The Coalition of the Billing: Bush’s War in Iraq is facing a Paradigmatic shift: Expect the casualties to mount for the Empire you pay for.
Craig B Hulet
April 8, 2004
"Should the people of the world look at the United States, Governor, and say -- should they fear us? Should they welcome our involvement? Should they see us as a friend to everybody in the world?
How do you -- how would you project us around the world, as president?"
-- Jim Lehrer 1999
Bush's answer: "I don't think they ought to look at us with envy.
It really depends upon how our nation conducts itself in foreign policy.
If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us.
If we're a humble nation but strong, they'll welcome us."
(Source: April 6, 2004 by the .news-journal online
The Consequences of Humility as Illusion, Pierre Tristam)
Iraq is worse off now, after the U.S.-led invasion, than it was under Saddam Hussein, Hans Blix told a Danish newspaper Tuesday April 6th. “What’s positive is that Saddam and his bloody regime is gone, but when figuring out the score, the negatives weigh more,” the former chief U.N. weapons inspector was quoted as saying in the daily newspaper "http://www.jp.dk/". “That accounts for the many casualties during the war and the many people who still die because of the terrorism the war has nourished, The war has liberated the Iraqis from Saddam, but the costs have been too great.”
"We will not be shaken by the thugs and terrorists.
These killers don't have values...
We face tough action in Iraq but we will stay the course."
-- President George W. Bush
Who’s “we” Mr. Bush?
Blix, whose inspection team didn’t make any weapons finds during months of searching Iraq before the war, has sharply criticized the United States and Britain for their invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. The primary reason given for the invasion was to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction. None were found during or after the invasion. The former Swedish foreign minister currently heads a newly created Stockholm-based independent commission on weapons of mass destruction. (Source: April 6, 2004 by the "http://www.ap.org" Blix: Iraq Worse Off Now Than With Saddam COPENHAGEN, Denmark)
In the meantime Mr. Bush has “asked more than a dozen countries to join a new international military force to protect the United Nations in Iraq, according to late reports from Washington. The Bush Administration has approached France, which led opposition to the war in Iraq, as well as India, Pakistan and other nations that were reluctant to join the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq. The list includes ‘a good global mix,’ said a State Department official familiar with the proposed force. (Source; U.S. Seeks Global Military Force That Would Protect U.N. in Iraq, Washington Post , April 07 2004)
That is not what Bush is doing at all. Bush is trying to make an event out of asking for UN support for his war that most every other nation opposed. Its a show. A show for Americans only, so Bush can later claim on the election trail that it is the UN’s fault Americans are dying in Iraq not his and Blair‘s culpability! And of course no Arab countries or neighbors of Iraq are on the list, with Turkey notably absent. The new force is considered essential to the fragile political transition because the Bush administration is relying on the United Nations to return to Iraq to help organize elections after the occupation ends on June 30. (Ibid.) We’ll see if the date is held to. And one doubts the UN is so foolish as to ”fix” Bush’s blunder in a war that never needed fighting!
The U.N. mission is likely to include activities such as assistance with a census, voter registration, civic education and training in the run-up to an election, as well as monitoring the polls by the year’s end -- in places where even the current coalition is not deployed, U.S. officials said. “Potentially there could be a lot more places that forces would have to go. This is an innovative process. None of us has done this before.” (Ibid.)
No, none of “us” out here are doing anything at all except funding it. All Americans are responsible for this war and every tax season that comes around from this day forward shall be a day to remember who is causing the deaths and destruction... every single one of us taxpayers are fully responsible. It is just Bush and his gruesome crew that is “doing” the doing in Iraq. The dollar cost analysis? $1.8 billion each day of your money collected in taxes. The bloody cost: U.S. forces have suffered their bloodiest week in Iraq since just before the fall of Baghdad a year ago, that is what the press repeats over and over. I am still thinking “what fall of Baghdad”? But the world is reporting 40 combat deaths in the seven days from March 31 to April 6. Unlike earlier spikes in casualty figures, like the ones last autumn that resulted from a few helicopter crashes, the latest jump reflects a broad range of incidents, from fierce firefights to roadside bombs. U.S. military deaths in Iraq since the invasion now total 635, including 444 caused by hostile fire. The number of wounded has reached 2,988, the number of AWOLS 1,700, suicides maybe 500.
As a sign of growing Pentagon concern about deteriorating security, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld raised the possibility yesterday that some U.S. troops scheduled to leave Iraq in the next few weeks might be kept in place to counter the mounting unrest. Many of the U.S. troops who died in the past week arrived only recently in Iraq, part of a rotation of forces that began earlier this year to replace war-weary veterans. While plans have called for the U.S. troop level to drop to 115,000 by June, about 135,000 are now in Iraq as arrivals overlap with those due to leave. Other troops are already being kept in Iraq over their enlistment periods, calling these stop-gap orders is meant to alleviate the pressure on calling this what it is. It is drafting these individuals after their enlistment is up. Like not counting the unemployed as unemployed if they work four hours a week, or simply stop looking for work, they are still unemployed. These troops being kept in the military past their lawful enlistments is the drafting of these personnel “back into” the Army and Marines. Sort of draft-light.
