufficient Iraqi security forces. The Pentagon says it has trained 70 per cent of the 95,000 Iraqi troops it believes will be required to deal with insurgents and 40 per cent of the required 140,000 Iraqi police. Critics say, however, these numbers include forces that have only received minimal training.
Lt-Gen David Petreaus, the senior US officer in charge of training Iraqi recruits, told The New York Times: "There has been a steady increase, particularly since the elections, in the capabilities and numbers of Iraqi units. However, there is still a huge amount of work to be done to help them achieve the capability of conducting independent counter-insurgency operations."
Iraq: Is the tide turning?
Yes
- Attacks on allied forces have dropped to 30 to 40 a day, from a daily peak of 140 in January.
- After a spate of kidnappings followed by beheadings, only two westerners are still being held.
- More than 152,000 Iraqis now trained and equipped for the military or the police commandos.
- Iraqi oil production for the past 9 months has reached 205 million barrels, and exports at 1.5 million barrels a day.
- Electricity is almost back up to pre-war levels when Iraq was under sanctions.
- Several top aides of rebel leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi captured or killed in recent weeks.
- Sovereign government was installed last week
No
- Civilian Iraqi deaths close to 20,000, and death-rate still rising since the elections.
- Kidnappings of Iraqis is rife. Children in particular being abducted and their parents held to ransom.
- Large parts of Iraq still outside US or Iraqi control.
- Grave doubts about quality of trained Iraqi police.
- Only significant oil production is in Southern Iraq. The oil pipelines across northern Iraq are under regular attack and vulnerable to sabotage.
- Power shortages remain frequent, with electricity supplies turning on and off.
- Car bombers and suicide bombers continue to target the US military and the government.
- Some 48 per cent of Iraqis are still out of work.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Andrew Buncombe, "US plans retreat from Iraq as Pentagon claims progress", The Independent, 12 April 2005.
11 April 2005
Stop killing Iraqis, nationalists warn religious fanatics
Patrick Cockburn
The Independent
11 April 2005
Gunmen ordered 16 off-duty Iraqi soldiers out of a truck in Latafiya, south of Baghdad, at the weekend and killed them, but signs are growing that the slaughter of all Iraqis in the army or police, or civilians working for the government, is leading to divisions in the resistance.
The split is between Islamic fanatics, willing to killing anybody remotely connected with the government, and Iraqi nationalists who want to concentrate on attacking the 130,000 US troops in Iraq. Posters threatening extreme resistance fighters have appeared on walls in Ramadi, a Sunni Muslim city on the Euphrates river west of Baghad.
Insurgents in the city say that resistance to the Americans is being discredited by the kidnapping and killing of civilians. "They have tarnished our image and used the jihad to make personal gains," Ahmed Hussein, an imam from a mosque in Ramadi, was quoted as saying.
A further indication that the armed resistance may be losing momentum is a fall in American casualties since January when 127 US and other foreign troops were killed, compared to 40 in March and just 12 in the first days of April. The US says the number of attacks by the resistance is slightly down from 50-60 a day in January to 40-45 now.
At the same time, the US occupation is as unpopular as ever among Iraqi Arabs, going by the mass rally against it by 300,000 people in the heart of Baghdad on Saturday. Called by the Shia militant leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, it was the largest anti-American demonstration since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Effigies of George Bush, Tony Blair and Saddam Hussein dressed in orange prison jump suits were symbolically thrown down amid cries of "No, No to America! No, No to occupation!"
Opinion polls confirm that two-thirds of Shia Arabs - 60 per cent of Iraq's population - as well as an overwhelming majority of Sunnis want US troops to leave immediately or in the near future. The Kurds, a fifth of Iraqis, are the only community fully to support the US presence.
The resistance in Iraq has always been fragmented and, unlike many traditional liberation movements, it has never had a political wing. Some 38 different have claimed attacks on the US troops. The insurgents have also proved extraordinarily effective - far more so than the regular Iraqi army during the war in 2003 - killing 1,089 US soldiers and wounding some 10,000.
