The Iraq Dossier

On May 1, a little over six months ago, President Bush made his now-infamous flight-suited appearance on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln, delivering the message that the war was over and the mission accomplished.

Now, six months later, as London lies transformed into "fortress London" to shield Bush from the wrath of the citizens of his only major ally in Iraq, most Americans know that Bush's May Day proclamation was, at best, premature. Bush himself has scrambled to "clarify" that, no, he only meant "major combat operations," and, well, of course other missions remain. Most Americans also know that despite White House protestations to the contrary, Iraq's occupation hasn't exactly gone according to plan.

Heck, some Americans are beginning to be aware that there was little or no White House plan at all -- only a blind optimistic faith that the troops would be welcomed as liberators and today, six months later, all involved would be holding hands and singing "Kumbaya" as they build a newly democratic Middle East.

Well, not exactly. Instead, headlines each day detail yet more deaths of American soldiers, and more quotes from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and "senior White House officials" dismissing the increasingly bold and sophisticated attacks as the isolated, desperate last stand of a handful of Saddam "dead-enders" and foreign terrorists.

That, as I'll discuss, is almost entirely nonsense. But it also obscures a number of other calamities now befalling our newest colonial possession. It's impossible to list them all in this space -- but since a number of them have gotten little or no media attention in this country, it's worth reviewing some of the lowlights in one place:

Casualties. Attention has gone to the spiraling death toll among American soldiers -- and that the White House has taken the extraordinary step of barring media from witnessing the return of bodies to the U.S. and filming the flag-draped coffins. Bush himself has yet to attend a military funeral for a casualty of the occupation. But it's worse than that.

Advances in battlefield medicine and triage mean that far more soldiers can survive their wounds today than 40 or even 10 years ago. But the nature of many of the attacks (car bombs, errant KPGs, etc.), and the number of dead point to a level of injured soldiers that is likely to be far higher than the 1,000 - 2,000 the Pentagon claims. Persistent reports have far greater numbers of soldiers -- up to 10,000 -- being shuttled back to military hospitals in Germany. When returned to the U.S., injured soldiers have been scattered in ones, twos, and threes to both military and civilian hospitals across the U.S. in an effort to minimize the visibility of casualties.

That's the Americans. What about Iraqis? It's impossible to say, not least because the Pentagon and occupying CPA government refuse to tally, let alone release the figures, of Iraqi civilian or resistance fighter dead or injured. The invaluable site iraqbodycount.org has documented over 1,500 civilian deaths in Baghdad alone since mid-April. Occupying soldiers seem to have carte blanche to fire on civilians with little or no pretext; even when investigations are promised, they never seem to be actually conducted. As the U.S. resorts to dropping large bombs on densely populated urban areas, civilian casualties can only increase. And the U.S. practice of ignoring Iraqi deaths and not holding its own people accountable for killings is only one of the many things angering Iraqis.

The Iraqi economy is a shambles. The Americans are hiring Iraqis for only the most menial jobs. Contractors are hiring Kuwaitis, Saudis, and Southeast Asians. The currency of choice is now the dollar. Looting was pandemic in the first months and remains a serious problem. As on the West Bank and Gaza, one of the reasons resistance can flourish is that unemployed young men are both angry and have time on their hands.