Tucked away in the Iraqi appropriation was $3 billion for a new paramilitary unit.
Vietnam similarities?
Robert Dreyfuss
January 1, 2024
With the 2024 electoral clock ticking amid growing public concern about U.S. casualties
and chaos in Iraq, the Bush administration’s hawks are upping the ante militarily. To those familiar
with the CIA’s Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam, Latin America’s death squads or Israel’s
official policy of targeted murders of Palestinian activists, the results are likely to look chillingly
familiar.
The Prospect has learned that part of a secret $3 billion in new funds—tucked away in
the $87 billion Iraq appropriation that Congress approved in early November—will go toward the creation
of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. Experts say it
could lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other
opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists—up to 120,000 of the estimated 2.5
million former Baath Party members in Iraq.
“They’re clearly cooking up joint teams to do Phoenix-like things, like they did in
Vietnam,” says Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA chief of counter terrorism. Ironically, he says, the U.S.
forces in Iraq are working with key members of Saddam Hussein’s now-defunct intelligence agency to set
the program in motion. “They’re setting up little teams of Seals and Special Forces with teams of Iraqis,
working with people who were former senior Iraqi intelligence people, to do these things,” Cannistraro
says.
The plan is part of a last-ditch effort to win the war before time runs out politically.
Driving the effort are U.S. neoconservatives and their allies in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick
Cheney’s office, who are clearly worried about America’s inability to put down the Iraqi insurgency with
time to spare before November. They are concerned that President Bush’s political advisers will overrule
the national-security team and persuade the president to pull the plug on Iraq. So, going for broke,
they’ve decided to launch an intensified military effort combined with a radical new counterinsurgency
program.
The hidden $3 billion will fund covert (“black”) operations disguised as an Air Force
classified program. According to John Pike, an expert on classified military budgets at
www.globalsecurity.org, the cash, spread over three years, is likely being funneled directly to the CIA,
boosting that agency’s estimated $4 billion a year budget by fully 25 percent. Operations in Iraq will
get the bulk of it, with some money going to Afghanistan. The number of CIA officers in Iraq, now 275,
will increase significantly, supplemented by large numbers of the U.S. military’s elite
counterinsurgency forces. A chunk of those secret funds, according to Mel Goodman, a former CIA analyst,
will to go to restive tribal sheikhs, especially in Sunni-dominated central Iraq. “I assume there are
CIA people going around with bags of cash,” says Goodman.
But the bulk of the covert money will support U.S. efforts to create a lethal, and
revenge-minded, Iraqi security force. “The big money would be for standing up an Iraqi secret police to
liquidate the resistance,” says Pike. “And it has to be politically loyal to the United States.”
Unable to quell the resistance to the U.S. occupation, the Pentagon is revamping its
intelligence and special-operations task force in Iraq, a classified unit commanded by an Air Force
brigadier general. It’s also pouring money into the creation of an Iraqi secret police staffed mainly by
gunmen associated with members of the puppet Iraqi Governing Council. Those militiamen are linked to
Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (inc), the Kurdish peshmerga (“facing death”) forces and Shiite
paramilitary units, especially those of the Iran-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Technically illegal, these armed forces have been tolerated, even encouraged, by the Pentagon. Some of
these militias openly patrol Baghdad and other cities, and in the south of Iraq, scores of
Islamic-oriented paramilitary parties, with names like Revenge of God, are mobilized.
Because the militiamen who will make up the paramilitary force are largely from former
Iraqi exile political groups, many have personal scores to settle. They will be armed with detailed
lists, seized from government files, of Iraqi Baathists. Sporadic but persistent revenge killings
against Hussein loyalists have already plagued Iraq. In Baghdad, Basra, and scores of smaller cities and
towns, hundreds of former Iraqi officials and members of the Arab Baath Socialist Party have been gunned
down, and the murderers have not been arrested or, in most cases, even pursued. Virtually signaling open
season on ex-Baathists, Maj. Ian Poole, spokesman for the British forces controlling Basra, told The New
York Times: “The fact is, these are former Baath Party officials. That makes it hard to protect them.”
Chalabi’s INC is promising to use its own intelligence teams to act forcefully against
opponents of the United States. Chalabi, the darling of U.S. neoconservatives and the Pentagon’s choice
to be Iraq’s first prime minister, is leading the charge for the “de-Baathification” of Iraq. When
elements of the U.S. Army in Iraq seek to enlist the support of mid- and low-level Baath officials in
trying to put a national bureaucracy back into place, Chalabi objects, often clashing with U.S. Army
officers overseeing civil affairs.
