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COPYRIGHT 2005 Kurdish Library
In an editorial for Informed Comment on the first day of February, this year, William Fischer wrote: "A few years ago, many of those who now serve George W. Bush launched their 'Project for the New American Century (PNAC).' Its stars included names like Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, James Woolsey, JohBolton, Douglas Feith and, of course, [Richard] Perle. Its ideology was the proactive assertion of American power in the world it believed that the kind of rhetoric we heard in the President's inaugural address was for real. The PNAC said what America needed was 'a new Pearl Harbor.' A wake-up call to arms and manifest destiny. They wrote, they spoke, they circulated policy papers, they lobbied the corridors of Washington power. And absent 9/11, they might just be doing the same old things." Because their will triumphed, ordinary people are doing the same old things."
Following is a piteous account of the consequences of doing the same old things. On December 28th eight Iraqi employees of the American security company, Sandi Group, were executed by insurgents. South of Tikrit, 12 policemen died in an attack on their station. A car bomb killed 5 Iraqi National Guardsmen and injured 26 near Baquba. Capt. Na'em Abdullah was assassinated. In Muradiya a car bomb killed 5 civilians and wounded dozens. In Mosul a gunman attacked a police station killing an officer. In Samarra an attacker detonated his car wounding 10. And in Mufriq three policmen were wounded by mortar rounds. (AP 12.28.04)
On the following day U.S. troops fought insurgents in Mosul. The military admitted that security had "deteriorated badly" in the city, but no more troops would be sent in. No doubt Kurdish pesh merga would fill in the blanks. In Baghdad attacks killed at least 29 Iraqis and wounded 18.
According to Associated Press, in the last four months of 2004, the U.S. suffered at least 348 deaths and the total number of wounded since March of 2003 surpassed 10,000. More than one quarter of that number were injured in just those four months. AP added these details: "The number of attacks on U.S. and allied troops grew from an estimated 1,400 attacks in September to 1,600 in October and 1,950 in November, whereas a year earlier they numbered 649 in September, 896 in October and 864 in November." But administration officials continued to claim that security was "improving." Insurgents' attacks were bound to increase before the January 30th elections, they said.
On the last day of the year, Brig, Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, an acquisition official, explained to reporters the downside of providing extra armor for Humvees in which so many American troops had been killed. Although armor "undoubtedly saves lives, it also adds indirectly to operating costs ... the extra weight of the armor causes vehicle suspension systems to wear out three or four times faster than normal, thereby adding to fuel consumption. He was careful to add that his words shouldn't be misconstrued to mean that adding armor "is not worth the expense." (AP 12.31.05)
One day into 2005, a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb north of Baghdad killing 19 Iraqis, 18 of them National Guardsmen. Two U.S. soldiers were wounded by another car bomb. Now the U.S. military announced it had "significantly increased" troop strength (they didn't say which troops) in Mosul. In Samarra four policemen were killed and a fifth wounded. In Jebala police chief Col. Abdel Karim Riyadh was assassinated, as was a police officer in a drive-by shooting in southern Baghdad. In eastern Diyala province gunmen killed a deputy governor. On the following day three suicide car bombs and a roadside explosion killed at least 16 people, one near the headquarters of interim prime minister Allawi's Iraqi National Accord party.
On January 3rd the Pentagon added three servicemen to the December casualty list raising the month's death toll to 72, including 20 reservists. On that day, three American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb. The casualty total had now reached 1,338. Meanwhile in Baghdad, Oil Minister Thamer Ghadban complained to reporters: "We want to tell the Iraqi people that there is an all-out war against the country's oil infrastructure ... Terrorists are not content to hit pipelines, but have also hit tanker trucks, and have threatened, beaten and killed drivers." He estimated lost export revenues at $8 billion since March 2003. (Daily Star 1.3.05) One day later gunmen killed Baghdad's mayor, Ali al-Haideri.
Now Gen. Muhammad Abd Allah Shahwani, the head of Iraqi intelligence, told the press: "I think the resistance is bigger than the U.S. military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people ... People are fed up after two years without improvement. People are fed up with no security, no electricity, people feel they have to do something. The army was hundreds of thousands. You would expect some veterans would join with their relatives, each one has sons and brothers." But he stopped short of saying the insurgents were winning. "I would say they aren't losing," he said. (Aljazeera 1.4.05) On the same day the Pentagon announced that the number of U.S. troops wounded since the invasion had climbed to 10,252. Iraqi casualties were considerably higher, but there has been no accurate count.
On January 6th the bodies of 18 men and boys, all Shiites were found assassinated in a field near Mosul. Duraid Kashmula, the governor of Nineveh province denied the reports. "We have not heard about such an incident in Mosul city," he said. When...
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