The key to the effectiveness of the resistance is that it has swum in a sea of popular support or acquiescence. However, often after an attack on Iraqi police or army recruits, furious by-standers have said to me: "Why are they attacking our own people and not killing Americans?"
The near universal antipathy to the occupation enabled marginal, unpopular or criminal groups opposed to the US to flourish. Islamic fundamentalists, commonly called the Salafi or Wahabi, were able to establish themselves in Sunni Muslim districts. Baathist officials, army officers and security men were swiftly able to establish guerrilla cells.
The extreme Islamic groups, typified by that led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, see themselves fighting a world full of "infidels", "apostates" and "crusaders" in which an Iraqi Shia or Christian was as worthy of death as a US soldier. When American troops allegedly damaged two mosques in Mosul, insurgents blew up two churches in the city in retaliation.
The Sunni sectarianism of the Salafi limited the nationalist appeal of the resistance and ensured that Shias supported the destruction of Fallujah by the US Marines last November.
The Sunni community as a whole is reassessing its options in the wake of the 30 January elections which it boycotted. It fears that a Shia-Kurd state, from which it is excluding itself, is developing. In an amazing turnaround, the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential body often the political wing of the resistance, called last week for Sunnis to join the army and police. The Shia parties, for their part, are intent on gaining control of the Interior Ministry and Mukhabarat security forces.
The Sunni leaders know that, in many ways, the resistance has been very successful. Two years ago, US officials were airily speaking of a prolonged occupation of Iraq. It was only as guerrilla attacks intensified that they agreed to the elections in January. The Sunni leaders may now wonder what they have to gain by intensifying resistance at a time when US forces are on the retreat.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Patrick Cockburn, "Stop killing Iraqis, nationalists warn religious fanatics," The Independent, 11 April 2005. Original URL:
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=628300&host=3&dir=75 (Internet 12 April 2005)
The Independent
11 April 2005
Gunmen ordered 16 off-duty Iraqi soldiers out of a truck in Latafiya, south of Baghdad, at the weekend and killed them, but signs are growing that the slaughter of all Iraqis in the army or police, or civilians working for the government, is leading to divisions in the resistance.
The split is between Islamic fanatics, willing to killing anybody remotely connected with the government, and Iraqi nationalists who want to concentrate on attacking the 130,000 US troops in Iraq. Posters threatening extreme resistance fighters have appeared on walls in Ramadi, a Sunni Muslim city on the Euphrates river west of Baghad.
Insurgents in the city say that resistance to the Americans is being discredited by the kidnapping and killing of civilians. "They have tarnished our image and used the jihad to make personal gains," Ahmed Hussein, an imam from a mosque in Ramadi, was quoted as saying.
A further indication that the armed resistance may be losing momentum is a fall in American casualties since January when 127 US and other foreign troops were killed, compared to 40 in March and just 12 in the first days of April. The US says the number of attacks by the resistance is slightly down from 50-60 a day in January to 40-45 now.
At the same time, the US occupation is as unpopular as ever among Iraqi Arabs, going by the mass rally against it by 300,000 people in the heart of Baghdad on Saturday. Called by the Shia militant leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, it was the largest anti-American demonstration since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Effigies of George Bush, Tony Blair and Saddam Hussein dressed in orange prison jump suits were symbolically thrown down amid cries of "No, No to America! No, No to occupation!"
Opinion polls confirm that two-thirds of Shia Arabs - 60 per cent of Iraq's population - as well as an overwhelming majority of Sunnis want US troops to leave immediately or in the near future. The Kurds, a fifth of Iraqis, are the only community fully to support the US presence.
The resistance in Iraq has always been fragmented and, unlike many traditional liberation movements, it has never had a political wing. Some 38 different have claimed attacks on the US troops. The insurgents have also proved extraordinarily effective - far more so than the regular Iraqi army during the war in 2003 - killing 1,089 US soldiers and wounding some 10,000.
