Attacks
on U.S. Troops in Iraq Grow in Lethality, Complexity
Bigger Bombs a Key Cause of May's High Death Toll
By Ann Scott Tyson and John Ward AndersonWashington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, June 3, 2007; Page A01
As U.S.
troops push more deeply into Baghdad and its volatile outskirts, Iraqi
insurgents are using increasingly sophisticated and
lethal means of attack, including bigger roadside bombs
that are resulting in greater numbers of American
fatalities relative to the number of wounded.
Insurgents are deploying huge,
deeply buried munitions set up to protect their territory
and mounting complex ambushes that demonstrate their
ability to respond rapidly to U.S. tactics. A new
counterinsurgency strategy has resulted in decreased
civilian deaths in Baghdad but has placed thousands of
additional American troops at greater risk in small
outposts in the capital and other parts of the country.
"It is very clear that the
number of attacks against U.S. forces is up" and
that they have grown more effective in Baghdad,
especially in recent weeks, said Maj. Gen. James E. Simmons, deputy commander for operations in Iraq.
At the same time, he said, attacks on Iraqi security
forces have declined slightly, citing figures that
compare the period of mid-February to mid-May to the
preceding three months. "The attacks are being
directed at us and not against other people," he
said.
May, with 127 American
fatalities, was the third-deadliest month for U.S. troops
since the 2003 invasion. As in the conflict's two
deadliest months for U.S. troops -- 137 died in November
2004 and 135 in April of that year -- the overarching
cause of May's toll is the ongoing, large-scale U.S. military operations. Simmons called the high
U.S. losses in May "a very painful and
heart-wrenching experience."
The intensity of combat and the
greater lethality of attacks on U.S. troops is
underscored by the lower ratio of wounded to killed for
May, which fell to about 4.8 to 1 -- compared with an
average of 8 to 1 in the Iraq conflict, according
Pentagon data. "The closer you get to a stand-up
fight, the closer you're going to get to that 3-to-1
ratio" that typified 2oth-century U.S. warfare, said
John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense
information Web site.
Simmons said that in May, the
number of armor-piercing weapons known as explosively
formed projectiles roughly matched the April high of 65,
and the main source of increased U.S. deaths was
"large and buried IEDs," or improvised
explosive devices.
U.S. deaths have risen sharply
in some of Baghdad's outlying regions, such as Diyala province, where Sunni and Shiite groups have
escalated sectarian violence and fought back hard against
American forces moving into their safe havens.
"Extremists on both sides of this thing are trying
to make a statement by attacking U.S. troops,"
Simmons said.
The overall percentage of U.S.
military fatalities caused by roadside bombs had dipped
from more than 60 percent late last year to 35 percent in
February. It then rose again to 70.9 percent in May,
according to research by the independent Web site
icasualties.org. Gains in defeating the bombs have not
resulted in fewer deaths because the number of bombs --
and the lethality of some types -- have increased,
military officials said.
Insurgents are also staging
carefully planned, complex ambushes and retaliatory
attacks as they target U.S. troops, the officials said.
While few in number, these include direct assaults on
U.S. military outposts, ambushes in which American troops
have been captured, and complex attacks that use multiple
weapons to strike more than one U.S. target. For example,
attackers will bomb a patrol and then target ground
forces or aircraft that come to its aid.
"We are starting to see
more sophistication and training in their attacks,"
said a senior military official in Baghdad. While the
vast majority of attacks are still relatively simple and
involve a single type of weapon, "clearly the trend
is going in the wrong direction," he said, speaking
on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized
to speak to reporters.
In an attack Monday in Diyala,
for example, an OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter carrying
two U.S. soldiers took heavy enemy fire during combat and
crashed in farmland southwest of the town of Abu Saydah,
about 40 miles north of Baghdad in a region where the
Sunni extremist group al-Qaeda in Iraq is trying to establish a new
stronghold.
The U.S. military scrambled
Bradley Fighting Vehicles at Forward Operating Base
Normandy, 19 miles from the crash, for an urgent rescue.
But as the Quick Reaction Force rumbled through the rural
terrain just a mile and a half from the crash site, a
huge roadside bomb hit a Bradley, killing four soldiers
and wounding another four, one mortally. Suddenly, the
rescue mission itself was in peril, and helicopters
rushed to evacuate the injured.