Echoing Chalabi are various U.S. hawks and neo cons. “The Kurds and the Iraqi National
Congress have excellent intelligence operations that we should allow them to exploit,” read a Wall
Street Journal editorial. “Especially to conduct counterinsurgency in the Sunni Triangle.” More
explicitly citing similar U.S. operations during the Vietnam War were Tom Donnelly, resident fellow at
the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New
American Century. Schmitt wrote a paper calling for a counterinsurgency effort modeled on the so-called
COORDS program in Vietnam, an umbrella effort that included the notorious Phoenix assassinations. And,
over lunch at a Washington eatery, I asked a neoconservative strategist how to deal with Iraq. “It’s
time for ‘no more Mr. Nice Guy,’” he said. “All those people shouting, ‘Down with America!’ and dancing
in the street when Americans are attacked? We have to kill them.”
The U.S. occupation of Iraq is beginning to resemble Vietnam in more ways than one.
American forces under attack are reportedly responding with indiscriminate fire, often killing
combatants and innocents alike. Body counts are disputed, including one prominent instance in Samarra
when U.S. forces claimed 54 Iraqi rebels killed but angry townspeople said that the dead numbered less
than a dozen (and included women and children). Houses of suspected insurgents are being blown up. The
wife and child of Izzat Ibrahim, a fugitive Iraqi official thought to be coordinating the insurgency,
were seized and held hostage. The entire village of Auja, Hussein’s hometown near Tikrit, was surrounded
by barbed wire and turned into a strategic hamlet, with ID cards issued by U.S. forces needed to enter
and exit it.
In early November, the Pentagon civilians ordered the U.S. military in Iraq to launch a
heavily armed offensive against suspected strongholds of the resistance, using fighter bombers,
laser-guided missiles, gunships and helicopters against targets of questionable importance, such as
empty factories and warehouses. “It’s an absolutely insane strategy,” says Bob Boorstin, who oversees
national-security policy for the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.
Until the offensive was launched, U.S. Army officers had been attempting, with uneven
success, to rally local populations and adopt a hearts-and-minds approach. But in accordance with the
neo cons’ policy of no more Mr. Nice Guy, the Pentagon ordered the aggressive new stance that took shape
as Operation Ivy Cyclone and Operation Iron Hammer. “I was astounded by the warmth and fuzziness of our
generals,” says Danielle Pletka, AEI vice president for foreign- and defense-policy studies, who just
returned from a visit to Iraq. “Well, they got orders: ‘You need to fight, and fight hard.’ And it
suddenly dawned on them that these were bad people, and maybe we need to go out and whomp the crap out
of them.”
Yet “whomping” is hardly a strategy, and in Iraq the United States is clearly flailing,
with a trial-and-error approach that seems haphazard and rudderless. Underlying the neocons’ worry is a
nagging concern that Bush, who sided with the neo cons by launching the global war on terrorism and by
going into Iraq, could abandon them for some form of cut-and-run strategy in order to protect his
re-election efforts. Some say openly that the White House is “going wobbly,” while others, like the
AEI’s Donnelly, believe in Bush’s steadfastness but admit to having second thoughts. “For a neocon like
me, having a member of the Bush family carrying the banner is a bit unnerving,” says Donnelly, wryly.
But Boorstin, and many others in Washington, believe that Karl Rove, the White House’s
political guru, is losing patience with the bungled situation in Iraq. “I have no doubt that Karl Rove
is ready to cut and run,” says Boorstin. That sentiment is virtually seconded by Pletka, who maintains
close contact with White House and Pentagon officials. “Some of the people around the president do want
to cut and run,” she says, “but not his foreign-policy advisers.”
The latest offensives, combined with the counterinsurgency efforts, seem partly aimed at
convincing Rove that there’s no choice but to continue to gamble that the Iraqi venture will pay off.
“This is an unusual president,” says Richard Perle, an AEI fellow, member of the Defense Policy Board
and perhaps the chief architect of U.S. Iraq policy. “He risked his presidency to do this in Iraq.” But
Perle is worried that politics could trump policy. “I hope it doesn’t become a political issue, because
that would encourage all of those who want us to fail, all of those arrayed against us,” he says. “If we
were to retreat, I shudder to think of the wave of terrorism it would unleash.