Regarding the overlap of forces coming into Iraq and keeping those on that were due to return home the Pentagon says “We’re taking advantage of that increase, and we will likely be managing the pace of the redeployments to allow those seasoned troops with experience and relationships with the local populations to see the current situation through,” Rumsfeld said. That is to say, they are not being rotated out period. (Source: Rotation Reassessed as Toll Spikes Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, April 8, 2004; Page A01)
Another senior defense official said later that no decision had been made to extend tours, which would break a Pentagon commitment to limit troop stays in Iraq to one year. (Ibid.) That is an outright lie of course as troops have already been extended with stop-gap orders and troops are being resent into Iraq that have been sent home for only a few months. Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf region, is reviewing options for bolstering emergency response forces, focusing initially on shifting some units closer to trouble spots. The entire country is becoming a “trouble spot.” The recent surge in violence has involved both a rise in attacks by Sunni insurgents and a new militant campaign by Shiite forces loyal to cleric Moqtada Sadr. At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, disputed characterizations of the violence as a popular uprising. They said battles have involved relatively small numbers of militants, estimating the size of Sadr’s militia at 1,000 to 6,000 fighters. “There’s nothing like an army or large elements of hundreds of people trying to change the situation,” Rumsfeld said. (Ibid.) Really? Then Rummy needs to explain the following report:
An attack by “hundreds of Iraqi militia members” on the U.S. government’s headquarters in Najaf on Sunday was repulsed not by the U.S. military, but by eight commandos from a private security firm, according to sources familiar with the incident. Before U.S. reinforcements could arrive, the firm, Blackwater Security Consulting, sent in its own helicopters amid an intense firefight to resupply its commandos with ammunition and to ferry out a wounded Marine, the sources said. The role of Blackwater’s commandos in Sunday’s fighting in Najaf illuminates the gray zone between their formal role as bodyguards and the realities of operating in an active war zone. Thousands of armed private security contractors are operating in Iraq in a wide variety of missions and exchanging fire with Iraqis every day, according to informal after-action reports from several companies. (Source; Private Guards Repel Attack on U.S. Headquarters, Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writer April 6, 2004; Page A01)
According to Rummy all we are facing is this: “You have a mixture of a small number of terrorists, a small number of militias, coupled with some demonstrations and some lawlessness.” (Ibid. Bradley Graham Washington Post ) Precisely what we called the Vietcong before they got the “name recognition” of being what they were, “Vietcong” guerrillas. Others with more combat experience on the ground than doddering old Rummsfeld contradict the Defense Secretary’s perspective on many of these attacks:
One senior Blackwater manager has described those killings to U.S. government officials as the result of a “high-quality” attack as skilled as one that can be mounted by U.S. Special Forces,” according to a copy of a report on the incident obtained by The Washington Post. (Ibid., Dana Priest, Washington Post )
Rumsfeld also rejected the notion that the intensified fighting represented “a turning point.” But he called it a “test of will,” saying the militants were engaged in a “power play” before the planned June 30 handover of sovereignty to an Iraqi government. (Ibid. Graham, Washington Post ) This is simply nonsense, as the real motivation is the elections here in America; the insurgents, as they are called throughout the world’s press rather than terrorists (or thugs), understand this all too well. The president of the United States is their enemy and to suggest they don’t understand this is an election year here in the States is to remain ignorant of just how “not ignorant” Iraqi’s are. An unelected Iraqi government, hand picked lackeys of the Bush regime, are never going to rule Iraq...never! All Rumsfeld can do is warn and bluster, “vowing “robust military action” to restore calm,” and then Rumsfeld warned Iraqi pilgrims that holy cities were potentially dangerous during the upcoming Shiite holiday of Arba'in. He said Iraqi authorities had asked that U.S. forces stay away from the cities and so the troops will not be in position to protect pilgrims. (Ibid., Graham, Washington Post )
The Marine Corps, with 25 dead, suffered the largest share of military deaths in the seven days ending April 6. The Marines took charge last month of a large area west of Baghdad that has been a hotbed of Sunni resistance. In one set of battles Tuesday in Ramadi, 12 Marines died engaging Sunni militants, and four have died since last weekend in operations to secure Fallujah, where four civilian contractors were killed March 31 and their bodies mutilated. (Ibid.) Civilian contractors? These were mercenaries ultimately in the pay of the United States Pentagon. Let’s call them what they are. You are, after all paying the merc’s work with your tax dollars to fight this jolly little war.
The U.S. Army has reported 15 recent deaths. Eight occurred last weekend in Baghdad battles with Shiite militants. Other soldiers perished one by one in attacks in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Balad and Mosul, victims of rocket-propelled grenades or bombs buried along roadways. (Ibid., Graham, Washington Post ) Then, in the same report, we hear this no-brainer: “Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, said some of the rise in U.S. combat deaths could be linked to U.S. forces stepping up offensive operations over the past week.” Amazing sense of reality over at the Pentagon. Makes me very glad indeed I “served my time in 69.” Sort of a slogan round here now.
