Soldier in Mosul: "We are facing death in Iraq for no reason." Lawrence of Arabia said the same

Soldier in Mosul: "We are facing death in Iraq for no reason." Lawrence of Arabia said the same First the word from a soldier serving in Mosul with the 101 Airborne: "We are facing death in Iraq for no reason:"

For the past six months, I have been participating in what I believe to be the great modern lie: Operation Iraqi Freedom.

As soldiers serving in Iraq, we have been told that our purpose is to help the people of Iraq by providing them with the necessary assistance militarily, as well as in humanitarian efforts. Then tell me where the humanity is in the recent account in Stars and Stripes (the newspaper of the US military) of two young children brought to a US military camp by their mother in search of medical care.

The two children had, unknowingly, been playing with explosive ordnance they had found, and as a result they were severely burned. The account tells how, after an hour-long wait, they - two children - were denied care by two US military doctors. A soldier described the incident as one of many "atrocities" on the part of the US military he had witnessed...

So what is our purpose here? Was this invasion because of weapons of mass destruction, as we have so often heard? If so, where are they? Did we invade to dispose of a leader and his regime because they were closely associated with Osama bin Laden? If so, where is the proof?

Or is it that our incursion is about our own economic advantage? Iraq's oil can be refined at the lowest cost of any in the world. This looks like a modern-day crusade not to free an oppressed people or to rid the world of a demonic dictator relentless in his pursuit of conquest and domination, but a crusade to control another nation's natural resource. Oil - at least to me - seems to be the reason for our presence.

There is only one truth, and it is that Americans are dying. There are an estimated 10 to 14 attacks every day on our servicemen and women in Iraq. As the body count continues to grow, it would appear that there is no immediate end in sight.

I once believed that I was serving for a cause - "to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States". Now I no longer believe that; I have lost my conviction, as well as my determination. I can no longer justify my service on the basis of what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies.

For Monday Robert Fisk reports from Iraq that every day is a death trap.

The American Humvee had burnt out, the US troop transporter had been smashed by rockets and an Iraqi lorry - riddled by American bullets in the aftermath of the attack - still lay smoldering on the central reservation.

"I saw the Americans flying through the air, blasted upwards," an Iraqi mechanic with an oil lamp in his garage said - not, I thought, without some satisfaction. "The wounded Americans were on the road, shouting and screaming."

The US authorities in Iraq - who only report their own deaths, never those of Iraqis - acknowledged three US soldiers dead. There may be up to eight dead, not counting the wounded. Several Iraqis described seeing arms and legs and pieces of uniform scattered across the highway.

There were three separate ambushes in Khaldiya and the guerrillas showed a new sophistication. Even as I left the scene of the killings after dark, US army flares were dripping over the semi-desert plain 100 miles west of Baghdad while red tracer fire raced along the horizon behind the palm trees. It might have been a scene from a Vietnam movie, even an archive newsreel clip; for this is now tough, lethal guerrilla country for the Americans, a death-trap for them almost every day.

As usual, the American military spokesmen had "no information" on this extraordinary ambush. But Iraqis at the scene gave a chilling account of the attack. A bomb - apparently buried beneath the central reservation of the four-lane highway - exploded beside an American truck carrying at least 10 US soldiers and, almost immediately, a rocket-propelled grenade hit a Humvee carrying three soldiers behind the lorry.

"The Americans opened fire at all the Iraqis they could see - at all of us," Yahyia, an Iraqi truck driver, said. "They don't care about the Iraqis." The bullet holes show that the US troops fired at least 22 rounds into the Iraqi lorry that was following their vehicles when their world exploded around them.

The mud hut homes of the dirt-poor Iraqi families who live on the 30-foot embankment of earth and sand above the road were laced with American rifle fire. The guerrillas - interestingly, the locals called them mujahedin, "holy warriors" - then fired rocket-propelled grenades at the undamaged vehicles of the American convoy as they tried to escape. A quarter of a mile down the road - again from a ridge of sand and earth - more grenades were launched at the Americans.

Again, according to the Sunni Muslim Iraqis of this traditionally Saddamite town, the Americans fired back, this time shooting into a crowd of bystanders who had left their homes at the sound of the shooting. Several, including the driver of the truck that was hit by the Americans after the initial bombing, were wounded and taken to hospital for treatment in the nearest city to the west, Ramadi. "They opened fire randomly at us, very heavy fire," Adel, the mechanic with the oil lamp, said. "They don't care about us. They don't care about the Iraqi people, and we will have to suffer this again. But I tell you that they will suffer for what they did to us today. They will pay the price in blood."