From: wvns@yahoogroups.com [mailto:wvns@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of World
View
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 9:04 AM
To: wvns@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [wvns] Iraq's Death Toll Far Worse Than Our
Leaders Admit
The US and Britain have triggered an episode more deadly
than the
Rwandan genocide
Iraq's death toll is far worse than our leaders admit
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2268067.ece
On both sides of the Atlantic, a process of spinning
science is
preventing a serious discussion about the state of
affairs in Iraq.
The government in Iraq claimed last month that since the
2003 invasion
between 40,000 and 50,000 violent deaths have occurred.
Few have
pointed out the absurdity of this statement.
There are three ways we know it is a gross underestimate.
First, if it
were true, including suicides, South Africa, Colombia,
Estonia,
Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia have experienced
higher
violent death rates than Iraq over the past four years.
If true, many
North and South American cities and Sub-Saharan Africa
have had a
similar murder rate to that claimed in Iraq. For those of
us who have
been in Iraq, the suggestion that New Orleans is more
violent seems
simply ridiculous.
Secondly, there have to be at least 120,000 and probably
140,000
deaths per year from natural causes in a country with the
population
of Iraq. The numerous stories we hear about overflowing
morgues, the
need for new cemeteries and new body collection brigades
are not
consistent with a 10 per cent rise in death rate above
the baseline.
And finally, there was a study, peer-reviewed and
published in The
Lancet, Europe's most prestigious medical journal, which
put the death
toll at 650,000 as of last July. The study, which I
co-authored, was
done by the standard cluster approach used by the UN to
estimate
mortality in dozens of countries each year. While the
findings are
imprecise, the lower range of possibilities suggested
that the Iraq
government was at least downplaying the number of dead by
a factor of 10.
There are several reasons why the governments involved in
this
conflict have been able to confuse the issue of Iraqi
deaths. Our
Lancet report involved sampling and statistical analysis,
which is
rather dry reading. Media reports always miss most deaths
in times of
war, so the estimate by the media-based monitoring
system,
Iraqbodycount.org (IBC) roughly corresponds with the Iraq
government's
figures. Repeated evaluations of deaths identified from
sources
independent of the press and the Ministry of Health show
the IBC
listing to be less than 10 per cent complete, but because
it matches
the reports of the governments involved, it is easily
referenced.
Several other estimates have placed the death toll far
higher than the
Iraqi government estimates, but those have received less
press
attention. When in 2005, a UN survey reported that 90 per
cent of
violent attacks in Scotland were not recorded by the
police, no one,
not even the police, disputed this finding.
Representative surveys are
the next best thing to a census for counting deaths, and
nowhere but
Iraq have partial tallies from morgues and hospitals been
given such
credence when representative survey results are
available.
The Pentagon will not release information about deaths
induced or
amounts of weaponry used in Iraq. On 9 January of this
year, the
embedded Fox News reporter Brit Hume went along for an
air attack, and
we learned that at least 25 targets were bombed that day
with almost
no reports of the damage appearing in the press.
Saddam Hussein's surveillance network, which only
captured one third
of all deaths before the invasion, has certainly
deteriorated even
further. During last July, there were numerous televised
clashes in
Anbar, yet the system recorded exactly zero violent
deaths from the
province. The last Minister of Health to honestly assess
the
surveillance network, Dr Ala'din Alwan, admitted that it
was not
reporting from most of the country by August 2004. He was
sacked
months later after, among other things, reports appeared
based on the
limited government data suggesting that most violent
deaths were
associated with coalition forces.
The consequences of downplaying the number of deaths in
Iraq are
profound for both the UK and the US. How can the
Americans have a
surge of troops to secure the population and promise
success when the
coalition cannot measure the level of security to within
a factor of
10? How can the US and Britain pretend they understand
the level of
resentment in Iraq if they are not sure if, on average,
one in 80
families have lost a household member, or one in seven,
as our study
suggests?
If these two countries have triggered an
episode more deadly than the
Rwandan genocide, and have actively worked to mask this
fact, how will
they credibly be able to criticise Sudan or Zimbabwe or
the next
government that kills thousands of its own people?
For longer than the US has been a nation, Britain has
pushed us at our
worst of moments to do the right thing. That time has
come again with
regard to Iraq. It is wrong to be the junior partner in
an endeavour
rigged to deny the next death induced, and to have
spokespeople
effectively respond to that death with disinterest and
denial.