In Sunday’s (April 4, 2004) fighting, Shiite militia forces barraged the Blackwater commandos, four MPs and a Marine gunner with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 fire for hours before U.S. Special Forces troops arrived. A sniper on a nearby roof apparently wounded three men. Someone tell me this sniper was a terrorist? and not a well-trained trooper! U.S. troops faced heavy fighting in several Iraqi cities that day. The Blackwater commandos, most of whom are former Special Forces troops, are on contract to provide security for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Najaf. With their ammunition nearly gone, a wounded and badly bleeding Marine on the rooftop, and no reinforcement by the U.S. military in the immediate offing, the company sent in helicopters to drop ammunition and pick up the Marine.
A Defense Department spokesman said that there were no military reports about the opening hours of the siege on CPA headquarters in Najaf because there were no military personnel on the scene. The Defense Department often does not have a clear handle on the daily actions of security contractors because the contractor mercs work directly for the coalition authority, funded by U.S. taxpayers, which coordinates and communicates on a limited basis through the normal military chain of command.
The four men slain the Wednesday previous to Sunday’s assaults in Fallujah were also Blackwater employees and were operating in the Sunni triangle area under even more hazardous conditions -- unarmored cars with no apparent backup -- than the U.S. military or the CIA permit. One senior Blackwater manager has described those killings to U.S. government officials as the result of a “high-quality” attack as skilled as one that can be mounted by U.S. Special Forces. (Ibid.) There have been questions as to whether the Blackwater mercenaries were even armed as they were taken out so easily; they most certainly were, but if the attack was as stated by the Blackwater manager and former SEAL, as high-quality an attack as our own Special Forces could have mounted, the four never had a chance to open fire. It was over before they could count. Rumsfeld is clearly being disingenuous as to the capability these insurgents have now and will continue to display in the future.
Whether they are former Medina Republican Guard, the Special Republican Guard or other well-trained troops from the former regime or from other nations as well, is historically important (we need to know what we are up against) but also somewhat irrelevant as they are acting under the war-fighting capabilities necessary to defeat (ultimately) the occupation forces: i.e., using classical urban guerrilla warfare. These are not simple un-trained terrorists. Clearly this is not the opening salvo of what this writer warned, if not predicted, may come to pass at some point in this ongoing guerrilla war. That being, that at some point we will likely face an even more deliberate conventional war-making capability against U.S. forces. Just as we fought two distinct enemies in Vietnam, 1) the guerrilla warriors of the mobile Vietcong, which is what we are facing in Iraq and Afghanistan; a) in Iraq an international urban guerrilla war [inner city jungles is a most apt phrase] which we cannot ever completely win as long as U.S. forces are in the Middle east, b) in Afghanistan a classic mountain guerrilla resistance that has never been defeated anywhere in the world); and 2) a more modern conventional army likely being quietly organized and prepared secretly for a specific theatre of operations [including artillery, tanks and APCs] and may likely launch from across one or more, simultaneously, of the porous borders surrounding Iraq [Syria, Iran, Turkey and Saudi soil] not unlike the TET offensive of 1968 in Vietnam.
What are we doing here in America as citizens allowing the Pentagon, or coporations receiving Pentagon funds, to hire mercenaries outright, admittedly and out of the taxpayer’s unwitting coffers? What are the likes of John Kerry saying about this, or Ted Kennedy? Or Lady Hillary of WalMart? The four victims of the Wednesday attack, according to Blackwater spokesman Chris Bertelli, were escorting trucks carrying either food or kitchen equipment for Regency Hotel and Hospitality. Regency is a subcontractor to Eurest Support Services (ESS), a division of the Compass Group, the world’s largest food service company. ESS provides food services to more than a dozen U.S. military dining facilities in Iraq, according to news accounts. Thus they receive tax dollars redistributed via reconstruction funds or the Pentagon proper.
The private military industry got its start in the early 1990s with the rise of the firm Executive Outcomes, the very same South African company that Simon Mann and many of the other coup suspects used to work with. Executive Outcomes, which was linked with multinational mining and energy interests, fought in Angola, Sierra Leone and Congo. While the firm formally went out of business in 1999, its success spawned a global industry of copy cats. In the decade since it began, the private military industry has mushroomed. Private military firms now operate in more than 50 countries and do up to $100bn business a year.(Source: The Dogs of War Go Corporate The London News Review, March 19, 2004 Peter W. Singer National Security Fellow, Brookings Foreign Policy Studies)
Private military firms are business providers of professional services intricately linked to warfare. That is, they are corporate bodies that specialize in the sale of military skills. They do everything, from leasing out commando teams and offering the strategic advice of ex-generals to running the outsourced supply chains for the US and now British armies. (Ibid.) In Iraq, for example, there are more than 15,000 private military contractors. They protect convoys and key installations, train the Iraqi police, paramilitary, and army, and also do mundane chores like feeding troops and fuelling vehicles. The biggest player in Iraq is Dick Cheney’s scandal-plagued Halliburton firm, presently besieged by a series of accounting and overbilling gaffes, but there are also a number of UK-based companies. One is Global Risks, reported to have 100 former British SAS troopers, 500 former Nepalese Ghurkas and 500 ex-Fijian soldiers working on the ground in Iraq. This one company has the sixth largest troop contingent in the coalition. Thus, President Bush’s international effort has finally come to pass, except to be completely honest he might want to rename it the “Coalition of the Billing.” (Source: The Dogs of War Go Corporate The London News Review, March 19, 2004 Peter W. Singer National Security Fellow, Brookings Foreign Policy Studies)
Blackwater, a security and training company based in Moyock, N.C., while it prides itself on the high caliber of its personnel, many of whom are former U.S. Navy SEALs, they are mercenaries nonetheless. And ultimately these services are being paid for, one way or another [let’s not do the corporate shuffle we all know happens to mask and veil the source of funding] we taxpayers are hiring mercs. Blackwater has 450 employees in Iraq, many of them providing security to CPA employees, including the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, and to VIPs visiting Iraq. Blackwater has applied to occupy a former MIG air base near Baghdad as a counterterrorism training facility for Iraqi forces. The training range will mirror the 6,000-acre Moyock site, which is frequented by U.S. law enforcement and military personnel. (Ibid., Graham, Washington Post)
I have argued elsewhere that “this war will likely last a generation.” That we are facing an “international urban guerrilla war which began in earnest on 9/11,” that we cannot ultimately win. (See www.kcandassociates.org for some 80 articles directly pertaining to Iraq, and guerrilla warfare) But everything has changed since 9/11. America is not any longer the free Republic based upon democratic principles it once was. American democracy is for sale. The wars the United States, all of us taxpayers as guilty as Bush and his gruesome crew, we are fighting in the Middle East and Central Asia can only create more instability in the region, and increase terrorist attacks (which have reached a higher level since 9/11, not fewer as we have been told (see KC&A site).