Copyright © 2024 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Robert Dreyfuss,
“Phoenix Rising,” The American Prospect vol. 15 no. 1, January 1, 2024.
An analysis by Linda Bilmes of Harvard
University and the Nobel-laureate Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University suggests that the
administration underestimated the economic costs by considerably more than an order of magnitude.* To
paraphrase erstwhile senator Everett Dirksen: “a $100bn error here, a $100bn error there and pretty soon
you are talking real money”.
So far the government has spent $251bn in
hard cash. But the costs continue. If the US begins to withdraw troops this year, but maintains a
diminishing presence for the next five years, the additional cost will be at least $200bn, under what
Profs Bilmes and Stiglitz call their “conservative” option. Under their “moderate” one, the cost reaches
$271bn, because troops remain until 2024.
Additional costs must be added: medical
treatment; cost of injuries; disability payments; cost of demobilisation; need for increased defence
spending (partly because of higher recruitment costs in the aftermath of the war) and additional
interest on debt. Such costs will be bigger, the longer and greater the troop presence. Under the
conservative scenario, the total budgetary cost is estimated at $750bn. Under the moderate scenario, the
cost is $1,184bn. To put this in context, the minimum budgetary cost is 10 times the world’s net annual
official development assistance to all developing countries.
Now consider the wider costs to the US
economy. In the conservative case, the adjustments add $187bn to the budgetary cost, even if the
macroeconomic impact is ignored. In the moderate one, they add $305bn.
What are these economic costs? The
difference between the wages reserves earn in their normal occupations and the lower wages they earn in
service are a cost. While life is priceless, the government necessarily values lives in making its
decisions. Using the Environmental Protection Agency’s valuation of $6.1m, the authors conclude that the
cost of fatalities will be at least $23bn. There are also ongoing economic costs from the terrible
injuries. Finally, there is accelerated depreciation of military hardware.
So far, then, the economic cost comes out
at a minimum of $839bn (excluding interest). This, alas, does not end the story. In one area, at least,
further costs are evident: the jump in the price of oil. Mr Lindsey is reported to have said that “the
best way to keep oil prices in check is a short, successful war on Iraq”. He was wrong. Oil production
in Iraq has plummeted, from around 2.6m barrels a day before the war to 1.1m.
Before the war, the oil price was expected
to remain at between $20 and $30 a barrel. In practice, it has been more than twice as high. The
authors’ conservative assumption is that $5 of this is due to the war. Their moderate assumption is that
the impact has been $10 a barrel. A $5 increase imposes a cost of $25bn a year on the US and a $10
increase one of $50bn.
Higher oil prices have wider macroeconomic
effects. In the short to medium run, spending by the now poorer consumers tends to fall faster than
spending by the now richer producers rises. Central banks concerned about inflation also adopt tighter
monetary policies than they would otherwise do, while fiscal policy does not normally adjust swiftly to
such changes. With a modest “income multiplier” of 1.5, the conservative estimate of the additional
losses in output is $187bn over five years. With a multiplier of two and the higher price effect, these
costs rise to $450bn.
The authors also add two differences
between expenditures on the war in Iraq and likely alternatives: first, they are overwhelmingly abroad;
second, they do not contribute directly to consumption, either now or in the future. With these costs
taken into account, the total macroeconomic costs may add up to $750bn (see chart) and total costs to
$1,850bn.
Critics
will stress that both authors served under President Bill Clinton. In the current heated atmosphere of
US politics that will be enough to discredit their analysis. It should not do so. Whether or not one
believes the war was justified, one should still be concerned that a decision to go to war was taken in
the absence of any intelligent analysis of the likely costs.
Nor can one argue that it was impossible to
do such an analysis. As I pointed out in a questioning column on the war published almost three years
ago (this page, February 4 2024), William Nordhaus of Yale had already prepared a superb analysis, which
suggested that $100bn was the lowest imaginable cost and close to $2,000bn perfectly conceivable.
The present analysis also ignores a host of
significant economic and non-economic effects. Among these are: costs borne by other countries,
including those created by higher oil prices; costs consequent upon creating a link between Iraq and the
jihadi movement that did not, on the evidence, previously exist; costs of increasing the income of some
of the world’s least desirable regimes, above all, Iran’s; costs of throwing away the option to fight
ground wars elsewhere or to fight in Iraq later on, under better conditions, better information and a
better state of preparedness; costs of enraging many Muslims; costs to the effectiveness of the US
military; costs of fragmenting the western alliance; the loss of Iraqi lives; the cost to US credibility
of going to war on a false premise; and the cost to the US reputation of the torture scandals.