The key to the effectiveness of the resistance is that it has swum in a sea of popular support or acquiescence. However, often after an attack on Iraqi police or army recruits, furious by-standers have said to me: "Why are they attacking our own people and not killing Americans?"
The near universal antipathy to the occupation enabled marginal, unpopular or criminal groups opposed to the US to flourish. Islamic fundamentalists, commonly called the Salafi or Wahabi, were able to establish themselves in Sunni Muslim districts. Baathist officials, army officers and security men were swiftly able to establish guerrilla cells.
The extreme Islamic groups, typified by that led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, see themselves fighting a world full of "infidels", "apostates" and "crusaders" in which an Iraqi Shia or Christian was as worthy of death as a US soldier. When American troops allegedly damaged two mosques in Mosul, insurgents blew up two churches in the city in retaliation.
The Sunni sectarianism of the Salafi limited the nationalist appeal of the resistance and ensured that Shias supported the destruction of Fallujah by the US Marines last November.
The Sunni community as a whole is reassessing its options in the wake of the 30 January elections which it boycotted. It fears that a Shia-Kurd state, from which it is excluding itself, is developing. In an amazing turnaround, the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential body often the political wing of the resistance, called last week for Sunnis to join the army and police. The Shia parties, for their part, are intent on gaining control of the Interior Ministry and Mukhabarat security forces.
The Sunni leaders know that, in many ways, the resistance has been very successful. Two years ago, US officials were airily speaking of a prolonged occupation of Iraq. It was only as guerrilla attacks intensified that they agreed to the elections in January. The Sunni leaders may now wonder what they have to gain by intensifying resistance at a time when US forces are on the retreat.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Patrick Cockburn, "Stop killing Iraqis, nationalists warn religious fanatics," The Independent, 11 April 2005. Original URL:
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=628300&host=3&dir=75 (Internet 12 April 2005)
U.S. Commanders See Possible Cut in Troops in Iraq
Eric Schmitt
New York Times
11 April 2005
WASHINGTON, April 10 - Two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the American-led military campaign in Iraq is making enough progress in fighting insurgents and training Iraqi security forces to allow the Pentagon to plan for
significant troop reductions by early next year, senior commanders and Pentagon officials say.
Senior American officers are wary of declaring success too soon against an insurgency they say still has perhaps 12,000 to
20,000 hard-core fighters, plentiful financing and the ability to change tactics quickly to carry out deadly attacks. But there is a
consensus emerging among these top officers and other senior defense officials about several positive developing trends, although
each carries a cautionary note.
Attacks on allied forces have dropped to 30 to 40 a day, down from an average daily peak of 140 in the prelude to the Jan. 30
elections but still roughly at the levels of a year ago. Only about half the attacks cause casualties or damage, but on average one
or more Americans die in Iraq every day, often from roadside bombs. Thirty-six American troops died there in March, the
lowest monthly death toll since 21 died in February 2004.
Attacks now are aimed more at killing Iraqi civilians and security forces, and have been planned with sinister care and timing to
take place outside schools, clinics and police stations when large daytime crowds have gathered.
Several top associates of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant whose network has claimed responsibility for many of
the most deadly attacks, have been captured or killed in recent weeks. American commanders say it now takes longer for
insurgents to regroup and conduct a series of attacks with new tactics, like the one on the night of April 2 against the Abu Ghraib
prison that wounded 44 Americans and 13 Iraqi prisoners.
While senior commanders say the insurgency is still mostly driven by Iraqis, small numbers of foreign fighters who carry out most
of the suicide bombings are still sneaking into the country, mainly from Syria.