Our nations' leaders are collectively expressing
belligerence at a
time when the populace knows they should be expressing
contrition. If
that cannot be corrected, Britain should end its role in
this
deteriorating misadventure. It is unlikely that any
historians will
record the occupation of Iraq in a favourable light.
Britain followed
the Americans into this débâcle. Wouldn't it be better
to let history
record that Britain led them out?
The writer is an Associate Professor at Columbia
University's Mailman
School of Public Health FW
[wvns] Iraq's Death Toll Far Worse Than Our Leaders Admit
Iraq revives Saddam deal with China
By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing and Steve Negus, Iraq
Correspondent
Published: June 22 2007 23:08 | Last updated: June 22
2007 23:08
Baghdad has revived a contract signed by the Saddam
Hussein administration allowing a state-owned Chinese oil
company to develop an Iraqi oil field, the Iraqi oil
minister told the Financial Times in Beijing on Friday.
Hussein al-Shahristani also said Baghdad welcomed
Chinese oil company bids for any other contract in the
country through a fair and transparent bidding
process to be laid out in the new oil law under
discussion in Iraqs parliament.
China National Petroleum Corporation, the
countrys largest oil company and the parent of
listed group Petrochina, signed a deal with Iraq in 1997
to develop the al-Ahdab oil field. The field is one of
the first to be offered to foreign investors since the
2003 US-led invasion.
Iraq has been reluctant to revive Saddam-era
contracts, but seems to have turned to China as security
problems and uncertainties over Iraqi investment law have
deterred other investors.
The field had an estimated pre-war
capacity of 90,000 barrels a day and the 1997 contract
was valued at about $1.2bn (900m, £600m).
The contract with the previous administration is
still valid it was signed and we will honour
it, Mr al-Shahristani said. We have been
talking since I visited China eight months ago and the
Chinese have just submitted a revised proposal to meet
the new technical requirements for oil field development
laid out by the Iraqi government.
Copyright
The Financial Times Limited 2007
**********************************************************************
NEW IRAQ OIL LAW
ILLEGAL BY ANY STANDARDS!
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/27/who_will_control_iraqs_oil.php
While debate rages in the United States about the
military in Iraq, an
equally important decision is being made inside of
Iraq-the future of
Iraq's oil. A new Iraqi law proposes to open the
country's currently
nationalized oil system to foreign corporate control. But
emblematic
of the flawed promotion of "democracy" by the
Bush administration,
this new law is news to most Iraqi politicians.
A leaked copy of the proposed hydrocarbon law appeared on
the Internet
last week at the same time that it was introduced to the
Iraqi Council
of Ministers. The law is expected to go to the Iraqi
Council of
Representatives within weeks. Yet the Internet version
was the first
look that most members of Iraq's parliament had of the
new law.
Many Iraqi oil experts, like Fouad al-Ameer who was
responsible for
the leak, think that this law is not an urgent item on
the country's
agenda. Other observers and analysis share al-Ameer's
views and
believe the Bush administration, foreign oil companies,
and the
International Monetary Fund are rushing the Iraqi
government to pass
the law.
Not every aspect of the law is harmful to Iraq. However,
the current
language favors the interests of foreign oil corporations
over the
economic security and development of Iraq. The law's key
negative
components harm Iraq's national sovereignty, financial
security,
territorial integrity, and democracy.
National Sovereignty and Financial Security
The new oil law gives foreign corporations access to
almost every
sector of Iraq's oil and natural gas industry. This
includes service
contracts on existing fields that are already being
developed and that
are managed and operated by the Iraqi National Oil
Company (INOC). For
fields that have already been discovered, but not yet
developed, the
proposed law stipulates that INOC will have to be a
partner on these
contracts. But for as-yet-undiscovered fields, neither
INOC nor
private Iraqi companies receive preference in new
exploration and
development. Foreign companies have full access to these
contracts.
The exploration and production contracts give firms
exclusive control
of fields for up to 35 years including contracts that
guarantee
profits for 25-years. A foreign company, if hired, is not
required to
partner with an Iraqi company or reinvest any of its
money in the
Iraqi economy. It's not obligated to hire Iraqi workers
train Iraqi
workers, or transfer technology.