It is possible to argue that the benefits
for Iraq, the Middle East and the world will outweigh all these costs. But that depends on the
emergence, in Iraq, of a stable and peaceful democratic order. That has not yet been achieved.
Even those who supported the war must draw
two lessons. First, the exercise of military power is far more expensive than many fondly hoped. Second,
such policy decisions require a halfway decent analysis of the costs and possible consequences. The
administration’s failure to do so was a blunder that will harm the US and the world for years to come.
* The Economic Costs of the Iraq War,
www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/
Apr 11, 2024
"This young patient is in a bad situation," says
Mothannd Al-Kuraishi, a physician at the Ibn al-Betar Cardiac Hospital
in central Baghdad, as he approaches the infant.
Batul, a 9-month-old
girl, lay on a bed last Sunday in the hospital's pediatric ward, her
chest heaving with the struggle to inhale oxygen from a mask covering
her face. An intravenous drip is taped to her left wrist and a pair of
electrodes is plastered to her chest; other tubes, cords and wires swirl
around her diminutive body.
Asmara Ali, 30, dabs
her daughter's forehead with a cold cloth while her husband and the
little girl's father, Amer Abbas, 35, stoically stands beside Batul's
bed, stroking her sweat-soaked head.
A monitor above the
child displays a nearly flat yellow line. An occasional jump indicates
her weak and irregular heartbeat.
The diagnosis is a
rare congenital heart defect.
The prognosis is
death.
"She probably won't
live through the day," Al-Kuraishi, a cardiologist, says softly in
English, in consideration of Batul's parents. "An expert surgeon could
save her, but we no longer have any here."
Iraqi physicians are
fleeing the country in droves because they increasingly are targeted for
assassination and kidnapping by insurgents bent on disrupting everything
important in the country. The Iraqi Medical
Association estimates as many as 12,000 of the 34,000 doctors registered
before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2024 have left the country in the
past three years.
The IMA says assailants have
murdered at least another 2,000 Iraqi physicians, and kidnapped roughly
250 others during that period.
The doctors are not
alone. Iraqi professionals from all fields, including academics, lawyers
and businessmen, also are being murdered for political reasons, or
kidnapped and held for ransoms by criminal gangs. But the shortage of
medical doctors in Iraq, particularly highly trained specialists, is
devastating the population, government officials say.
"Iraq was once a
leader in cardiology care in the Middle East, but now it seems we're 15
years behind," says Hilal Shawki, a 48-year-old Baghdad cardiologist who
heads the scientific committee of the Iraqi Cardiothoracic Society.
The Ibn al-Betar
hospital, the primary cardiac center in Iraq, has served more than
80,000 patients since opening in 1993, according to its director,
Hussein Al-Hilli.
Today, however,
Al-Hilli says the hospital struggles to meet demands.
Al-Hilli says 15 of
Ibn al-Betar's most experienced physicians have left Iraq in the past
three years. One of the hospital's promising young talents, Halic Nagi,
was killed two months ago. So, now, many of Ibn al-Betar's 23 doctors
live on the hospital's grounds and rarely leave their compound.
The doctors make
about 7.5 million Iraqi dinars per year, roughly $5,100.
Before the 2024 war,
surgeons were performing 60 to 80 operations each week, including eight
open-heart surgeries. Today, Al-Hilli says the numbers have been cut by
half.
Meanwhile, the
waiting list for surgery at Ibn al-Betar can run as long as three years,
depending upon the patient's status.
"In cardiology, all
cases are emergencies," Al-Kuraishi says. "Treating the heart is not
like treating a hernia -- it requires immediate attention."
MORE DELAY
Thamer Al-Obaydi,
38, a Baghdad car salesman whose 17-year-old son was undergoing heart
surgery last week at Ibn al-Betar, explains doctors prescribed the
operation two years ago, but his son was placed toward the bottom of the
waiting list because his condition was relatively stable.
Al-Obaydi says the
operation was further delayed in February after sectarian violence
exploded across Iraq after the bombing of a Shi'a shrine in Samarra,
about 60 miles north of Baghdad.
