The war on Iraq has made moral cowards of us
all
More than 100,000 Iraqis have been killed -
and where is our shame and rage?
By Scott Ritter*
11/01/04 "The Guardian" --
The full scale of the human cost already
paid for the war on Iraq is only now becoming clear. Last
week's
estimate by investigators, using credible methodology, that more than
100,000 Iraqi civilians - most of them women and children - have died
since the US-led invasion is a profound moral indictment of our
countries. The US and British governments quickly moved to cast doubt
on the Lancet medical journal findings, citing other studies.
These
mainly media-based reports put the number of Iraqi civilian deaths at
about 15,000 - although the basis for such an endorsement is unclear,
since neither the US nor the UK admits to collecting data on Iraqi
civilian casualties.
Civilian deaths have always been a tragic reality of modern war.
But the conflict in Iraq was supposed to be different - US and British
forces were dispatched to liberate the Iraqi people, not impose their
own tyranny of violence.
Reading accounts of the US-led invasion, one is struck by the
constant, almost casual, reference to civilian deaths. Soldiers and
marines speak of destroying hundreds, if not thousands, of vehicles
that turned out to be crammed with civilians. US marines acknowledged
in the aftermath of the early, bloody battle for Nassiriya that their
artillery and air power had pounded civilian areas in a blind effort to
suppress insurgents thought to be holed up in the city. The infamous
"shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad produced hundreds of deaths, as did
the 3rd Infantry Division's "Thunder Run", an armoured thrust in
Baghdad that slaughtered everyone in its path.
It is true that, with only a few exceptions, civilians who died as
a result of ground combat were not deliberately targeted, but were
caught up in the machinery of modern warfare. But when the same claim
is made about civilians killed in aerial attacks (the Lancet study
estimates that most of civilian deaths were the result of air attacks),
the comparison quickly falls apart. Helicopter engagements apart, most
aerial bombardment is deliberate and pre-planned. US and British
military officials like to brag about the accuracy of the "precision"
munitions used in these strikes, claiming this makes the kind of modern
warfare practised by the coalition in Iraq the most humanitarian in
history.
But there is nothing humanitarian about explosives once they
detonate near civilians, or about a bomb guided to the wrong target.
Dozens of civilians were killed during the vain effort to eliminate
Saddam Hussein with "pinpoint" air strikes, and hundreds have perished
in the campaign to eliminate alleged terrorist targets in Falluja. A
"smart bomb" is only as good as the data used to direct it. And
the
abysmal quality of the intelligence used has made the smartest of bombs
just as dumb and indiscriminate as those, for example, dropped during
the second world war.
The fact that most bombing missions in Iraq today are pre-planned,
with targets allegedly carefully vetted, further indicts those who wage
this war in the name of freedom. If these targets are so precise, then
those selecting them cannot escape the fact that they are deliberately
targeting innocent civilians at the same time as they seek to destroy
their intended foe. Some would dismiss these civilians as "collateral
damage". But we must keep in mind that the British and US governments
made a deliberate decision to enter into a conflict of their choosing,
not one that was thrust upon them. We invaded Iraq to free Iraqis
from
a dictator who, by some accounts, oversaw the killing of about 300,000
of his subjects - although no one has been able to verify more
than a
small fraction of the figure. If it is correct, it took Saddam decades
to reach such a horrific statistic. The US and UK have, it seems,
reached a third of that total in just 18 months.
Meanwhile, the latest scandal over missing nuclear-related high
explosives in Iraq (traced and controlled under the UN inspections
regime) only underscores the utter deceitfulness of the Bush-Blair
argument for the war. Having claimed the uncertainty surrounding Iraq's
WMD capability constituted a threat that could not go unchallenged in a
post-9/11 world, one would have expected the two leaders to insist
on
a military course of action that brought under immediate coalition
control any aspect of potential WMD capability, especially relating to
any possible nuclear threat. That the US military did not have a
dedicated force to locate and neutralise these explosives underscores
the fact that both Bush and Blair knew that there was no threat from
Iraq, nuclear or otherwise.
Of course, the US and Britain have a history of turning a blind eye
to Iraqi suffering when it suits their political purposes. During the
1990s, hundreds of thousands are estimated by the UN to have died as a
result of sanctions. Throughout that time, the US and the UK maintained
the fiction that this was the fault of Saddam Hussein, who refused to
give up his WMD. We now know that Saddam had disarmed and those deaths
were the responsibility of the US and Britain, which refused to lift
sanctions.
There are many culpable individuals and organisations history will
hold to account for the war - from deceitful politicians and
journalists to acquiescent military professionals and silent citizens
of the world's democracies. As the evidence has piled up confirming
what I and others had reported - that Iraq was already disarmed by the
late 1990s - my personal vote for one of the most culpable
individuals
would go to Hans Blix, who headed the UN weapons inspection team in the
run-up to war. He had the power if not to prevent, at least to
forestall a war with Iraq. Blix knew that Iraq was disarmed, but in his
mealy-mouthed testimony to the UN security council helped provide
fodder for war. His failure to stand up to the lies used by Bush and
Blair to sell the Iraq war must brand him a moral and intellectual
coward.
