Today in Iraq

War News for Monday, April 18, 2005 Bring 'em on: Seven Iraqi Kurds working at US military base kidnapped in Mansuria. Bring 'em on: Number of US soldiers wounded in a car bomb attack in Rutba. Bring 'em on: Two Iraqi policemen and one civilian killed in car bomb attack in Duluiyah. Bring 'em on: French and Czech citizens identified (along with Aid worker Marla Ruzicka) as victims of the suicide bomb attack in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: One US soldier killed and another injured in IED attack in Baghdad. The Madain hostage crisis that never was? Is the Insurgency waning? Iraqi police/military deaths: January 2005: 109 casualties. February 2005: 103 casualties. March 2005: 200 casualties. April 2005: 108 so far this month. Commentary: This illegal, unjust and unprovoked war against a sovereign country is what has alienated the rest of the world. This alienation runs deep and will have very long-term implications. The whole push of the best people in the bloody 20th century was an attempt to find ways to avert wars of aggression. The U.S. was one of the leaders in that drive. All of that was chucked on the ash heap of history by George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq and overthrow its government. No sane leader of any nation in the world can trust America anymore. We have demonstrated that if we desire to attack a nation, we will fabricate the excuse and attack it, despite international law and international opinion. We have demonstrated that a nation need not provoke us or threaten us to become a victim of our aggression. We have said to the world that the only law we respect is the law of the jungle, and that might makes right. That's why so many people consider us to be a rogue nation and a threat to world peace. The sad part is that the American people have been so sheeplike. They believed the blarney about weapons of mass destruction, even the stupid parts such as Bush claiming Iraq's tiny little drone airplanes could attack the U.S. When those lies were exposed, they believed that the war was justified by Saddam Hussein's cruelty. We've slept with many bloody dictators, including Saddam. Now they believe that we went there to spread democracy. What I didn't see in Iraq: "Trust me when I tell you things are so much better in Iraq," said one US military official to me on my recent visit to that war-ravaged country. I didn't know whether to scream or pull the remaining two strands of hair out of my head. I was in Iraq as part of a delegation of eight members of Congress, led by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Everything we have been told about Iraq by the Bush Administration has either been an outright lie or overwhelmingly false. There were no weapons of mass destruction; we have not been greeted as liberators; and the cost in terms of blood and treasure has outpaced even their worst-case scenarios. Trust is something I cannot give to this Administration. If things in Iraq are so much better, why are we not decreasing the number of US forces there? Why is the insurgency showing no signs of waning? Why are we being told that in a few months the Administration will again ask Congress for billions of dollars more to fight the war? Why, according to the World Food Program, is hunger among the Iraqi people getting worse? It's time for some candor, but candor is hard to come by in Iraq. We were in Iraq for one day--for security reasons, it is US policy that Congressional delegations are not allowed to spend the night. We spent most of our time in the heavily fortified Green Zone, which serves as coalition headquarters. It's the most heavily guarded encampment I've ever seen--and it still gets attacked. I even had armed guards accompany me to the bathroom. The briefings we received from US military and diplomatic officials were, to say the least, unsatisfying. The Nixonian approach that our military and diplomatic leaders have adopted in dealing with visiting members of Congress is aimed more at saving face than at engaging in an honest dialogue. At first, our briefers wanted to get away with slick slide presentations, but we insisted on asking real questions and attempting to get real answers. During one such briefing, Lieut. Gen. David Petraeus, tasked with overseeing training of Iraqi security forces, informed us that 147,000 Iraqis had been trained. That sounded good to me. Perhaps we could start reducing the number of American forces, I suggested. But upon further questioning, General Petraeus conceded that less than one-fourth of the 147,000 were actually "combat capable." Why didn't he say that to begin with? I asked--respectfully--our military and diplomatic officials what the gap was between the Iraqis we have trained and the number we needed to train in order to draw down the number of US troops. I could not get a straight answer. During the morning of our visit, US military officials crowed about a recent operation in which Iraqi security forces had killed eighty-five insurgents. By the afternoon, when more reports came in, it was unclear how many insurgents had actually been killed and whether the Iraqi security forces had exaggerated their own actions. I asked both General Petraeus and our embassy about US plans to build military bases in Iraq, which in my view would indicate a prolonged US presence. I was told--emphatically--that there are no plans to construct military bases. Yet Congress recently passed a huge supplemental wartime appropriations bill that includes, at the request of the Bush Administration, $500 million for military base construction. In Iraq.