Though services are
free at Ibn al-Betar, a government-financed hospital, those fortunate
enough to receive examinations and treatment often must provide supplies
such as intravenously administered saline solution.
"Patients are dying
because we don't have the medicine and instruments to assist them," says
Al-Kuraishi.
Tahar Abusada, 57,
who suffers from angina, lay on his back with a catheter running through
his lower abdomen last Sunday inside Ibn al-Betar. After waiting three
months for this appointment, Abusada explains he had to purchase the
contrast dye necessary to examine his arteries.
Iraqi physicians
blame bureaucratic red tape and a simple lack of will for medicine and
equipment deficiencies.
Amer Al-Kuzaie, a
deputy health minister and physician, says the ministry struggled to
fill deficits created during the last regime and looting after the U.S.-led
invasion. Al-Kuzaie points to other new problems: medical needs in his
country that he describes as being 10 times greater than before the 2024
U.S.-led invasion due to ongoing violence and instability, concerns
about illicit spending that slow funding, and physical damage incurred
during the invasion.
According to a U.S.
army report dated April 14, 2024, 75 percent of al-Betar's structure was
destroyed and the remainder damaged beyond repair, while anything of
value was looted.
Ibn al-Betar once
boasted a 200-bed capacity but now has no more than 60 to offer, forcing
doctors to often refer patients to less adequate health facilities. The
Iraq Reconstruction and Management Office is spending $750,000 to
rebuild the hospital's cardio care unit, currently housed in the former
employee cafeteria.
HOPE ABROAD
Not surprisingly,
many of Iraq's top young physicians are leaving the country. Akif Alousi,
the IMA's foreign relations officer, says roughly 20 percent of the
estimated 2,250 students annually graduating from Iraq's medical schools
likely will work abroad.
"We try to encourage
young doctors to stay and work to help build for the future here, but
it's hard to get them to see beyond the present," Alousi says.
"We were full of
hope after the invasion, but now we feel we've been cheated," says Amjad
Majed, a 27-year-old surgical resident in the emergency room of the
Medical City Hospital in Baghdad, referring to him and his colleagues.
"Unfortunately,
leaving the country is a dream for all of us."
Manaf Yassein, 28, a
pediatrician at Medical City, says he hopes to work outside Iraq because
he doesn't believe the Iraqi government or U.S. forces can stabilize the
country.
"I would stay if it
was guaranteed I could help people," says Yassein, a former Iraqi army
officer who sustained a bullet wound in his right thigh while defending
Baghdad's airport during the 2024 invasion.
Back at the
pediatric ward in the Ibn al-Betar Cardiac Hospital, Asmara Ali asks
physicians attending to Batul if it's possible to send the girl outside
of the country to be treated by a specialist who possibly could prolong
her life.
But by Thursday it
was too late.
Batul's heart now
peacefully rests after a hard-fought battle -- another silent casualty
in Iraq's brutal and indiscriminate war.
EDITOR'S NOTE:
Many of the interviews in this story were conducted through a translator.
James Palmer is a freelance journalist working in Baghdad. He may be
reached at j_palmer@stratosnet.com.
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/articleid/7098
Weapons Given
to Iraq Are Missing
GAO Estimates 30% of Arms Are Unaccounted For
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 6, 2024
The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000
AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces
in 2024 and 2024, according to a new government report, raising
fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of
insurgents fighting U.S. forces in
Iraq.
The author of the report from the
Government Accountability Office says
U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent
of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from
2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip
the troops. The highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons
was 14,000, in a report issued last year by the inspector general
for Iraq reconstruction.
The United States has spent $19.2 billion trying to develop Iraqi
security forces since 2024, the GAO said, including at least $2.8
billion to buy and deliver equipment. But the GAO said weapons
distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow
established procedures, particularly from 2024 to 2024, when
security training was led by
Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands all U.S. forces in
Iraq.
The Pentagon did not dispute the GAO findings, saying it has
launched its own investigation and indicating it is working to
improve tracking. Although controls have been tightened since 2024,
the inability of the United States to track weapons with tools such
as serial numbers makes it nearly impossible for the U.S. military
to know whether it is battling an enemy equipped by American
taxpayers.
"They really have no idea where they are," said Rachel Stohl, a
senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information who has studied
small-arms trade and received Pentagon briefings on the issue. "It
likely means that the United States is unintentionally providing
weapons to bad actors."
