Today we have
two separate views on the war in Iraq. We do not take
delight in the events but merely wish to forward the
truth.
---------------------------------------------------------------
U.S. Optimism Tested - By John F. Burns
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 31 -- Hours after the deaths of the
four American civilians who were dragged from their
vehicle and mutilated in Falluja on Wednesday, an
American general went before reporters in Baghdad with
the air of measured assurance that has characterized
every daily briefing on the military situation across
Iraq.
"Despite an uptick in local engagements, the overall
area of operations remains relatively stable with
negligible impact on the coalition's ability to continue
progress in governance, economic development, and
restoration of essential services," said Brig. Gen. Mark
Kimmitt, 51, the former paratrooper who is chief
spokesman for the United States military command.
Nearly a year into the insurgency, the command, in lock
step with the civilian administration headed by L. Paul
Bremer III, remains relentlessly positive.
But along with the publicly expressed confidence, there
are hints that American generals are not as sure as they
were only weeks ago that they have turned a corner in
the conflict. Nor do the scenes from Falluja on
Wednesday -- Iraqis mutilating American bodies, and
crowds cheering at the sight -- appear to fit the theory
put forward by the American military that Islamic
militants, including foreigners, rather than Iraqi
supporters of Saddam Hussein, are increasingly behind
terrorist attacks. Falluja, 30 miles west of Baghdad,
has been the volatile center of support for the toppled
dictator, and a bellwether of the wider war.
Falluja, relatively quiet in recent months, has become a
major battleground again as the First Marine
Expeditionary Force, replacing the Army's 82nd Airborne
Division, has sent large troop formations into the city
to challenge insurgents who had taken control of entire
neighborhoods. This reversed the airborne division's
policy of leaving security in the city mainly to Iraqi
police and civil defense units, and led last week to
several pitched battles in which at least three marines
and 30 Iraqis died.
The visceral hatred for Americans that poured forth on
Wednesday suggests that the city remains as much a
caldron as it was last April 9, when American troops
captured Baghdad. Two weeks after Mr. Hussein's ouster,
American troops who had taken over a school as a
barracks opened fire on angry crowds, killing 17 Iraqis,
after shots were fired at the school. The incident set
off attacks that by midsummer had engulfed the entire
Sunni Triangle, a strategic area of hundreds of square
miles in central Iraq, north, south and west of Baghdad.
By February, American generals had begun to say that the
worst of the "Saddamist" insurgency was over, its power
blunted by a wide American offensive that followed the
former dictator's capture on Dec. 13. The American
strikes across the Sunni Triangle, they said, had relied
heavily on information about the cell structure of the
insurgent leadership that was found among the documents
seized with Mr. Hussein. Penetrating that, the American
officers said, had allowed them to disrupt attacks
severely, putting the rebels at a disadvantage.
At the same time, senior officers around Lt. Gen.
Ricardo S. Sanchez, the American commander, said that
Hussein loyalists were increasingly being replaced as
America's principal enemy in Iraq by Islamic terrorists
with at least loose links to Al Qaeda.
On Feb. 8, United States officials produced a document
that became known as the "Zarqawi letter." In this, they
said, a man they believed to be responsible for several
major attacks, including the August bombing of the
United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed 22
people, had urged Qaeda leaders to support further
attacks aimed at provoking a civil war in Iraq -- and
halting American progress toward the establishment of a
Western-style democratic state.
Questions remain about the letter, including whether the
writer really was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born
Islamic militant. But it provided the Americans with a
ready-made template for their new interpretation of the
war. They said the letter, found on a computer disk
carried by a Qaeda-linked courier, was proof that the
conflict in Iraq had been transformed from a battle to
restore Mr. Hussein into a regional theater for the
worldwide war against terrorism.
Mr. Zarqawi's photograph was posted in operations
centers at American bases across Iraq, and soldiers in
their Humvees began cursing Mr. Zarqawi more than Mr.
Hussein. Virtually every briefing for reporters tied
developments in the war to the growing role of the
Islamic militants and the receding threat from what
military jargon calls F.R.E.'s, or former regime
elements.
In urging this view, American generals and senior
officials around Mr. Bremer, chief of the occupation
authority, have struggled to explain elements of the
situation that have seemed not quite to fit their
theory. While blaming Islamic militants for many of the
worst suicide bombings, including the attacks in Baghdad
and Karbala in early March that killed at least 190
people, they have not been able to provide strong
evidence that the Islamists, and not supporters of Mr.