These are the wars of a weakened nation-state with dreams of Empire bedazzling the perfunctory leadership. We have a military much too large for homeland defense but one that is much too small, too weak, to rule an empire These are corporate wars for corporate resources for a corporate empire that bears no resemblance to America per se. Wars in behalf of corporations that have not paid a dime in income tax since 1989!
A majority of U.S. corporations haven’t paid income tax in any year since 1989, as they used accounting strategies to duck the 35 percent corporate tax rate, the General Accounting Office reported recently in Washington....The congressional auditing agency said last week that 63 percent of all U.S. companies used a variety of legal -- and some illegal -- methods to zero out their tax liability between 1996 and 2000.... During the same period, 94 percent of U.S. corporations reported tax liabilities of less than 5 percent. Similar results were found for the period 1989-95 in a previous GAO study. (Source: (Source: Majority of firms don'’ pay tax, April 7, 2004; Accounting strategies used, GAO reports RYAN J. DONMOYER BLOOMBERG NEWS)
“Too many corporations are finagling ways to dodge paying Uncle Sam, despite the benefits they receive from this country.” -- Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., who requested the GAO report. The Senator has it precisely backwards. The taxes paid are for the subjects to pay; the wars fought are for the corporate empire, American-led but not American in any sense of the term. The corporations are instructing the federal government, defining it, driving it. It includes foreign corporations with American board members and often an American (if that term means anything any longer) as CEO.
Overall, the report said that more foreign-owned corporations avoided taxes between 1996 and 2000 than their U.S. competitors -- 71 percent to 61 percent, respectively. When the study focused on larger corporations, defined as those with more than $250 million in assets or $50 million in gross receipts, tax avoidance by U.S. corporations outpaced foreign-owned companies. In total, foreign-controlled corporations paid an average of $11.88 per $1,000 of gross receipts in 2000, the study said. U.S. corporations paid an average of $14.75 per $1,000. The Senate Finance Committee is reviewing 55 boxes of IRS records on almost 700 private agreements that the agency has struck with multinational corporations on the way prices have been set for intracompany transactions since 1991. Such transfer pricing arrangements can be a source of abuse when goods are sold between subsidiaries at inflated prices. The IRS and companies say their private pricing arrangements, which are voluntary and often done in conjunction with tax authorities in other countries, avoid legal disputes when the companies are audited. (Ibid.)
Companies use losses, improper intercompany pricing arrangements and accrued tax credits to reduce or eliminate their tax bills, the GAO said in the study, reported by The Wall Street Journal. 45 percent of all international trade is intra-firm trade; it is between Ford of Bonn and Ford of Detroit. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, America the largest, 55 are corporations! America is now a corporate state, Corporatism is its ideology. What better describes Corporatism (Corporazioni in 1920s Italian terminology) than the hiring, by corporations like Halliburton KBR, of corporate mercenaries, whose funds are derived ultimately from taxing the subjects of empire, who pay trillions of dollars in taxes as individuals, all the while the same corporations reaping the harvest pay not one nickel in taxes to the empire?
If the Empire were “American,” as academics like Noam Chomsky and Chalmers Johnson keep repeating, the U.S. corporations would have to tithe Caesar no less than the Plebeians and serfs, you and I. But they are the recipients of the taxes collected, the corporations receive the booty taken from the mass of subjects, the people, through a vast organ of redistribution that was set in motion by FDR and other liberal politicians in the hopes of bettering the lives of “the people.” But FDR did not live to remove the corporate nexus he put into power. Truman wasn’t strong enough just as Eisenhower was not either. By John Kennedy the fix was in, the corporate structure had seized all significant power from the people’s representatives. Corporatism is defined by its wars, follow the cash, indeed, follow your cash ... as it flows left or right, Democrat or Republican, from you to their grubby grasping paws.