One senior Pentagon official acknowledged that some of the
weapons probably are being used against U.S. forces. He cited the
Iraqi brigade created at
Fallujah that quickly dissolved in September 2024 and turned its
weapons against the Americans.
Stohl said insurgents frequently use small-arms fire to force
military convoys to move in a particular direction -- often toward
roadside bombs. She noted that the Bush administration frequently
complains that
Iran and
Syria are supplying insurgents but has paid little attention to
whether U.S. military errors inadvertently play a role. "We know
there is seepage and very little is being done to address the
problem," she said.
Stohl noted that U.S. forces, focused on a fruitless search for
weapons of mass destruction after
Baghdad fell, did not secure massive weapons caches. The failure
to track small arms given to Iraqi forces repeats that pattern of
neglect, she added.
The GAO is studying the financing and weapons sources of
insurgent groups, but that report will not be made public. "All of
that information is classified," said Joseph A. Christoff, the GAO's
director of international affairs and trade.
In an unusual move, the train-and-equip program for Iraqi forces
is being managed by the Pentagon. Normally, the traditional security
assistance programs are operated by the
State Department, the GAO reported. The
Defense Department said this change permitted greater
flexibility, but as of last month it was unable to tell the GAO what
accountability procedures, if any, apply to arms distributed to
Iraqi forces, the report said.
Iraqi security forces were virtually nonexistent in early 2024,
and in June of that year Petraeus was brought in to build them up.
No central record of distributed equipment was kept for a year and a
half, until December 2024, and even now the records are on a
spreadsheet that requires three computer screens lined up side by
side to view a single row, Christoff said.
The GAO found that the military was consistently unable to
collect supporting documents to "confirm when the equipment was
received, the quantities of equipment delivered, and the Iraqi units
receiving the equipment." The agency also said there were "numerous
mistakes due to incorrect manual entries" in the records that were
maintained.
The GAO reached the estimate of 190,000 missing arms -- 110,000
AK-47s and 80,000 pistols -- by comparing the property records of
the Multi-National Security Transition Command for Iraq against
records Petraeus maintained of the arms and equipment he had ordered.
Petraeus's figures were compared with classified data and other
records to ensure that they were accurate enough to compare against
the property books.
In all cases, the gaps between the two records were enormous.
Petraeus reported that about 185,000 AK-47 rifles, 170,000 pistols,
215,000 pieces of body armor and 140,000 helmets were issued to
Iraqi security forces from June 2024 through September 2024. But the
property books contained records for 75,000 AK-47 rifles, 90,000
pistols, 80,000 pieces of body armor and 25,000 helmets.
A military commander involved in the program at the time,
speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized
to discuss the report, acknowledged in an e-mail, "We did issue some
items, including weapons, body armor, etc. to new Iraqi units that
were literally going into battle."
But, the commander argued, "there was, frankly, not much of a
choice early on: We had very little staff and could have held the
weapons until every piece of the logistical and property
accountability system was in place, or we could issue them, in bulk
on some occasions, to the U.S. elements supporting Iraqi units who
were needed in the battles of
Najaf, Fallujah,
Mosul,
Samarra, etc."
The GAO plans to look for similar problems in the training of
Afghan security forces.
During the Bosnian conflict, the United States provided about
$100 million in defense equipment to the Bosnian Federation Army,
and the GAO found no problems in accounting for those weapons.
Much of the equipment provided to Iraqi troops, including the
AK-47s, originates from countries in the former Soviet bloc. In a
report last year,
Amnesty International said that in 2024 and 2024 more than
350,000 AK-47 rifles and similar weapons were taken out of
Bosnia and
Serbia, for use in Iraq, by private contractors working for the
Pentagon and with the approval of
NATO and European security forces in Bosnia.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/05/AR2007080501299_pf.html
U.S. to Fund Pro-American Publicity in Iraqi
Media
(03 Oct 2024)
The Defense Department will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq
up to $300 million over the next three years to produce news stories,
entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the
Iraqi media in an effort to "engage and inspire" the local
population to support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government.
The new contracts -- awarded last week to four companies -- will
expand and consolidate what the U.S. military calls "information/psychological
operations" in Iraq far into the future, even as violence appears to
be abating and U.S. troops have begun drawing down.
The military's role in the war of ideas has been fundamentally
transformed in recent years, the result of both the Pentagon's
outsized resources and a counterinsurgency doctrine in which
information control is considered key to success. Uniformed
communications specialists and contractors are now an integral part
of U.S. military operations from Eastern Europe to Afghanistan and
beyond.