The overall number of insurgents has remained virtually unchanged since last fall, even though hundreds, maybe thousands, have
been killed or captured, suggesting that the insurgency can still attract the unemployed, disaffected and even enough true
believers to keep the pool from drying up. American commanders also fear that the fledgling Iraqi government and security
services are riddled with informants despite thorough vetting of applicants, officials say.
The American military's priority has shifted from waging offensive operations to training Iraqi troops and police officers. Iraqi
forces now oversee sections of Baghdad and Mosul, with American forces on call nearby to help in a crisis. More than 2,000
American military advisers are working directly with Iraqi forces.
More Iraqi civilians are defying the insurgents' intimidation to give Iraqi forces tips on the locations of hidden roadside bombs,
weapons caches and rebel safe houses. The Pentagon says that more than 152,000 Iraqis have been trained and equipped for
the military or the police, but the quality and experience of those forces varies widely. Also, the Government Accountability
Office said in March that those figures were inflated, including perhaps tens of thousands of police officers who are absent from
duty.
Interviews with more than a dozen senior American and Iraqi officers, top Pentagon officials and lawmakers who have visited
Iraq yield an assessment that the combination of routing insurgents from their sanctuary in Falluja last November and the Iraqi
elections on Jan. 30 has given the military operation sustained momentum, and put the Bush administration's goal of turning Iraq
over to a permanent, elected Iraqi government within striking distance.
"We're on track," Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview. But the insurgency "kills
virtually every day," he warned. "It's still a very potent threat."
This view of steady if uneven progress is shared by virtually all senior American commanders and Pentagon officials interviewed,
who base their judgments on some 50 to 70 specific measurements from casualty figures to assassination attempts against Iraqi
government officials as well as subjective analyses by American commanders and diplomats. They recall how plans a year ago to
reduce American forces were dashed by resurgent rebel attacks in much of the Sunni-dominated areas north and west of
Baghdad, and in Shiite hot spots like Najaf. And they express concern that a huge, last-ditch suicide attack against a prominent
target, like the new Iraqi National Assembly, could deal the operation a severe blow. "I worry about being excessively
optimistic," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters on March 29.
Precisely when and how many American forces withdraw from Iraq hinges on several factors, including the security situation, the
size and competence of newly trained Iraqi forces, and the wishes of the new Iraqi government. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the
top commander in Iraq, told CNN two weeks ago that if all went well, "we should be able to take some fairly substantial
reductions in the size of our forces" by this time next year.
General Casey has declined to describe the size of any possible troop reductions, but other senior military officials said American
force levels in Iraq could drop to around 105,000, or about 13 brigades, by early next year, from the 142,000 now, just over 17
brigades.
Even some of the administration's toughest critics now express cautious optimism about an Iraq operation that costs more than
$4 billion a month, as the nascent political process and slowly improving economy appear to drain away tacit support for the
insurgency from the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians the military calls "fence-sitters."
"We've gained some real military traction over the past several months, but we'd be naïve to think that the insurgency is over,"
said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and former officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. "We're there militarily for
the long haul."
American officials say the insurgency is still a mix of former Baath Party loyalists, Iraqi military and security service officers, Sunni
Arab militants and terrorists like Mr. Zarqawi. Rather than focusing on their numbers, commanders say they are more concerned
with what the insurgents can do. These groups are well armed and well financed, but are suffering some recruiting problems that
are increasingly forcing them to form tactical partnerships to carry out their attacks, officials said.
"They're slowly losing," said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, a senior aide to General Myers who commanded the Fourth Infantry
Division in Iraq last year.
Helping the situation is that, as the Iraqi security forces gain more confidence and experience, Iraqi residents have put more trust
in them. "We are gaining more victories because people are now cooperating more with us," Maj. Gen. Adnan Thabit, the head
of 11,000 Iraqi police commandos and other security forces, said in an interview.
Senior officers say the increased pressure on insurgents is driving many of them out of safe houses in cities like Mosul, Samarra
and Baghdad, and into the desert. Senior officials say it is notable, although not clearly understood, how the insurgency seems to
be moving in more of a set-piece fashion than it did in its early period.