End 04/08/04
Craig B Hulet
April 8, 2004
"Should the people of the world look at the United States, Governor, and say -- should they fear us? Should they welcome our involvement? Should they see us as a friend to everybody in the world?
How do you -- how would you project us around the world, as president?"
-- Jim Lehrer 1999
Bush's answer: "I don't think they ought to look at us with envy.
It really depends upon how our nation conducts itself in foreign policy.
If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us.
If we're a humble nation but strong, they'll welcome us."
(Source: April 6, 2004 by the .news-journal online
The Consequences of Humility as Illusion, Pierre Tristam)
Iraq is worse off now, after the U.S.-led invasion, than it was under Saddam Hussein, Hans Blix told a Danish newspaper Tuesday April 6th. “What’s positive is that Saddam and his bloody regime is gone, but when figuring out the score, the negatives weigh more,” the former chief U.N. weapons inspector was quoted as saying in the daily newspaper "http://www.jp.dk/". “That accounts for the many casualties during the war and the many people who still die because of the terrorism the war has nourished, The war has liberated the Iraqis from Saddam, but the costs have been too great.”
"We will not be shaken by the thugs and terrorists.
These killers don't have values...
We face tough action in Iraq but we will stay the course."
-- President George W. Bush
Who’s “we” Mr. Bush?
Blix, whose inspection team didn’t make any weapons finds during months of searching Iraq before the war, has sharply criticized the United States and Britain for their invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. The primary reason given for the invasion was to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction. None were found during or after the invasion. The former Swedish foreign minister currently heads a newly created Stockholm-based independent commission on weapons of mass destruction. (Source: April 6, 2004 by the "http://www.ap.org" Blix: Iraq Worse Off Now Than With Saddam COPENHAGEN, Denmark)
In the meantime Mr. Bush has “asked more than a dozen countries to join a new international military force to protect the United Nations in Iraq, according to late reports from Washington. The Bush Administration has approached France, which led opposition to the war in Iraq, as well as India, Pakistan and other nations that were reluctant to join the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq. The list includes ‘a good global mix,’ said a State Department official familiar with the proposed force. (Source; U.S. Seeks Global Military Force That Would Protect U.N. in Iraq, Washington Post , April 07 2004)
That is not what Bush is doing at all. Bush is trying to make an event out of asking for UN support for his war that most every other nation opposed. Its a show. A show for Americans only, so Bush can later claim on the election trail that it is the UN’s fault Americans are dying in Iraq not his and Blair‘s culpability! And of course no Arab countries or neighbors of Iraq are on the list, with Turkey notably absent. The new force is considered essential to the fragile political transition because the Bush administration is relying on the United Nations to return to Iraq to help organize elections after the occupation ends on June 30. (Ibid.) We’ll see if the date is held to. And one doubts the UN is so foolish as to ”fix” Bush’s blunder in a war that never needed fighting!
The U.N. mission is likely to include activities such as assistance with a census, voter registration, civic education and training in the run-up to an election, as well as monitoring the polls by the year’s end -- in places where even the current coalition is not deployed, U.S. officials said. “Potentially there could be a lot more places that forces would have to go. This is an innovative process. None of us has done this before.” (Ibid.)
No, none of “us” out here are doing anything at all except funding it. All Americans are responsible for this war and every tax season that comes around from this day forward shall be a day to remember who is causing the deaths and destruction... every single one of us taxpayers are fully responsible. It is just Bush and his gruesome crew that is “doing” the doing in Iraq. The dollar cost analysis? $1.8 billion each day of your money collected in taxes. The bloody cost: U.S. forces have suffered their bloodiest week in Iraq since just before the fall of Baghdad a year ago, that is what the press repeats over and over. I am still thinking “what fall of Baghdad”? But the world is reporting 40 combat deaths in the seven days from March 31 to April 6. Unlike earlier spikes in casualty figures, like the ones last autumn that resulted from a few helicopter crashes, the latest jump reflects a broad range of incidents, from fierce firefights to roadside bombs. U.S. military deaths in Iraq since the invasion now total 635, including 444 caused by hostile fire. The number of wounded has reached 2,988, the number of AWOLS 1,700, suicides maybe 500.
As a sign of growing Pentagon concern about deteriorating security, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld raised the possibility yesterday that some U.S. troops scheduled to leave Iraq in the next few weeks might be kept in place to counter the mounting unrest. Many of the U.S. troops who died in the past week arrived only recently in Iraq, part of a rotation of forces that began earlier this year to replace war-weary veterans. While plans have called for the U.S. troop level to drop to 115,000 by June, about 135,000 are now in Iraq as arrivals overlap with those due to leave. Other troops are already being kept in Iraq over their enlistment periods, calling these stop-gap orders is meant to alleviate the pressure on calling this what it is. It is drafting these individuals after their enlistment is up. Like not counting the unemployed as unemployed if they work four hours a week, or simply stop looking for work, they are still unemployed. These troops being kept in the military past their lawful enlistments is the drafting of these personnel “back into” the Army and Marines. Sort of draft-light.
