Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September 5, 2003
Robert Fisk
We Were
Warned About This Chaos
Recent
Stories
September 4, 2003
Stan Goff
The Bush
Folly: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
John Ross
Mexico's
Hopes for Democracy Hit Dead-End
Harvey Wasserman
Bush to New Yorkers: Drop Dead
Adam Federman
McCain's
Grim Vision: Waging a War That's Already Been Lost
Aluf Benn
Sharon Saved from Threat of Peace
W. John Green
Colombia's Dirty War
Joanne Mariner
Truth,
Justice and Reconciliation in Latin America
Website of the Day
Califoracle
September 3, 2003
Virginia Tilley
Hyperpower
in a Sinkhole
Davey D
A Hip
Hop Perspective on the Cali Recall
Emrah Göker
Conscripting Turkey: Imperial Mercenaries Wanted
John Stanton
The US is a Power, But Not Super
Brian Cloughley
The
Pentagon's Bungled PsyOps Plan
Dan Bacher
Another Big Salmon Kill
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors Weep' Ninth Circuit Overturns 127 Death Sentences
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
Website of the Day
Art Attack!
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
August 28, 2003
Gilad Atzmon
The
Most Common Mistakes of Israelis
David Vest
Moore's
Monument: Cement Shoes for the Constitution
David Lindorff
Shooting Ali in the Back: Why the Pacification is Doomed
Chris Floyd
Cheap Thrills: Bush Lies to Push His War
Wayne Madsen
Restoring the Good, Old Term "Bum"
Elaine Cassel
Not Clueless in Chicago
Stan Goff
Nukes in the Dark
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Behold, My Package
Website of the Day
Palestinian
Artists
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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September
5, 2003
Quagmire? What Quagmire?
Iraq
is a Black Hole
By Col. DAN SMITH
In the months leading up to the recent war in
Iraq and in its aftermath, Bush administration officials were
forced to continually change their rationale for launching the
attack to topple Saddam Hussein. Where they have not wavered,
and where they have received consistent support from top Pentagon
military commanders, is in their insistence that Iraq is not
another Vietnam, not a quagmire. The further the U.S. and the
world move from the fall of Baghdad on April 9th, the more it
seems that the administration is correct: Iraq is not a quagmire.
It is really a black hole.
A quagmire is defined in the American
Heritage Dictionary as (1) "land with a soft, muddy surface"
or (2) "a precarious or difficult situation." In either
definition, circumstances are not irreversible. A "soft
muddy surface" suggests something more solid somewhere beneath,
while "difficult" is not the same as impossible.
But media reports the last week in August
have made it very clear that the administration has plunged the
U.S. over the lip--what is called the "event horizon"--of
the human and financial black hole that is post-war Iraq. The
significance of passing the astronomical event horizon is that
whatever crosses it, even light, cannot recover or be recovered.
It is a one-way trip down a "tunnel" at whose end there
is no light, only crushing gravity.
Consider the human costs of the Iraq
adventure to date:
The U.S. death toll from all causes since
May 1st, the date President Bush declared the end of major combat
operations in Iraq, now exceeds the death toll from the three
weeks required to seize Baghdad (March 20th-April 9th) and the
three weeks thereafter. The 286 U.S. fatalities in the 2003 war
is fast approaching the 293 killed in the 1991 Gulf War with
Iraq. The British lost four more soldiers in late August, bringing
their post-May 1st losses to twelve. This is nearly one-quarter
of the UK's total fatalities since March 20th and doubles total
UK fatalities in the 1991 Gulf War. And the British are operating
in an area the coalition expected to be very receptive to the
occupation authorities. Not routinely reported are the number
of U.S. wounded, who total 1,127 as of September 2nd. The UN's
foreign staff lost 16, killed when its Baghdad headquarters was
blown up by a vehicular bomb in August. Other relief and humanitarian
workers have also been targets, and one Danish soldier has been
killed. Unreported are the Iraqi dead and wounded from encounters
with invading and occupation forces and the series of car bombings
in August and early September. And then there are the fatalities
caused by inadequate or insufficient public services--electric
power, clean water, sanitation--as well as lack of basic security
brought on by the wholesale dismissal ("cleansing")
of the Iraqi police force, army, and border guards in May. Today,
according to the Los Angeles Times, Baghdad has 6,000 policemen,
most of whom are in training. Before March 20, the city had 20,000.
And today the "army" consists of 1,000 recruits.