But we all are moral cowards when it comes to Iraq. Our collective
inability to summon the requisite shame and rage when confronted by an
estimate of 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians in the prosecution of an
illegal and unjust war not only condemns us, but adds credibility
to
those who oppose us. The fact that a criminal such as Osama bin Laden
can broadcast a videotape on the eve of the US presidential
election
in which his message is viewed by many around the world as a sober
argument in support of his cause is the harshest indictment of the
failure of the US and Britain to implement sound policy in the
aftermath of 9/11. The death of 3,000 civilians on that horrible
day
represented a tragedy of huge proportions. Our continued indifference
to a war that has slaughtered so many Iraqi civilians, and will
continue to kill more, is in many ways an even greater tragedy: not
only in terms of scale, but also because these deaths were
inflicted
by our own hand in the course of an action that has no defence.
* Scott Ritter was a senior UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991
and 1998 and is the author of Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass
Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America - WSRitter@aol.com
Increase in War Funding Sought
Bush to Request $70 Billion More
By Jonathan Weisman and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A01
The Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion
in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next
year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion
of Iraq early last year, Pentagon and congressional officials said
yesterday.
White House budget office spokesman Chad Kolton emphasized that
final decisions on the supplemental spending request will not be made
until shortly before the request is sent to Congress. That may not
happen until early February, when President Bush submits his budget for
fiscal 2006, assuming he wins reelection.
But Pentagon and House Appropriations Committee aides said the
Defense Department and military services are scrambling to get their
final requests to the White House Office of Management and Budget by
mid-November, shortly after the election. The new numbers underscore
that the war is going to be far more costly and intense, and last
longer, than the administration first suggested.
The Army is expected to request at least an additional $30 billion
for combat activity in Iraq, with $6 billion more needed to begin
refurbishing equipment that has been worn down or destroyed by
unexpectedly intense combat, another Appropriations Committee aide
said. The deferral of needed repairs over the past year has added to
maintenance costs, which can no longer be delayed, a senior Pentagon
official said.
The Army is expected to ask for as much as $10 billion more for its
conversion to a swifter expeditionary force. The Marines will come in
with a separate request, as will the Defense Logistics Agency and other
components of the Department of Defense. The State Department will need
considerably more money to finance construction and operations at the
sprawling embassy complex in Baghdad. The Central Intelligence Agency's
request would come on top of those.
"I don't have a number, and [administration officials] have not been
forthcoming, but we expect it will be pretty large," said James Dyer,
Republican chief of staff of the Appropriations Committee.
Bush has said for months that he would make an additional request
for the war next year, but the new estimates are the first glimpse of
its magnitude. A $70 billion request would be considerably larger than
lawmakers had anticipated earlier this year. After the president
unexpectedly submitted an $87 billion request for the Iraq and
Afghanistan efforts last year, many Republicans angrily expressed
sticker shock and implored the administration not to surprise them
again.
This request would come on top of $25 billion in war spending
allocated by Congress for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. The two
bills combined suggest the cost of combat is escalating from the $65
billion spent by the military in 2004 and the $62.4 billion allocated
in 2003, as U.S. troops face insurgencies that have proven far more
lethal than expected at this point.
"We're still evaluating what our commitments will be, and we will
submit a request that fully supports those commitments," Kolton said.
The senior Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of
anonymity, said final figures may be shaped by the outcome of the
presidential election and events in Iraq. But assuming force levels
will remain constant in Iraq at about 130,000 troops, the final bill
will be "roughly" $70 billion for the military alone, he said.
In making cost estimates for the supplemental budget request,
Pentagon officials have distanced themselves from the Bush
administration's public optimism about trends in Iraq. Instead, they
make the fairly pessimistic assumption that about as many troops will
be needed there next year as are currently on the ground.
The latest request comes on top of three earlier emergency spending
bills approved by Congress in support of the war. In August, Congress
approved $25 billion for the war as a bridge to the larger request the
president promised for early 2005. Last October, lawmakers passed an
$87.5 billion emergency spending measure that included $65 billion for
combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. An additional $18.6 billion
of that money went to Iraqi reconstruction.
Congress approved the first war spending measure in April 2003, a
$78.5 billion measure that included $62.4 billion for combat and $7.5
billion for foreign assistance.
The White House has been careful to keep the war spending numbers
"close to the vest," Dyer said. But Pentagon officials have been
working on the request for two to three months, even as they put
together their far larger budget request for fiscal 2006, the Pentagon
official said.
The Iraq war has proven so costly because of the unexpectedly
intense opposition from insurgents. That has led the Pentagon to keep
far more troops in Iraq than it planned.
At the end of the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, Pentagon
officials expected to be able to radically trim the occupation force by
the end of that year to perhaps 50,000 troops or less. Instead, they
maintained a force of about 130,000 personnel there and have
supplemented that force with about 20,000 civilian contractors.
On top of paying the wages of the all-volunteer force and the
contractors, the military has paid for building dozens of bases and
keeping a high-tech force equipped with computers, communications gear
and expensive modern weaponry.
Yale University economist William D. Nordhaus estimated that in
inflation-adjusted terms, World War I cost just under $200 billion for
the United States. The Vietnam War cost about $500 billion from 1964 to
1972, Nordhaus said. The cost of the Iraq war could reach nearly half
that number by next fall, 2 1/2 years after it began.
A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment. "We are going to let OMB
talk for the administration on this issue," Marine Lt. Col. Rose-Ann
Lynch said.