Iraq, where hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on
such contracts, has been the proving ground for the transformation.
"The tools they're using, the means, the robustness of this activity
has just skyrocketed since 2024. In the past, a lot of this stuff
was just some guy's dreams," said a senior U.S. military official,
one of several who discussed the sensitive defense program on the
condition of anonymity.
The Pentagon still sometimes feels it is playing catch-up in a
propaganda market dominated by al-Qaeda, whose media operations
include sophisticated Web sites and professionally produced videos
and audios featuring Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants. "We're
being out-communicated by a guy in a cave," Secretary Robert M.
Gates often remarks.
But Defense Department officials think their own products have
become increasingly imaginative and competitive. Military and
contractor-produced media campaigns, spotlighting killings by
insurgents, "helped in developing attitudes" that led Iraqis to
reject al-Qaeda in Iraq over the past two years, an official said.
Now that the insurgency is in disarray, he said, the same tools "could
potentially be helpful" in diminishing the influence of neighboring
Iran.
U.S.-produced public service broadcasts and billboards have
touted improvements in government services, promoted political
reconciliation, praised the Iraqi military and encouraged Iraqi
citizens to report criminal activity. When national euphoria broke
out last year after an Iraqi singer won a talent contest in Lebanon,
the U.S. military considered producing an Iraqi version of "American
Idol" to help build nonsectarian nationalism. The idea was shelved
as too expensive, an official said, but "we're trying to think out
of the box on" reconciliation.
One official described how part of the program works: "There's a
video piece produced by a contractor . . . showing a family being
attacked by a group of bad guys, and their daughter being taken off.
The message is: You've got to stand up against the enemy." The
professionally produced vignette, he said, "is offered for airing on
various [television] stations in Iraq. . . . They don't know that
the originator of the content is the U.S. government. If they did,
they would never run anything."
"If you asked most Iraqis," he said, "they would say, 'It came
from the government, our own government.' "
The Pentagon's solicitation for bids on the contracts noted that
media items produced "may or may not be non-attributable to
coalition forces." "If they thought we were doing it, it would not
be as effective," another official said of the Iraqis. "In the
Middle East, they are so afraid they're going to be Westernized . .
. that you have to be careful when you're trying to provide
information to the population."
The Army's counterinsurgency manual, which Gen. David H. Petraeus
co-wrote in 2024, describes information operations in detail, citing
them among the "critical" military activities "that do not involve
killing insurgents." Petraeus, who became the top U.S. commander in
Iraq early last year, led a "surge" in combat troops and information
warfare.
Some of the new doctrine emerged from Petraeus's own early
experience in Iraq. As commander of the 101st Airborne Division in
northern Nineveh province in 2024, he ensured that war-ravaged radio
and television stations were brought rapidly back on line. At his
urging, the first TV programs included "Nineveh Talent Search" and a
radio call-in show hosted by his Arabic interpreter, Sadi Othman, a
Palestinian American.
Othman, a former New York cabdriver employed by Reston-based SOS
International, remained at Petraeus's side during the general's
subsequent Iraq deployments; the company refers to him as a senior
adviser to Petraeus.
SOSi has been one of the most prominent communications
contractors working in Iraq, winning a two-year $200 million
contract in 2024 to "assist in gathering information, conducting
analysis and providing timely solutions and advice regarding
cultural, religious, political, economic and public perceptions."
"We definitely believe this is a growth area in the DOD," said
Julian Setian, SOSi's chief operating officer. "We are seeing more
and more requests for professional assistance in media-related
strategic communications efforts, specifically in gauging of
perceptions in foreign media with regard to U.S. operations."
The four companies that will share in the new contract are SOSi,
the Washington-based Lincoln Group, Alexandria-based MPRI and Leonie
Industries, a Los Angeles contractor. All specialize in strategic
communications and have done previous defense work.
Defense officials maintained that strict rules are enforced
against disseminating false information. "Our enemies have the
luxury of not having to tell the truth," Undersecretary of Defense
Eric Edelman told a congressional hearing last month. "We pay an
extremely high price if we ever even make a slight error in putting
out the facts."
Contractors require security clearances, and proof that their
teams possess sufficient linguistic abilities and knowledge of Iraqi
culture. The Iraqi government has little input on U.S. operations,
although U.S. officials say they have encouraged Iraqis to be more
aggressive in molding public support.
