One Utah

From this morning’s Salt Lake Tribune:

Casualties are down for U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians. Tribal leaders from Iraq’s deadliest province have joined American efforts to fight al-Qaida. Bombings are down, oil production is up and some refugees are returning home.

Well, the subject of the article is that a majority of Utahns don’t believe the Bush administration’s claims of progress in the Iraq occupation (over on DailyKos, it triggered a jubilant headline: “No More Red States!”). The skeptics are right, and the Trib’s reporter should have been more skeptical himself [see UPDATE below].

“Casualties are down for U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians” — Civilian deaths spiked upward in October according to both the Iraqi government and the website Iraq Body Count. The reason US casualties are down is because air strikes are replacing ground combat– with collateral damage a contributing cause of increased civilian casualties. Danger Room has more.

According to Iraqi government ministries, the civilian death toll for October was at least 887, compared to 840 in September. However, Iraqi government casualty statistics are considered incomplete and unreliable.

US forces have killed 96 Iraqi civilians in October, including 23 children. In September they had killed 91, including 7 children, according to the website Iraq Body Count. Based on reliable media reports, their October total is 1,187 civilians killed. This number is also probably an undercount because many deaths go unreported by journalists.

The Bush administration has been saying that violence is on the decline. This is true for some areas around Baghdad, but not because the so-called “surge” has brought increased security. In a recent hearing before the House Appropriations Committee, Joe Christoff of the Government Accountability Office stated that Baghdad’s reduction in violence is not necessarily good news because it coincides with increased sectarian cleansing and massive refugee displacement.

“Tribal leaders…have joined American efforts to fight al Qaeda.” — The US military command is paying insurgents not to attack Americans, as Sunni sheiks use the money to buy weapons and raise forces to fight the Iraq civil war. According to COL Martin Stanton, chief of reconciliation efforts, these Sunni militias number at least 67,000. “Al Qaeda in Iraq” (AQI) is an Iraqi organization, not the same al Qaeda that attacked the USA in 2001, and is militarily insignificant (fewer than a thousand full-time fighters, less than one percent of the insurgency).

“Bombings are down” — Iraq Body Count’s statistics show that 2007 has been the deadliest year of the occupation for insurgent car bombs and IEDs.

“Oil production is up” – The recently released quarterly report of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) says that Iraq’s oil production has been flat for years– although the increase in the price of oil, partly due to the Bush administration’s own threats to attack Iran, has brought in more money.

“[S]ome refugees are returning home” – True, because the visas of many Iraqi refugees in Syria have expired, and they have no alternative but to return to Iraq. Meanwhile, the USA is falling short of its (meager) commitments to grant asylum to Iraqi refugees. The State Department even sets up bureaucratic roadblocks for Iraqis employed by the US government.

Overall, the SIGIR report (warning: 244-page PDF file) tries to sugar-coat the bad news. However, the report concludes that the overall security situation in Iraq still hampers reconstruction efforts. Attacks on infrastructure continue to adversely affect the availability of essential services. In fact, SIGIR is using satellite imagery to inspect reconstruction projects, most of which are in areas too dangerous to visit on the ground.

Although the progress of construction of roads and bridges remains steady, attacks on infrastructure continue. This quarter, the Grand Canal at Tiji lost its southbound bridge in an attack.

[C]orruption within the Government of Iraq (GOI)…is a “second insurgency” that exerts a corrosive force on Iraq’s fledgling democracy… Threats to Iraq’s anticorruption personnel severely limit the transparency of government activities. More than 30 members of the Commission on Public Integrity (CPI) staff have been killed since 2003…

The Department of Labor (DoL) reported 72 new death claims this quarter for civilian contractors working on U.S.-funded projects in Iraq. Since Iraq reconstruction began, 1,073 death claims have been filed with the DoL. Reported deaths in this category were about 22% above the quarterly average.

This quarter, both Syria and Jordan closed their borders to Iraqi refugees. Iraqis who seek residency in Syria or Jordan must now apply for a visa. Syria has reported that 1.5 million Iraqi refugees have already crossed its borders. Iraqis now represent approximately 7.7% of Syria’s population. Jordan has accepted 500,000-750,000 Iraqi refugees. Iraqi refugees represent 8-12% of Jordan’s population.

This report and others like it may be the best source of information that the Bush administration doesn’t want us to know about. Right now, their media strategy is to say things are getting better in Iraq and change the subject.

UPDATE: In an e-mail this morning, Trib reporter Matt LaPlante explained that he considers himself quite skeptical of what’s being said about the Iraq occupation by the Bush administration: “I think I made the case that its very healthy to maintain a lot of skepticism of so-called ‘good news’ out of Iraq. That said, acknowledging that many of the (grrr… I hate this word) ‘metrics’ are trending downward is not the same thing as giving Bush a pass.” His blog about Iraq, Dispatches: by Matthew D. LaPlante is worth a visit.

Recent related One Utah posts:
What is Bush’s Iraq Strategy?
What’s Really Happening in Iraq?

This entry was posted Friday, November 2nd, 2007 at 7:24 am and is filed under Disaster, Iraq, Military, National Politics, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.