The Abu Ghraib attacks, for example, were coordinated, small-unit strikes by 40 to 60 insurgents, though they were largely
ineffective, officers say.
"At this point, we are all concerned they may be changing tactics," Brig. Gen. John DeFreitas III, the senior military intelligence
officer in Iraq, said in an interview. "It's still too early to tell."
Commanders are also concerned that the attacks are being aided by a growing network of informants, some of whom appear to
be in lower levels of the new Iraqi civilian administration and security forces.
"They have tentacles that reach all through the new government and the new military," said Lt. Gen. Walter E. Buchanan, the top
American air commander in the Persian Gulf region. The concern about infiltration by former Hussein loyalists has slowed, to
some degree, the reforming of Iraqi security forces at all levels. "Picking senior leadership has been slower initially than I think
anyone liked because the vetting process had to be so carefully done," General Myers said, adding that the process now is
"moving faster, and faster and faster."
Indeed, the biggest remaining challenges are recruiting new Iraqi leaders at all levels of command, and training the new Iraqi
police, American officers say.
Officials say that in training Iraqi forces as well as filling the ranks of the new Interior and Defense Ministries, they seek to strike
a balance between pressing them to assume more responsibilities quickly, and not doing so before they are ready.
"We don't want a rush to failure," said Brig. Gen. Carter F. Ham, the Joint Staff's deputy director of operations, who recently
ended a tour as head of American forces in northern Iraq.
"There has been a steady increase, particularly since the elections, in the capabilities and numbers of Iraqi units," Lt. Gen. David
H. Petraeus, the top American trainer in Iraq, said in an e-mail message. "However, there is still a huge amount of work to be
done to help them achieve the capability of conducting independent counter-insurgency operations."
How quickly those Iraqi forces take over security duties will dictate the timetable of the American withdrawal. General Myers
said senior Iraqi leaders had discussed with him a possible long-term economic and security partnership with the United States,
after most troops go home.
Even then, sizable numbers of Special Operations forces, intelligence personnel and surveillance systems will probably remain in
Iraq or nearby countries to help quell the insurgency. Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, said, "I think we're there
for a long time."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Eric Schmitt, "U.S. Commanders See Possible Cut in Troops in Iraq",
New York Times, 11 April 2005. Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/politics/11military.html?ei=5070&en=95dd2cccf427153c&ex=1113796800&pagewanted=print&position=
New York Times
11 April 2005
WASHINGTON, April 10 - Two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the American-led military campaign in Iraq is making enough progress in fighting insurgents and training Iraqi security forces to allow the Pentagon to plan for
significant troop reductions by early next year, senior commanders and Pentagon officials say.
Senior American officers are wary of declaring success too soon against an insurgency they say still has perhaps 12,000 to
20,000 hard-core fighters, plentiful financing and the ability to change tactics quickly to carry out deadly attacks. But there is a
consensus emerging among these top officers and other senior defense officials about several positive developing trends, although
each carries a cautionary note.
Attacks on allied forces have dropped to 30 to 40 a day, down from an average daily peak of 140 in the prelude to the Jan. 30
elections but still roughly at the levels of a year ago. Only about half the attacks cause casualties or damage, but on average one
or more Americans die in Iraq every day, often from roadside bombs. Thirty-six American troops died there in March, the
lowest monthly death toll since 21 died in February 2004.
Attacks now are aimed more at killing Iraqi civilians and security forces, and have been planned with sinister care and timing to
take place outside schools, clinics and police stations when large daytime crowds have gathered.
Several top associates of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant whose network has claimed responsibility for many of
the most deadly attacks, have been captured or killed in recent weeks. American commanders say it now takes longer for
insurgents to regroup and conduct a series of attacks with new tactics, like the one on the night of April 2 against the Abu Ghraib
prison that wounded 44 Americans and 13 Iraqi prisoners.
