US Iraq Casualties Rise To 72,239

Compiled by Michael Munk
www.MichaelMunk.com

US military occupation forces in Iraq under Commander-in-Chief Obama suffered 30 combat casualties in the six days ending May 27, 2009 as the official total rose to at least 72,239. The total includes 34,758 dead and wounded from what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and more than 37,481 dead and medically evacuated (last reported April 4, 2009) from "non-hostile" causes.*

The actual total is over 100,000 because the Pentagon chooses not to count as "Iraq casualties" the more than 30,000 veterans whose injuries - mainly brain trauma from explosions and PTSD - diagnosed only after they had left Iraq.**

US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by occasionally reporting only the total killed (4,303 as of May 27) but rarely mentioning the 31,312 wounded in combat. To further minimize public perception of the cost, they cover for the Pentagon by ignoring the 36,624 (as of April 4, 2009))*** military victims of accidents and illness serious enough to require medical air evacuation, although the 4,303 reported deaths include 857 (up one) who died from those same causes, including at least 18 from faulty electrical work by KBR and 177 suicides through 2008.****

Key:

* The number of wounded is usually updated on Tuesdays by the Pentagon.

** New York Times, Jan 26, 2009

*** the number of "non combat" injured was reported by the Pentagon.

**** NYTimes, Jan 30, 2009

Source: afterdowningstreet.org Monitor

"The Iraqi parliament voted to approve the SOFA late last year only after linking it to a referendum this summer which would allow Iraqis to vote on whether US troops should leave sooner than the end of 2011.
With Maliki's public insistence that there will be no extension for US forces, plans for the promised referendum appear to have quietly disappeared."

Iraq Lies Continue: Redraw the City Borders and Call it a Withdrawal

By Jane Arraf
The Christian Science Monitor

Baghdad - On a map of Baghdad, the US Army's Forward Operating Base Falcon is clearly within city limits.

Except that Iraqi and American military officials have decided it's not. As the June 30 deadline for US soldiers to be out of Iraqi cities approaches, there are no plans to relocate the roughly 3,000 American troops who help maintain security in south Baghdad along what were the fault lines in the sectarian war.

"We and the Iraqis decided it wasn't in the city," says a US military official. The base on the southern outskirts of Baghdad's Rasheed district is an example of the fluidity of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) agreed to late last year, which orders all US combat forces out of Iraqi cities, towns, and villages by June 30.

"We consider the security agreement a living document," says a senior US commander. With six weeks to go, US and Iraqi commanders are sitting down in joint security committees to determine how they can comply with the decree that all US combat forces withdraw from populated areas by the end of June and still maintain the requirement to assist Iraq in fighting the insurgency and maintaining security and stability.

"[The Iraqis are] clear in their intention, less clear in their implementation," says the senior military official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Complexity of operating under SOFA

The security agreement, which took effect five months ago and charts the US-Iraqi relationship for years to come, is also being tested in murkier waters, such as the US right to self-defense.

A US-led raid in the southern Iraqi city of Kut last month, in which an Iraqi woman was killed in the crossfire, prompted protests in the streets. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called the operation a crime and demanded that the American soldiers involved be turned over to Iraqi courts, saying the raid violated the terms of the security agreement.

US officials say they had valid warrants for the operation targeting suspected members of Iranian-funded Shiite militias involved in weapons smuggling. One suspect was killed in the raid and six others detained before Iraqi authorities ordered their release.

One US military official said that although Iraqi authorities had been notified of the raid in advance, those authorities maintained they had not approved it....

The rest of the article continues at The Christian Science Monitor

Combat Operations in Fallujah

by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Report

Indicative of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq, on May 1 the US military reported the death of a Naval petty officer who was killed "on April 30 while conducting combat operations in Fallujah, Iraq." The Department of Defense report went on to explain that the sailor "was deployed with an East Coast based Navy SEAL team." That same day, the military announced the deaths of two marines "killed while conducting combat operations against enemy forces here April 30." The dateline for the latter press release is "AL ANBAR PROVINCE, Iraq." Apparently, all is not well in Fallujah and al- Anbar province. The US military, having met the fiercest resistance throughout their occupation of Iraq in these areas, is once again conducting combat operations there.