Hussein, were responsible.
One senior official who blamed Mr. Zarqawi for the
Baghdad and Karbala bombings told reporters that the
F.B.I. had matched ball bearings used in the suicide
belts with those used in two January bombings in the
northern city of Erbil that killed more than 100 people.
But he conceded that ball bearings are sufficiently
alike that they lack a conclusive forensic signature --
and that a matchup of the shrapnel would prove only that
the two attacks might have had a common organizer, not
necessarily that the perpetrator was Mr. Zarqawi, and
not even that the attackers were Islamic militants,
rather than followers of Mr. Hussein.
Another problem for those who contend that Islamic
terrorists with Qaeda links now pose the main threat to
American forces is that only a small number of the
12,000 detainees currently held at American-run camps
across Iraq are foreigners from the swath of Muslim
countries across Asia, the Middle East and Africa who
have been the principal activists of Al Qaeda and its
associated groups elsewhere. American officials have
said that fewer than 150 of the detainees are
foreigners, the rest Iraqis. The United States command
has occasionally announced the arrest of a suspected
Islamic terrorist, but has then fallen silent.
On Tuesday, before the Falluja attacks, General Kimmitt,
the American military spokesman, appeared to back off at
least somewhat from the emphasis on Islamic militants as
the principal enemy. At a briefing, he offered an
overview of the war in which he suggested that what has
occurred, in effect, is a merging of the Saddamist
insurgents and the Islamic terrorists into a common
terrorist threat, and that, either way, "we just call
them targets."
Several Iraqis interviewed on Wednesday, including
middle-class professionals, merchants and former members
of Mr. Hussein's army, suggested that that the United
States might be facing a war in which the common bonds
of Iraqi nationalism and Arab sensibility have
transcended other differences, fostering a war of
national resistance that could pose still greater
challenges to the Americans in the months, and perhaps
years, ahead.
**********************************************************
A Grim Milestone; American Fatalities Reach 600- By Mike
Ewens
In a shocking upsurge of violence, American deaths in
Iraq reached a grim milestone yesterday. The bombing in
Fallujah resulted in the deaths of five GIs and four
contract workers: In one of the bloodiest days for the
U.S. military this year, five 1st Infantry Division
soldiers died when their M-113 armored personnel carrier
ran over a bomb . . . Residents said the bomb attack
occurred in Malahma, 12 miles northwest of Fallujah,
where anti-U.S. insurgents are active.
This event, coupled with the release of the name of a
Wisconsin native killed in an IED attack, brings total
American fatalities in Iraq to 600. Unfortunately, this
total does not coincide with many numbers released in
the mainstream media.
I believe that this is a result of two factors: the lack
of an authoritative government listing and the ambiguous
nature of many of the deaths. With regard to the former,
the Department of Defense will state a death total only
after a call from the press, thus silencing an
indifferent media. The classifications of deaths also
create problems. A quick look at this listing reveals
that many deaths occur days if not weeks after combat
wounds. Some soldiers have died in U.S. military
hospitals; their names only released to those who
frequently peruse the DoD press releases. Other deaths
have occurred in Kuwait or Qatar, where soldiers are
training for or are supporting "Operation Iraqi
Freedom." Antiwar.com decided early on that these
perhaps ambiguous deaths should be counted for the
simple reason that they only occurred because the U.S.
brought war to Iraq. Our numbers are backed up by a
truly remarkable source of information: Iraqi Coalition
Casualty Count. There one will find a complete listing
of names (rather than merely just post-May 1st) and a
comprehensive database.
For those readers who will scream the anecdotes such as
"600 is nothing; 1000 people were killed in NYC last
year!" (false analogy) or "600? Saddam killed tens of
thousands!" ("America goes abroad not in search of
monsters to destroy...."), I present this short list of
what the war on Iraq has wrought:
*3439 official U.S. wounded, while other estimates claim
the total as high as 18,000.
*101 non-U.S. coalition troops killed since the war
began. " 8799 - 10,649 Iraqi civilians killed.
*$109 billion spent and counting.
*Increased terrorism and decreased safety in America.
*Growing sentiments of Anti-Americanism " An army
stretched thin
|