The financial aspects of the black hole
that is post-war Iraq are astronomical:
The cost of the war itself is estimated
at $48 billion, with the Pentagon's ongoing operations costing
another $4 billion a month--and no decrease forecast. Reconstruction
costs for just the post-war part of Fiscal Year 2003, which ends
September 30, have been estimated at $7.3 billion.
The administration refuses to estimate
costs for 2004, let alone future years. Independent estimates
depend on what is included; for example, the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences has a range of between $106-$615 billion
over ten years while estimates by Taxpayers for Common Sense
run between $114-$465 billion.
The administration had already signaled
it would ask Congress for new, substantial Iraq supplemental
appropriations in October. Now it says it will need a "few
billion more" just to get through September. L. Paul Bremer
III, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), acknowledged
that rebuilding Iraq would cost "tens of billions"
of dollars and that most of this cost would be paid by U.S. taxpayers.
Bremer recently set the cost of providing clean water at $16
billion and reliable electric power at $13 billion. He made no
estimate about the cost of rebuilding the oil industry, although
he did suggest it might cost $100 billion over the next five
years to reconstitute Iraq's "national infrastructure."
In March, even before Baghdad fell, a
non-competitive contract to rehabilitate Iraq's oil fields, with
an upper limit of $7 billion, was awarded to Vice President Dick
Cheney's former employer, Halliburton, by the Army Corps of Engineers.
(As of the end of August, Halliburton had already been paid $700
million for oil field work, according to information the Corps
provided the Washington Post.) As recently as June, the CPA had
said Iraq's oil production would return to pre-war levels by
the end of August. In July this slipped to October; now it has
slipped to October 2004. Yet as early as March 27, one week after
the war began and well before any evaluation of the condition
of the oil infrastructure was possible, Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz assured the House Appropriations Committee that
oil would be Iraq's self-financing rebuilding engine: "We're
dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction,
and relatively soon."
Facing an ever-growing black hole from
failed oil revenues, the CPA unveiled in late August its latest
gambit to revive Iraq's economy: opening the country to outside
investment. The U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, according
to the New York Times, reacted very cautiously. Even though it
nominally will have the opportunity to review major investment
offers, there is concern that traditional industries, rendered
relatively inefficient by 23 years of war, sanctions, and under-investment,
would quickly be swamped by new factories, throwing more people
out of work in a country where unemployment hovers near 60%.
Indeed, food and agriculture, services,
and manufacturing are among major segments of the economy not
exempted from foreign investment. What the CPA's scheme does
exclude are natural resources (including oil), basic services
(electricity, water, and sewage) and areas that would remain
under CPA control because of "national security" reasons
(e.g., "retraining" members of Iraq's former intelligence
service, the Mukhabarat, to work for the CPA). Moreover, the
CPA's proposal omits any requirement for investors to reinvest
their profits in Iraq. This sets up conditions similar to those
in post-Soviet Russia when billions of dollars were exported
and stashed in foreign banks while the economy plunged.
While foreign investment is generally
considered a plus for economic growth, the terms of the CPA plan
seem to run counter to recommendations of the Pentagon-appointed
review group that visited Iraq in late June to assess conditions.
Headed by former Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre, the panel
put economic development as the third of seven priorities (behind
public safety and greater Iraqi involvement in reconstruction
efforts). Specifically, it recommended:
creating short-term, large-scale public
works projects that would absorb sizable numbers of people in
the labor pool;
jump-starting a significant number of
state-owned enterprises, even those that would not be competitive,
because of the great need to produce more job opportunities;
initiating a "massive" micro-credit
program, similar to those that have been successful in impoverished,
war-ravaged countries, that would open new avenues for economic
activity to new players, especially women.
Private foreign investment will not be
interested in any of these areas as economic return would be
minimal, if any, and not worth the risk given the lack of security
in Iraq.
One characteristic of black holes is
that they grow in size as they absorb energy from the surrounding
cosmos. Iraq has already snuffed out thousands of lives and absorbed
tens of billions of dollars. President Bush reiterated that a
"substantial commitment of time and resources" still
lies ahead.
Yes, Iraq is not a quagmire. But at a
time when U.S. budget deficits of $401 billion this year and
$480 billion for 2004 are forecast, Iraq looms as an ever-expanding
funnel into which human lives, human talent, and monetary resources
are being poured, never to be recovered. That, by any measure,
defines a veritable black hole.
Dan Smith
is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus and
a retired U.S. army colonel and senior fellow on Military Affairs
at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.) He can be
reached at: dan@fcnl.org
Weekend
Edition Features for August 30 / Sept. 1, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
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