The fact that the US military has largely hung the Sahwa out to dry, exposing the 100,000 strong Sunni militia to the ire of the Maliki government for ongoing assassinations and detentions, has taken the lid off the volcano that the Sahwa were keeping from erupting. Let us remember - it was the Sahwa who kept al-Qaeda in Iraq in check, not the US military or the Iraqi military. As members of the Sahwa continue to leave their security posts due to lack of pay and being targeted by the Iraqi government, they are returning to the resistance from which most of them had emerged to join the militia.

Let us also be clear about the fact that the Sahwa allied themselves with the US military so as to protect themselves from the Shia-dominated sectarian government of Prime Minister Maliki.

I asked a good friend of mine in Baghdad to interview a Sahwa leader in the Adhamiya district of Baghdad a few days ago. The leader asked to be identified as Abu Ahmed. He is 40 years old, married, has four children, and had this to say, "I would like to say that the Iraqi Government, and especially Mr. Maliki, are continuing to target us. They have been doing this from the beginning, and they continue to do this against the Sahwa. The reason is because we are Sunni and the Iraqi government are a sectarian government."

Abu Ahmed said he and his fellow Sahwa members support the immediate withdrawal of all occupation forces "and then we can change our government by ourselves and build a nationalist government to replace this current sectarian government."

He then added, succinctly, "Our purpose is to end the occupation, end al-Qaeda, and make a new Iraq that is safe."

Fate, as if to underscore his point, found rivers of blood filling the....

the full article can be found at truthout.org

Planning for Failure in Afghanistan

Col. Sam Gardiner, USAF (ret.) and Erik Leaver
Foreign Policy In Focus

It's official. President Barack Obama now fully owns the war in Afghanistan. Standing alongside his military advisors and in front of the Washington press corps, he outlined a plan with "a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan." While the goal and the five objectives to meet this goal are clear, they're also unattainable and will likely result in the U.S. (and NATO) being trapped in the region for decades to come.

Searching for a solution in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in 2007, the National Security Council Principals Committee reexamined and reset U.S. objectives for Afghanistan. These essentially boiled down to establishing a democracy and a working capitalist state in which women were well- treated. With the military set to take the lead or a main support role to achieve these objectives, there was no way they could be achieved and, more importantly, there was no indication of when such a mission would be finished.

No less than eight strategy reviews have been conducted in the last several months. They've all concluded that the primary objective should be more limited, essentially calling for action to stop Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorists. The problem with even this more limited objective is that there is no way in which the United States or NATO could achieve it without staying forever. As long as the United States and NATO forces are there in great numbers, it won't be a safe haven. But when forces leave, the opportunity would exist for it to roll back.

Obama's plan, along with all eight strategy reviews, have missed the seven-plus years of our experience there. Red flags should have been raised as Obama outlined his five core objectives:

Security

Since the invasion began the Afghans haven't shown any propensity to take care of their own security. Even those military forces who have been trained by the United States and NATO freely allow Taliban to pass through their territory if they pay. The Afghan tradition of corruption is overwhelming. With the drug trade flourishing, there is little hope that these military forces could ever be paid enough to bring a stop to the temptations of corruption.

In a late March BBC interview, Afghan finance minister (and presidential candidate) Anwarulhaq Ahadisaid said the United States allowed corruption to come into the Afghanistan government. As with President Hamid Karzai, we see the pattern of denying any responsibility for corruption.

As Obama noted, 2008 was the deadliest for U.S. soldiers on the ground. It was also the deadliest for Afghans. In 2008, civilian casualties climbed 40%, topping 2,100. Public awareness of those casualties brought heightened anger at and opposition to the U.S. military presence, even beyond opposition to the specific attacks. Challenges grew around U.S. supply lines, and war objectives were increasingly recognized as unclear. As in Iraq, the use of roadside bombs and suicide bombers significantly increased. The increase in casualties corresponds directly with the increase in U.S. and NATO troop strength. More importantly, the "surge" of 17,000 troops further undermines the....

read full analysis at Foreign Policy In Focus