So now let's step back to August 22, 1920. The great British adventurer and author T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) wrote the Sunday Times of a burgeoning crisis in Mesopotamia. Its kind of staggering:

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster.

The sins of commission are those of the British civil authorities in Mesopotamia (especially of three 'colonels') who were given a free hand by London. They are controlled from no Department of State, but from the empty space which divides the Foreign Office from the India Office. They availed themselves of the necessary discretion of war-time to carry over their dangerous independence into times of peace. They contest every suggestion of real self- government sent them from home. A recent proclamation about autonomy circulated with unction from Baghdad was drafted and published out there in a hurry, to forestall a more liberal statement in preparation in London, 'Self-determination papers' favourable to England were extorted in Mesopotamia in 1919 by official pressure, by aeroplane demonstrations, by deportations to India.

Yet our published policy has not changed, and does not need changing. It is that there has been a deplorable contrast between our profession and our practice. We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government, and to make available for the world its resources of corn and oil. We spent nearly a million men and nearly a thousand million of money to these ends. This year we are spending ninety-two thousand men and fifty millions of money on the same objects.

Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They kept fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied, and killed a yearly average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining peace. We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes, armoured cars, gunboats, and armoured trains. We have killed about ten thousand Arabs in this rising this summer. We cannot hope to maintain such an average: it is a poor country, sparsely peopled; but Abd el Hamid would applaud his masters, if he saw us working. We are told the object of the rising was political, we are not told what the local people want. It may be what the Cabinet has promised them. A Minister in the House of Lords said that we must have so many troops because the local people will not enlist. On Friday the Government announce the death of some local levies defending their British officers, and say that the services of these men have not yet been sufficiently recognized because they are too few (adding the characteristic Baghdad touch that they are men of bad character). There are seven thousand of them, just half the old Turkish force of occupation. Properly officered and distributed, they would relieve half our army there. Cromer controlled Egypt's six million people with five thousand British troops; Colonel Wilson fails to control Mesopotamia's three million people with ninety thousand troops.

We have not reached the limit of our military commitments. Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a memorandum asking for four more divisions. I believe it was forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three brigades from India. If the North-West Frontier [Taliban country!!!! Dan] cannot be further denuded, where is the balance to come from? Meanwhile, our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the wilfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad. The Government in Baghdad have been hanging Arabs in that town for political offences, which they call rebellion. The Arabs are not at war with us. Are these illegal executions to provoke the Arabs to reprisals on the three hundred British prisoners they hold? And, if so, is it that their punishment may be more severe, or is it to persuade our other troops to fight to the last? We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world. How far will the killing of ten thousand villagers and townspeople this summer hinder the production of wheat, cotton, and oil? How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?

Iran-contra redux and some general incompetence

Some nice speculations about secret proxy army activities. There is a bizarre group in Iraq today called the Mujahideen e-Khalq, who hate the Iranian government. But they are basically a matriarchal cult with a couple dozen tanks. And they have been ranging around from US-controlled territory, Iraq, into Iran to cause... terrorism? After all, they're officially a 'terrorist organization,' and hence one of those 'enemies of civilization' and all that.

So this is what's interesting. The neoconservative planners tend to favor horrible little proxy armies to do their bidding. This was our opium-oriented "Northern Alliance," who stabilized the Afghan province so well. (Heh) It was also the strategy Ariel Sharon used with the Phalangist militia in Lebanon (of Sabra and Shatila massacre fame). And we know that a few of the neocons, namely Michael Ledeen and Eliot Abrams, were perjurous architects of the Iran-Contra scheme. Ledeen hates Iran passionately, and Abrams lied to Congress about it. There's been word that Ledeen has re-opened contact with an Iranian arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, the very same arms dealer who brought those missiles into the Islamic republic.

Could schemers be shifting weapons around, to use against Iran? More specifically, could the neo-cons be encouraging the MEK and giving them harbor? (Bush doctrine ultra-sin!) The Jewish newsletter Forward wrote back in June that

A small Pentagon planning office under fire for its alleged manipulation of intelligence on Iraq is also dealing with other countries in the Persian Gulf, including Iran, raising concerns among critics about the shaping of Bush administration policy in this sensitive region. Defense Department spokesmen acknowledge that a small, four-member team is working on Iran policy within the Pentagon's so-called Office of Special Plans. Critics contend that the office has been distorting intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda in order to strengthen the case for war. Even now, however, some hawks are pressing the administration to engage the group and possibly use it as a proxy against the Tehran regime.