While senior commanders say the insurgency is still mostly driven by Iraqis, small numbers of foreign fighters who carry out most
of the suicide bombings are still sneaking into the country, mainly from Syria.
The overall number of insurgents has remained virtually unchanged since last fall, even though hundreds, maybe thousands, have
been killed or captured, suggesting that the insurgency can still attract the unemployed, disaffected and even enough true
believers to keep the pool from drying up. American commanders also fear that the fledgling Iraqi government and security
services are riddled with informants despite thorough vetting of applicants, officials say.
The American military's priority has shifted from waging offensive operations to training Iraqi troops and police officers. Iraqi
forces now oversee sections of Baghdad and Mosul, with American forces on call nearby to help in a crisis. More than 2,000
American military advisers are working directly with Iraqi forces.
More Iraqi civilians are defying the insurgents' intimidation to give Iraqi forces tips on the locations of hidden roadside bombs,
weapons caches and rebel safe houses. The Pentagon says that more than 152,000 Iraqis have been trained and equipped for
the military or the police, but the quality and experience of those forces varies widely. Also, the Government Accountability
Office said in March that those figures were inflated, including perhaps tens of thousands of police officers who are absent from
duty.
Interviews with more than a dozen senior American and Iraqi officers, top Pentagon officials and lawmakers who have visited
Iraq yield an assessment that the combination of routing insurgents from their sanctuary in Falluja last November and the Iraqi
elections on Jan. 30 has given the military operation sustained momentum, and put the Bush administration's goal of turning Iraq
over to a permanent, elected Iraqi government within striking distance.
"We're on track," Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview. But the insurgency "kills
virtually every day," he warned. "It's still a very potent threat."
This view of steady if uneven progress is shared by virtually all senior American commanders and Pentagon officials interviewed,
who base their judgments on some 50 to 70 specific measurements from casualty figures to assassination attempts against Iraqi
government officials as well as subjective analyses by American commanders and diplomats. They recall how plans a year ago to
reduce American forces were dashed by resurgent rebel attacks in much of the Sunni-dominated areas north and west of
Baghdad, and in Shiite hot spots like Najaf. And they express concern that a huge, last-ditch suicide attack against a prominent
target, like the new Iraqi National Assembly, could deal the operation a severe blow. "I worry about being excessively
optimistic," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters on March 29.
Precisely when and how many American forces withdraw from Iraq hinges on several factors, including the security situation, the
size and competence of newly trained Iraqi forces, and the wishes of the new Iraqi government. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the
top commander in Iraq, told CNN two weeks ago that if all went well, "we should be able to take some fairly substantial
reductions in the size of our forces" by this time next year.
General Casey has declined to describe the size of any possible troop reductions, but other senior military officials said American
force levels in Iraq could drop to around 105,000, or about 13 brigades, by early next year, from the 142,000 now, just over 17
brigades.
Even some of the administration's toughest critics now express cautious optimism about an Iraq operation that costs more than
$4 billion a month, as the nascent political process and slowly improving economy appear to drain away tacit support for the
insurgency from the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians the military calls "fence-sitters."
"We've gained some real military traction over the past several months, but we'd be naïve to think that the insurgency is over,"
said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and former officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. "We're there militarily for
the long haul."
American officials say the insurgency is still a mix of former Baath Party loyalists, Iraqi military and security service officers, Sunni
Arab militants and terrorists like Mr. Zarqawi. Rather than focusing on their numbers, commanders say they are more concerned
with what the insurgents can do. These groups are well armed and well financed, but are suffering some recruiting problems that
are increasingly forcing them to form tactical partnerships to carry out their attacks, officials said.
"They're slowly losing," said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, a senior aide to General Myers who commanded the Fourth Infantry
Division in Iraq last year.