The current law remains silent on the type of contracts
that the Iraqi
government can use. The law establishes a new Iraqi
Federal Oil and
Gas Council with ultimate decision-making authority over
the types of
contracts that will be employed. This Council will
include, among
others, "executive managers of from important
related petroleum
companies." Thus, it is possible that foreign oil
company executives
could sit on the Council. It would be unprecedented for a
sovereign
country to have, for instance, an executive of ExxonMobil
on the board
of its key oil and gas decision-making body.
The law also does not appear to restrict foreign
corporate executives
from making decisions on their own contracts. Nor does
there appear to
be a "quorum" requirement. Thus, if only five
members of the Federal
Oil and Gas Council met-one from ExxonMobil, Shell,
ChevronTexaco, and
two Iraqis-the foreign company representatives would
apparently be
permitted to approve contacts for themselves.
Under the proposed law, the Council has the ultimate
power and
authority to approve and re-write any contract using
whichever model
it prefers if a "2/3 majority of the members in
attendance" agree.
Early drafts of the bill, and the proposed model by the
U.S. advocate
very unfair, and unconventional for Iraq, models such as
Production
Sharing Agreements (PSAs) which would set long term
contracts with
unfair conditions that may lead to the loss of hundreds
of billions of
dollars of the Iraqi oil money as profits to foreign
companies.
The Council will also decide the fate of the existing
exploration and
production contracts already signed with the French,
Chinese, and
Russians, among others.
The law does not clarify who ultimately controls
production levels.
The contractee-the INOC, foreign, or domestic
firms-appears to have
the right to determine levels of production. However, a
clause reads,
"In the event that, for national policy
considerations, there is a
need to introduce limitations on the national level of
Petroleum
Production, such limitations shall be applied in a fair
and equitable
manner and on a pro-rata basis for each Contract Area on
the basis of
approved Field Development Plans." The clause does
not indicate who
makes this decision, what a "fair and equitable
manner" means, or how
it is enforced. If foreign companies, rather than the
Iraqi
government, ultimately have control over production
levels, then
Iraq's relationship to OPEC and other similar
organizations would be
deeply threatened.
Democracy and Territorial Integrity
Many Iraqi oil experts are already referring to the draft
law as the
"Split Iraq Fund," arguing that it facilitates
plans for splitting
Iraq into three ethnic/religious regions. The experts
believe the law
undermines the central government and shifts important
decision-making
and responsibilities to the regional entities. This shift
could serve
as the foundation for establishing three new independent
states, which
is the goal of a number of separatist leaders.
The law opens the possibility of the regions taking
control of Iraq's
oil, but it also maintains the possibility of the central
government
retaining control. In fact, the law was written in a
vague manner to
help ensure passage, a ploy reminiscent of the passage of
the Iraqi
constitution. There is a significant conflict between the
Bush
administration and others in Iraq who would like ultimate
authority
for Iraq's oil to rest with the central government and
those who would
like to see the nation split in three. Both groups are
powerful in
Iraq. Both groups have been mollified, for now, to ensure
the law's
passage.
But two very different outcomes are possible. If the
central
government remains the ultimate decision-making authority
in Iraq,
then the Iraq Federal Oil and Gas Council will exercise
power over the
regions. And if the regions emerge as the strongest power
in Iraq,
then the Council could simply become a silent rubber
stamp, enforcing
the will of the regions. The same lack of clarity exists
in Iraq's
constitution.
The daily lives of most people in Iraq are overwhelmed
with meeting
basic needs. They are unaware of the details and full
nature of the
oil law shortly to be considered in parliament. Their
parliamentarians, in turn, have not been included in the
debate over
the law and were unable to even read the draft until it
was leaked on
the Internet. Those Iraqis able to make their voices
heard on the oil
law want more time. They urge postponing a decision until
Iraqis have
their own sovereign state without a foreign occupation.
Passing this oil law while the political future of Iraq
is unclear can
only further the existing schisms in the Iraqi
government. Forcing its
passage will achieve nothing more than an increase in the
levels of
violence, anger, and instability in Iraq and a
prolongation of the
U.S. occupation.
This piece was written February 22 for Foreign Policy in
Focus. While
it does not take into account unfolding events in
Baghdad, the
underlying analysis remains pertinent. UPDATE FOLLOWS
Those
So-Called Oil Contracts in Iraq
By JEAN GERARD
So-called "oil
contracts" have been on the table of the Iraqi
Parliament for months, and the fluff of lies printed
about them in U..S. media is nauseating.