Regarding the overlap of forces coming into Iraq and keeping those on that were due to return home the Pentagon says “We’re taking advantage of that increase, and we will likely be managing the pace of the redeployments to allow those seasoned troops with experience and relationships with the local populations to see the current situation through,” Rumsfeld said. That is to say, they are not being rotated out period. (Source: Rotation Reassessed as Toll Spikes Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, April 8, 2004; Page A01)
Another senior defense official said later that no decision had been made to extend tours, which would break a Pentagon commitment to limit troop stays in Iraq to one year. (Ibid.) That is an outright lie of course as troops have already been extended with stop-gap orders and troops are being resent into Iraq that have been sent home for only a few months. Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf region, is reviewing options for bolstering emergency response forces, focusing initially on shifting some units closer to trouble spots. The entire country is becoming a “trouble spot.” The recent surge in violence has involved both a rise in attacks by Sunni insurgents and a new militant campaign by Shiite forces loyal to cleric Moqtada Sadr. At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, disputed characterizations of the violence as a popular uprising. They said battles have involved relatively small numbers of militants, estimating the size of Sadr’s militia at 1,000 to 6,000 fighters. “There’s nothing like an army or large elements of hundreds of people trying to change the situation,” Rumsfeld said. (Ibid.) Really? Then Rummy needs to explain the following report:
An attack by “hundreds of Iraqi militia members” on the U.S. government’s headquarters in Najaf on Sunday was repulsed not by the U.S. military, but by eight commandos from a private security firm, according to sources familiar with the incident. Before U.S. reinforcements could arrive, the firm, Blackwater Security Consulting, sent in its own helicopters amid an intense firefight to resupply its commandos with ammunition and to ferry out a wounded Marine, the sources said. The role of Blackwater’s commandos in Sunday’s fighting in Najaf illuminates the gray zone between their formal role as bodyguards and the realities of operating in an active war zone. Thousands of armed private security contractors are operating in Iraq in a wide variety of missions and exchanging fire with Iraqis every day, according to informal after-action reports from several companies. (Source; Private Guards Repel Attack on U.S. Headquarters, Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writer April 6, 2004; Page A01)
According to Rummy all we are facing is this: “You have a mixture of a small number of terrorists, a small number of militias, coupled with some demonstrations and some lawlessness.” (Ibid. Bradley Graham Washington Post ) Precisely what we called the Vietcong before they got the “name recognition” of being what they were, “Vietcong” guerrillas. Others with more combat experience on the ground than doddering old Rummsfeld contradict the Defense Secretary’s perspective on many of these attacks:
One senior Blackwater manager has described those killings to U.S. government officials as the result of a “high-quality” attack as skilled as one that can be mounted by U.S. Special Forces,” according to a copy of a report on the incident obtained by The Washington Post. (Ibid., Dana Priest, Washington Post )
Rumsfeld also rejected the notion that the intensified fighting represented “a turning point.” But he called it a “test of will,” saying the militants were engaged in a “power play” before the planned June 30 handover of sovereignty to an Iraqi government. (Ibid. Graham, Washington Post ) This is simply nonsense, as the real motivation is the elections here in America; the insurgents, as they are called throughout the world’s press rather than terrorists (or thugs), understand this all too well. The president of the United States is their enemy and to suggest they don’t understand this is an election year here in the States is to remain ignorant of just how “not ignorant” Iraqi’s are. An unelected Iraqi government, hand picked lackeys of the Bush regime, are never going to rule Iraq...never! All Rumsfeld can do is warn and bluster, “vowing “robust military action” to restore calm,” and then Rumsfeld warned Iraqi pilgrims that holy cities were potentially dangerous during the upcoming Shiite holiday of Arba'in. He said Iraqi authorities had asked that U.S. forces stay away from the cities and so the troops will not be in position to protect pilgrims. (Ibid., Graham, Washington Post )
The Marine Corps, with 25 dead, suffered the largest share of military deaths in the seven days ending April 6. The Marines took charge last month of a large area west of Baghdad that has been a hotbed of Sunni resistance. In one set of battles Tuesday in Ramadi, 12 Marines died engaging Sunni militants, and four have died since last weekend in operations to secure Fallujah, where four civilian contractors were killed March 31 and their bodies mutilated. (Ibid.) Civilian contractors? These were mercenaries ultimately in the pay of the United States Pentagon. Let’s call them what they are. You are, after all paying the merc’s work with your tax dollars to fight this jolly little war.
The U.S. Army has reported 15 recent deaths. Eight occurred last weekend in Baghdad battles with Shiite militants. Other soldiers perished one by one in attacks in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Balad and Mosul, victims of rocket-propelled grenades or bombs buried along roadways. (Ibid., Graham, Washington Post ) Then, in the same report, we hear this no-brainer: “Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, said some of the rise in U.S. combat deaths could be linked to U.S. forces stepping up offensive operations over the past week.” Amazing sense of reality over at the Pentagon. Makes me very glad indeed I “served my time in 69.” Sort of a slogan round here now.