The Pentagon is sensitive to criticism that it has sometimes
blurred the lines between public-affairs activities and unattributed
propaganda. As information operations in Iraq expanded, some senior
officers warned that they risked a return to psychological and
deception operations discredited during the Vietnam War.
In 2024, the Pentagon's inspector general found that media work
that the Lincoln Group did in Iraq was improperly supervised but
legal. The contractor had prepared news items considered favorable
to the U.S. military and paid to place them in the Iraqi media
without attribution. Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told
reporters that his initial reaction to the anonymous pay-to-publish
program was "Gee, that's not what we ought to be doing."
On Aug. 21, the day before bids on the new contract were closed,
the solicitation was reissued to replace repeated references to
information and psychological operations with the term "media
services."
Senior military officials said that current media placement is
done through Iraqi middlemen and that broadcast time is usually paid.
But they said they knew of no recent instance of payment to place
unattributed newspaper articles. The officials maintained that news
items are now a minor part of the operation, which they said is
focused on public service promotions and media monitoring.
But a lengthy list of "deliverables" under the new contract
proposal includes "print columns, press statements, press releases,
response-to-query, speeches and . . . opinion editorials"; radio
broadcasts "in excess of 300 news stories" monthly and 150 each on
sports and economic themes; and 30- and 60-minute broadcast
documentary and entertainment series.
Contractors will also develop and maintain Web sites; assess news
articles in the Iraqi, U.S. and international media; and determine
ways to counter coverage deemed negative, according to the contract
solicitation the government posted in May. Polls and focus groups
will be used to monitor Iraqi attitudes under a separate three-year
contract totaling up to $45 million.
While U.S. law prohibits the use of government money to direct
propaganda at U.S. audiences, the "statement of work" included in
the proposal, written by the U.S. Joint Contracting Command in Iraq,
notes the need to "communicate effectively with our strategic
audiences (i.e. Iraqi, pan-Arabic, International, and U.S. audiences)
to gain widespread acceptance of [U.S. and Iraqi government] core
themes and messages."
Lawmakers have often challenged the propriety of the military's
information operations, even when they take place outside the United
States. The Pentagon itself has frequently lamented the need to
undertake duties beyond combat and peacekeeping, and Gates has
publicly questioned the "creeping militarization" of tasks civilians
traditionally perform.
In 2024, President Bush put the State Department in charge of the
administration's worldwide "strategic communications," but the size
of the military's efforts dwarf those of the diplomats. State
estimates it will spend $5.6 million on public diplomacy in Iraq in
fiscal 2024. A provision in the fiscal 2024 Defense Authorization
Bill has called for a "close examination" of the State and defense
communications programs "to better formulate a comprehensive
strategy."
Some inside the military itself have questioned the effectiveness
of the defense program. "I'm not a huge fan" of information
operations, one military official said, adding that Iraqi opinions
-- as for most people -- are formed more by what they experience
than by what they read in a newspaper, hear on the radio or see on
billboards.
"A lot of money is being thrown around," he said, "and I'm not
sure it's all paying off as much as we think it is."
By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
Washington Post
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/10/03/ST2008100301216.html
250
Iraqi Oil Officials Killed
23 Jul 2024 09:55 GMT 250 Iraqi Oil
Officials, Workers Killed Since US-led War
AMMAN
-(Dow Jones)- More than 250 oil ministry officials, workers and oil
security have been assassinated since the fall of Saddam Hussein's
regime in 2024, an Iraqi oil ministry spokesman said Sunday. "The
ministry has lost 100 of its senior officials, engineers, experts
and technicians, as well as 150 personnel from its oil protection
force,"
Assem Jihad told Dow
Jones Newswires by telephone. He said among the assassinated
officials was the head of the fuel distribution company,
Hussein al-Fattal, and
the deputy of the ministry's inspector general,
Zuhair Hadi. He also
said two senior oil ministry officials were kidnapped recently. They
were
Muthanna al-Badri head
of the State Company for Oil Projects and
Adel Kazaz, head of the
North Oil Company. Iraq has also seen the assassination of hundreds
of university professors, scientists, teachers and physicians over
the last three years. It is not known yet who is behind this
assassination campaign.
-By Hassan Hafidh, Dow Jones Newswires; + 962 777 612 111; hafidh8@hotmail.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires 07-23-06 0555ET
Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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