Helping the situation is that, as the Iraqi security forces gain more confidence and experience, Iraqi residents have put more trust
in them. "We are gaining more victories because people are now cooperating more with us," Maj. Gen. Adnan Thabit, the head
of 11,000 Iraqi police commandos and other security forces, said in an interview.
Senior officers say the increased pressure on insurgents is driving many of them out of safe houses in cities like Mosul, Samarra
and Baghdad, and into the desert. Senior officials say it is notable, although not clearly understood, how the insurgency seems to
be moving in more of a set-piece fashion than it did in its early period.
The Abu Ghraib attacks, for example, were coordinated, small-unit strikes by 40 to 60 insurgents, though they were largely
ineffective, officers say.
"At this point, we are all concerned they may be changing tactics," Brig. Gen. John DeFreitas III, the senior military intelligence
officer in Iraq, said in an interview. "It's still too early to tell."
Commanders are also concerned that the attacks are being aided by a growing network of informants, some of whom appear to
be in lower levels of the new Iraqi civilian administration and security forces.
"They have tentacles that reach all through the new government and the new military," said Lt. Gen. Walter E. Buchanan, the top
American air commander in the Persian Gulf region. The concern about infiltration by former Hussein loyalists has slowed, to
some degree, the reforming of Iraqi security forces at all levels. "Picking senior leadership has been slower initially than I think
anyone liked because the vetting process had to be so carefully done," General Myers said, adding that the process now is
"moving faster, and faster and faster."
Indeed, the biggest remaining challenges are recruiting new Iraqi leaders at all levels of command, and training the new Iraqi
police, American officers say.
Officials say that in training Iraqi forces as well as filling the ranks of the new Interior and Defense Ministries, they seek to strike
a balance between pressing them to assume more responsibilities quickly, and not doing so before they are ready.
"We don't want a rush to failure," said Brig. Gen. Carter F. Ham, the Joint Staff's deputy director of operations, who recently
ended a tour as head of American forces in northern Iraq.
"There has been a steady increase, particularly since the elections, in the capabilities and numbers of Iraqi units," Lt. Gen. David
H. Petraeus, the top American trainer in Iraq, said in an e-mail message. "However, there is still a huge amount of work to be
done to help them achieve the capability of conducting independent counter-insurgency operations."
How quickly those Iraqi forces take over security duties will dictate the timetable of the American withdrawal. General Myers
said senior Iraqi leaders had discussed with him a possible long-term economic and security partnership with the United States,
after most troops go home.
Even then, sizable numbers of Special Operations forces, intelligence personnel and surveillance systems will probably remain in
Iraq or nearby countries to help quell the insurgency. Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, said, "I think we're there
for a long time."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Eric Schmitt, "U.S. Commanders See Possible Cut in Troops in Iraq",
New York Times, 11 April 2005. Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/politics/11military.html?ei=5070&en=95dd2cccf427153c&ex=1113796800&pagewanted=print&position=
05 April 2005
Iraq insurgency has killed 6,000 civilians
Luke Baker
Reuters
05 April 2005
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Guerrillas and criminal gangs have killed 6,000 Iraqi civilians over the past two years and wounded 16,000, according to the first comprehensive government estimate of the toll from the insurgency.
"These people in the insurgency are involved in looting, terrorism, killing, kidnapping, drug dealing, beheading and all that," Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin told Reuters on Tuesday.
"There are around 6,000 Iraqis who have been killed by these people and 16,000 who have been wounded," he said, citing figures compiled from records kept by the health, human rights, interior and other ministries.
"We have also found that around 5,000 Iraqis have been kidnapped since the fall of the regime, which does not include those cases that have gone unreported," he said.
It has been notoriously difficult to estimate the number of civilians killed since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
While there have been estimates of the number of civilians killed by U.S.-led forces and insurgents before, there has not previously been a breakdown of the overall toll.
AWASH WITH CRIMINALS
U.S. and British authorities have been criticised for not keeping a count, while Iraq's health ministry has produced some figures, saying 3,274 civilians died as a result of military and insurgent activity in the last six months of 2004.