In Sunday’s (April 4, 2004) fighting, Shiite militia forces barraged the Blackwater commandos, four MPs and a Marine gunner with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 fire for hours before U.S. Special Forces troops arrived. A sniper on a nearby roof apparently wounded three men. Someone tell me this sniper was a terrorist? and not a well-trained trooper! U.S. troops faced heavy fighting in several Iraqi cities that day. The Blackwater commandos, most of whom are former Special Forces troops, are on contract to provide security for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Najaf. With their ammunition nearly gone, a wounded and badly bleeding Marine on the rooftop, and no reinforcement by the U.S. military in the immediate offing, the company sent in helicopters to drop ammunition and pick up the Marine.
A Defense Department spokesman said that there were no military reports about the opening hours of the siege on CPA headquarters in Najaf because there were no military personnel on the scene. The Defense Department often does not have a clear handle on the daily actions of security contractors because the contractor mercs work directly for the coalition authority, funded by U.S. taxpayers, which coordinates and communicates on a limited basis through the normal military chain of command.
The four men slain the Wednesday previous to Sunday’s assaults in Fallujah were also Blackwater employees and were operating in the Sunni triangle area under even more hazardous conditions -- unarmored cars with no apparent backup -- than the U.S. military or the CIA permit. One senior Blackwater manager has described those killings to U.S. government officials as the result of a “high-quality” attack as skilled as one that can be mounted by U.S. Special Forces. (Ibid.) There have been questions as to whether the Blackwater mercenaries were even armed as they were taken out so easily; they most certainly were, but if the attack was as stated by the Blackwater manager and former SEAL, as high-quality an attack as our own Special Forces could have mounted, the four never had a chance to open fire. It was over before they could count. Rumsfeld is clearly being disingenuous as to the capability these insurgents have now and will continue to display in the future.
Whether they are former Medina Republican Guard, the Special Republican Guard or other well-trained troops from the former regime or from other nations as well, is historically important (we need to know what we are up against) but also somewhat irrelevant as they are acting under the war-fighting capabilities necessary to defeat (ultimately) the occupation forces: i.e., using classical urban guerrilla warfare. These are not simple un-trained terrorists. Clearly this is not the opening salvo of what this writer warned, if not predicted, may come to pass at some point in this ongoing guerrilla war. That being, that at some point we will likely face an even more deliberate conventional war-making capability against U.S. forces. Just as we fought two distinct enemies in Vietnam, 1) the guerrilla warriors of the mobile Vietcong, which is what we are facing in Iraq and Afghanistan; a) in Iraq an international urban guerrilla war [inner city jungles is a most apt phrase] which we cannot ever completely win as long as U.S. forces are in the Middle east, b) in Afghanistan a classic mountain guerrilla resistance that has never been defeated anywhere in the world); and 2) a more modern conventional army likely being quietly organized and prepared secretly for a specific theatre of operations [including artillery, tanks and APCs] and may likely launch from across one or more, simultaneously, of the porous borders surrounding Iraq [Syria, Iran, Turkey and Saudi soil] not unlike the TET offensive of 1968 in Vietnam.
What are we doing here in America as citizens allowing the Pentagon, or coporations receiving Pentagon funds, to hire mercenaries outright, admittedly and out of the taxpayer’s unwitting coffers? What are the likes of John Kerry saying about this, or Ted Kennedy? Or Lady Hillary of WalMart? The four victims of the Wednesday attack, according to Blackwater spokesman Chris Bertelli, were escorting trucks carrying either food or kitchen equipment for Regency Hotel and Hospitality. Regency is a subcontractor to Eurest Support Services (ESS), a division of the Compass Group, the world’s largest food service company. ESS provides food services to more than a dozen U.S. military dining facilities in Iraq, according to news accounts. Thus they receive tax dollars redistributed via reconstruction funds or the Pentagon proper.
The private military industry got its start in the early 1990s with the rise of the firm Executive Outcomes, the very same South African company that Simon Mann and many of the other coup suspects used to work with. Executive Outcomes, which was linked with multinational mining and energy interests, fought in Angola, Sierra Leone and Congo. While the firm formally went out of business in 1999, its success spawned a global industry of copy cats. In the decade since it began, the private military industry has mushroomed. Private military firms now operate in more than 50 countries and do up to $100bn business a year.(Source: The Dogs of War Go Corporate The London News Review, March 19, 2004 Peter W. Singer National Security Fellow, Brookings Foreign Policy Studies)
Private military firms are business providers of professional services intricately linked to warfare. That is, they are corporate bodies that specialize in the sale of military skills. They do everything, from leasing out commando teams and offering the strategic advice of ex-generals to running the outsourced supply chains for the US and now British armies. (Ibid.) In Iraq, for example, there are more than 15,000 private military contractors. They protect convoys and key installations, train the Iraqi police, paramilitary, and army, and also do mundane chores like feeding troops and fuelling vehicles. The biggest player in Iraq is Dick Cheney’s scandal-plagued Halliburton firm, presently besieged by a series of accounting and overbilling gaffes, but there are also a number of UK-based companies. One is Global Risks, reported to have 100 former British SAS troopers, 500 former Nepalese Ghurkas and 500 ex-Fijian soldiers working on the ground in Iraq. This one company has the sixth largest troop contingent in the coalition. Thus, President Bush’s international effort has finally come to pass, except to be completely honest he might want to rename it the “Coalition of the Billing.” (Source: The Dogs of War Go Corporate The London News Review, March 19, 2004 Peter W. Singer National Security Fellow, Brookings Foreign Policy Studies)
Blackwater, a security and training company based in Moyock, N.C., while it prides itself on the high caliber of its personnel, many of whom are former U.S. Navy SEALs, they are mercenaries nonetheless. And ultimately these services are being paid for, one way or another [let’s not do the corporate shuffle we all know happens to mask and veil the source of funding] we taxpayers are hiring mercs. Blackwater has 450 employees in Iraq, many of them providing security to CPA employees, including the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, and to VIPs visiting Iraq. Blackwater has applied to occupy a former MIG air base near Baghdad as a counterterrorism training facility for Iraqi forces. The training range will mirror the 6,000-acre Moyock site, which is frequented by U.S. law enforcement and military personnel. (Ibid., Graham, Washington Post)
I have argued elsewhere that “this war will likely last a generation.” That we are facing an “international urban guerrilla war which began in earnest on 9/11,” that we cannot ultimately win. (See www.kcandassociates.org for some 80 articles directly pertaining to Iraq, and guerrilla warfare) But everything has changed since 9/11. America is not any longer the free Republic based upon democratic principles it once was. American democracy is for sale. The wars the United States, all of us taxpayers as guilty as Bush and his gruesome crew, we are fighting in the Middle East and Central Asia can only create more instability in the region, and increase terrorist attacks (which have reached a higher level since 9/11, not fewer as we have been told (see KC&A site).
