One Utah

Beginning in July 2005, Congress has required the Department of Defense (DOD) to issue quarterly reports on Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq as a condition for further appropriations. The National Priorities Project estimates that more than $351.4 billion has been spent on the Iraq war and occupation so far. As you might expect, the DOD reports tend to spin everything in a positive way so that it doesn’t look like all this incredible amount of money is just going down the drain. Needless to say, they also don’t want us to think the casualties suffered by our forces (the equivalent of a battalion a month) and the Iraqis are not worth the results.

Yesterday the Pentagon posted a new quarterly report (53-page PDF) on its website. It’s a shock to read. As usual, the report writers tried to omit or gloss over as much as they could, but by now the situation in Iraq has deteriorated so badly that it can’t be covered up. It’s all very carefully worded, but objectively there is no good news in this report. I challenge anyone to point to anything in this document that could reasonably be called an indication that the USA is achieving its objectives.

Here’s a bullet point synopsis of some of the facts included in this report:

• The front-page headline is the revelation that insurgent and militia attacks are up 22 percent. A bar chart indicates the weekly average has approached 1,000, compared with about 800 per week from the May-to-August period. As the Iraq Study Group (ISG) noted, the Pentagon does not include sectarian violence in these statistics; the ISG found total incidents undercounted by a factor of ten.
• Since January, sectarian executions have increased more than five-fold and civilian casualties are nearly three times higher than they were a year ago.
• The number of Iraqi battalions in combat has decreased (most likely due to mass desertions).
• Both oil production and electricity generation are down. Electricity is being generated at a slightly lower rate than in 2004, though unmet demand has greatly increased. The country averages 12.2 hours of electricity generation per day, with some areas averaging less than eight hours. Oil revenues are down since 2004.
• Inflation is running at 32 percent. Official unemployment estimates run as high as 18 percent, with unofficial estimates around 50 percent.
• Less than ten percent of Iraqis have access to drinkable water. The report says there is now “capacity to provide access to potable water” to 5.2 million people. But 60 percent of water treatment output is lost due to leakage and contamination.
• Malnutrition was reported as varying between 14.2% and 26.5%, depending on the province.

UPDATE: On the subject of Bush’s idea of “surging” more troops to Iraq, which the Joint Chiefs oppose, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo (TPM) raises an interesting point:

Say we ’surge’ up 30,000 or 50,000 troops into Baghdad. And then after 3 or 6 or 9 months, nothing has changed or, more likely, the security situation is even worse. If both those things happen, will we then be told that ramping back to the pre-surge levels is something we can’t do for fear of showing weakness to the enemy or admitting defeat?

In other words, is this a surge or a ratchet?

In a later post, a TPM reader points out that the “surge” is probably just Bush’s way of trying to get through the next two years without having to admit he’s wrong. Never mind how many people have to die.

UPDATE: The New York Times reports that insurgents have been successful at cutting off Baghdad from Iraq’s power grid, which explains why the capital averaged less than eight hours of electricity a day in October (p. 16 of the Pentagon report).

This entry was posted Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Disaster, Iraq, National Politics, This Blog, War. Both comments and pings are currently closed.