Every report I
have been able to find in the general media has been long
on inferences and short on facts. The result is that the
average American knows nothing about them, and even those
of us who try to follow important policy matters cannot
find out more than the simple assertion that there are
such things as Production Sharing Agreements, and that
their signing is one of the "benchmarks" the US
has put up as a requirement for our withdrawal of
military forces.
These "contracts" are literally a matter of
life and death in Iraq, admitted by Prime Minister Maliki
himself to be "the most important law in Iraq."
They are proposals for agreements between the Iraqi
government such as it is and the world's largest energy
corporations which will determine for a decade or more
just how much oil can be pumped out of which fields by
whom and how the enormous profits will be shared.
Traditionally the revenue from these fields has been
controlled by the Iraqi government as a state-owned
resource. Present proposals will probably reduce the
amount of control the Iraqi state maintains, while the
oil companies are likely to benefit from Iraq's present
weakness which will force them to sign agreements to
their disadvantage. Making agreement on the contracts one
of the "benchmarks" for the US military
departure from Iraq is a form of arm-twisting pressure,
saying, in effect: "If you want us out, sign the
proposals!".
The most recent report in the New York Times (7/3/07)
says "Maliki's Cabinet Approves Oil Law Draft"
and goes on to state that this means the Parliament can
now begin to debate the proposed contracts. This is
touted as "a major sign of progress" and will
work "to boost reconciliation between Iraq's Sunnis
and Shiites." Without stating any particulars at
all, the article denigrates the disagreements among Iraqi
factions as "bickering" and states that
negotiations have been "plagued by squabbling."
Use of such prejudicial words minimizes the importance of
the proposals at the same time it tells nothing about
what those proposals are.
Whatever figures are given on how oil resources are to be
shared, are practically meaningless because they have no
context. We are told that Kurds will be allotted l7 of
the net revenues after deducting federal government
expenditures." 17 what? How much "net
revenue"? How much "federal government
expenditures?" And totally excluded from the account
what will be the rake-off of the international oil
companies?
We are told that the decision in the Cabinet to discuss
the proposals was "unanimous." However, of the
37 members, only 24 were present to vote. The Sunni Iraqi
Accordance Front and the Shiite Sadrist movement
"boycotted" the meeting. Then the article
admits that the "key sticking point" is
"who should control lucrative untapped fields."
Such a statement indicates that decisions regarding
control of development would be done by "a
yet-to-be-established national oil company,"
implying (but not clearly stating) that the resources
will stay in the hands of the Iraqi government and not be
placed in the hands of foreign corporations. One cannot
help but wonder who this "yet-to-be-established
national oil company" will be, and how easy or
difficult it might be to form it and to make it effective
in dealing with the powerful oil-hungry foreign energy
interests
Rather than pointing out the importance of these
agreements to the daily livelihood of the Iraqi people,
the article stresses that agreement itself will
"help convince the US public and Congress that Iraqi
leaders are doing what's needed to halt the
violence." This, of course, implies that the
continuing violence in Iraq is caused by lack of
agreement on oil contracts which is not true. Discussions
over the details of the proposed contracts are not the
cause of the war's continuing and hence the
"need" for US troops to remain. Rather, the US
does not want to withdraw till it is assured of control
over Iraq's oil.
Under such a cloud of obfuscation and lack of on-going
specific information it is easy for reporters to rely on
handouts presenting only the US government's point of
view. The interests of the Iraqi people simply do not
matter. And concerned Americans can't find out enough
solid information about what is going on to object.
Yet questions arise: Is it really about the disagreements
among Iraqi factions, or disagreements about the amount
that foreign companies will be allowed to extract? Is it
really "unanimous" when only 2/3 of the members
are present to vote? Is it likely that the Kurds, who are
20% of the Iraqi population, will be satisfied with 17
(and is it per cent, or what?) of the oil revenues AFTER
deducting federal government expenditures? Judging from
our own experience here at home, will "federal
government expenditures" have any limit? If so, who
will limit them, and how?
Questions, questions and no answers. All the cabinets and
parliaments in the world will not make it come out right
so long as people of ordinary intelligence are excluded
from information about what is really going on behind the
scenes.
Jean Gerard lives in Los
Osos, California.
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