These are the wars of a weakened nation-state with dreams of Empire bedazzling the perfunctory leadership. We have a military much too large for homeland defense but one that is much too small, too weak, to rule an empire These are corporate wars for corporate resources for a corporate empire that bears no resemblance to America per se. Wars in behalf of corporations that have not paid a dime in income tax since 1989!
A majority of U.S. corporations haven’t paid income tax in any year since 1989, as they used accounting strategies to duck the 35 percent corporate tax rate, the General Accounting Office reported recently in Washington....The congressional auditing agency said last week that 63 percent of all U.S. companies used a variety of legal -- and some illegal -- methods to zero out their tax liability between 1996 and 2000.... During the same period, 94 percent of U.S. corporations reported tax liabilities of less than 5 percent. Similar results were found for the period 1989-95 in a previous GAO study. (Source: (Source: Majority of firms don'’ pay tax, April 7, 2004; Accounting strategies used, GAO reports RYAN J. DONMOYER BLOOMBERG NEWS)
“Too many corporations are finagling ways to dodge paying Uncle Sam, despite the benefits they receive from this country.” -- Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., who requested the GAO report. The Senator has it precisely backwards. The taxes paid are for the subjects to pay; the wars fought are for the corporate empire, American-led but not American in any sense of the term. The corporations are instructing the federal government, defining it, driving it. It includes foreign corporations with American board members and often an American (if that term means anything any longer) as CEO.
Overall, the report said that more foreign-owned corporations avoided taxes between 1996 and 2000 than their U.S. competitors -- 71 percent to 61 percent, respectively. When the study focused on larger corporations, defined as those with more than $250 million in assets or $50 million in gross receipts, tax avoidance by U.S. corporations outpaced foreign-owned companies. In total, foreign-controlled corporations paid an average of $11.88 per $1,000 of gross receipts in 2000, the study said. U.S. corporations paid an average of $14.75 per $1,000. The Senate Finance Committee is reviewing 55 boxes of IRS records on almost 700 private agreements that the agency has struck with multinational corporations on the way prices have been set for intracompany transactions since 1991. Such transfer pricing arrangements can be a source of abuse when goods are sold between subsidiaries at inflated prices. The IRS and companies say their private pricing arrangements, which are voluntary and often done in conjunction with tax authorities in other countries, avoid legal disputes when the companies are audited. (Ibid.)
Companies use losses, improper intercompany pricing arrangements and accrued tax credits to reduce or eliminate their tax bills, the GAO said in the study, reported by The Wall Street Journal. 45 percent of all international trade is intra-firm trade; it is between Ford of Bonn and Ford of Detroit. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, America the largest, 55 are corporations! America is now a corporate state, Corporatism is its ideology. What better describes Corporatism (Corporazioni in 1920s Italian terminology) than the hiring, by corporations like Halliburton KBR, of corporate mercenaries, whose funds are derived ultimately from taxing the subjects of empire, who pay trillions of dollars in taxes as individuals, all the while the same corporations reaping the harvest pay not one nickel in taxes to the empire?
If the Empire were “American,” as academics like Noam Chomsky and Chalmers Johnson keep repeating, the U.S. corporations would have to tithe Caesar no less than the Plebeians and serfs, you and I. But they are the recipients of the taxes collected, the corporations receive the booty taken from the mass of subjects, the people, through a vast organ of redistribution that was set in motion by FDR and other liberal politicians in the hopes of bettering the lives of “the people.” But FDR did not live to remove the corporate nexus he put into power. Truman wasn’t strong enough just as Eisenhower was not either. By John Kennedy the fix was in, the corporate structure had seized all significant power from the people’s representatives. Corporatism is defined by its wars, follow the cash, indeed, follow your cash ... as it flows left or right, Democrat or Republican, from you to their grubby grasping paws.
End 04/08/04