"The Office of Special Plans has been willing to reach out to the MEK and use them as a surrogate to pressure Iran," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA and State Department official who has been among those alleging pressure on analysts by Pentagon hawks to skew intelligence on Iraq. The senior Defense Department official strongly denied the allegations, contending that the Office of Special Plans had in fact advocated cracking down on the MEK. He said the ensuing policy confusion was due to other government agencies.

And so, these months later, the neocons have biffed the job. It seems that they didn't get to planning the post-Baathist fourth phase of the war! As leftie Alex Cockburn says on Counterpunch, "Matchlessly Wrong About Everything: Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con!":

Now here we are on the downslope of 2003 and George Bush is learning, way too late for his own good, that the neo-cons have been matchlessly wrong about everything. One can burrow through the archives of historical folly in search of comparisons and still come up empty-handed. The neo-cons told Bush that eviction of Saddam would rearrange the chairs in the Middle East, to America's advantage. Wrong. They told him it would unlock the door to a peaceful settlement in Israel. Wrong. They told him (I'm talking about Wolfowitz's team of mad Straussians at DoD) that there was irrefutable proof of the existence of weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq. Wrong. They told him the prime Iraqi exile group, headed by Ahmad Chalabi, had street cred in Iraq. Wrong. They told him it would be easy to install a US regime in Baghdad and make the place hum quietly along, like Lebanon in the 1950s. Wrong...

Now many are gloating at the neo-cons' discomfiture and waiting for their downfall. Click go Madam Defarge's knitting needles as she waits beside the guillotine. Here come the tumbrils, inching their way slowly through the rotting cabbages and vulgar ribaldry of Republican isolationists. Here's a pale-faced Douglas Feith. Up goes the fatal blade, and down it flashes. Behold, the head of a neo-con! The next tumbril carries a weightier cargo: Richard Perle and Elliott Abrams. Still not enough. Madam Defarge knits on and her patience is soon rewarded. Here come Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, the latter defiantly jotting a coda to Rumsfeld's Rules. They are cleanly dispatched and the crowd moves off to torch the Weekly Standard and string up its editor, Bill Kristol.

Oh no, even the militant Washington Times is givin some to the Pentagon's policy bombs. Of course, we don't necessarily have to reach for conspiracies to determine that their policy planning has simply been incompetent:

The Pentagon's policy-making shop is getting internal criticism for failing to predict the ongoing guerrilla war in its planning for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, military officials say.

The officials, who requested anonymity, also said the intelligence community failed to paint a full picture before the war of the sorry state of Iraq's infrastructure and basic services such as drinking water and sewage treatment.

Much of the inside-the-Pentagon criticism is directed at Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, who has coordinated postwar planning. "Feith's star is falling," one Pentagon insider said of the Georgetown University-educated lawyer who worked in the Reagan administration. This official said Mr. Feith pushed to make Saddam's suspected weapons of mass destruction the No. 1 rationale for going to war on March 19. That argument has suffered as search teams have failed to find any such weapons.

...Pentagon officials told of rushed prewar planning last winter, as one arm of the policy shop made post-Saddam blueprints of which others had no knowledge. Some nondefense agencies simply skipped planning meetings. While the war plan went off with few snags and produced a quick victory, the "Phase IV" plan was not solidly in place when Baghdad fell April 9.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, told Mr. Wolfowitz at a hearing last week: "It's clear that the Bush administration was not ready for what took place after the Iraqi regime collapsed. ... We were unprepared, totally unprepared, for what's happened out there in Iraq in terms of giving adequate protection for American troops."

...A secret report for the Joint Chiefs of Staff last month gave a low grade to planning for Phase IV. "Late formation of DoD [Phase IV] organizations limited time available for the development of detailed plans and pre-deployment coordination," said the report, prepared by the chiefs' planning arm, the Joint Staff. "Command relationships (and communication requirements) and responsibilities were not clearly defined for DoD organizations until shortly before [the war] commenced."

So then, what will it be? A conspiracy to attack Iran (or at least move around arms), or else the continued implementation of really poor defense policies?