Iraq Body Count, a website run by academics and peace activists and based on reports from two media sources, estimates between 17,316 and 19,696 Iraqis have been killed since the war.
A household survey done in Iraq by U.S. scientists, which was rejected by the British government as unreliable, put war-related civilian deaths at about 100,000 since the invasion -- a figure Iraq's health ministry also dismissed.
Part of the difficulty in coming up with an accurate figure is the fact Iraqis are not just being killed by insurgents, but also as a result of criminal activity, militia fighting, private vendettas and tribal conflicts.
Many criminal gangs carry out their activities under the guise of insurgency, kidnapping Iraqis and foreigners for ransom while making the abductions appear politically motivated. In many cases, criminals and insurgents work hand-in-hand.
The insurgency has been estimated to be at least 20,000 strong, including former members of Saddam Hussein's regime and foreign fighters. It is not clear how many are involved in criminal activity, but it could be more than previously thought.
In October 2002, Saddam freed all the country's criminals in an amnesty, letting loose thousands of murderers, rapists, thieves and gunmen, as well as many political prisoners.
The total number was thought to be around 40,000, but the human rights minister said the number may have been far higher.
"We believe the actual number war around 110,000 and the vast majority of those are now involved in kidnapping, murder and terrorism," Amin said.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Luke Baker, "Iraq insurgency has killed 6,000 civilians", Reuters, 05 April 2005.
Reuters
05 April 2005
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Guerrillas and criminal gangs have killed 6,000 Iraqi civilians over the past two years and wounded 16,000, according to the first comprehensive government estimate of the toll from the insurgency.
"These people in the insurgency are involved in looting, terrorism, killing, kidnapping, drug dealing, beheading and all that," Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin told Reuters on Tuesday.
"There are around 6,000 Iraqis who have been killed by these people and 16,000 who have been wounded," he said, citing figures compiled from records kept by the health, human rights, interior and other ministries.
"We have also found that around 5,000 Iraqis have been kidnapped since the fall of the regime, which does not include those cases that have gone unreported," he said.
It has been notoriously difficult to estimate the number of civilians killed since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
While there have been estimates of the number of civilians killed by U.S.-led forces and insurgents before, there has not previously been a breakdown of the overall toll.
AWASH WITH CRIMINALS
U.S. and British authorities have been criticised for not keeping a count, while Iraq's health ministry has produced some figures, saying 3,274 civilians died as a result of military and insurgent activity in the last six months of 2004.
Iraq Body Count, a website run by academics and peace activists and based on reports from two media sources, estimates between 17,316 and 19,696 Iraqis have been killed since the war.
A household survey done in Iraq by U.S. scientists, which was rejected by the British government as unreliable, put war-related civilian deaths at about 100,000 since the invasion -- a figure Iraq's health ministry also dismissed.
Part of the difficulty in coming up with an accurate figure is the fact Iraqis are not just being killed by insurgents, but also as a result of criminal activity, militia fighting, private vendettas and tribal conflicts.
Many criminal gangs carry out their activities under the guise of insurgency, kidnapping Iraqis and foreigners for ransom while making the abductions appear politically motivated. In many cases, criminals and insurgents work hand-in-hand.
The insurgency has been estimated to be at least 20,000 strong, including former members of Saddam Hussein's regime and foreign fighters. It is not clear how many are involved in criminal activity, but it could be more than previously thought.
In October 2002, Saddam freed all the country's criminals in an amnesty, letting loose thousands of murderers, rapists, thieves and gunmen, as well as many political prisoners.
The total number was thought to be around 40,000, but the human rights minister said the number may have been far higher.
"We believe the actual number war around 110,000 and the vast majority of those are now involved in kidnapping, murder and terrorism," Amin said.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Luke Baker, "Iraq insurgency has killed 6,000 civilians", Reuters, 05 April 2005.