While public support in the US for Washington's counterinsurgency war in Iraq has collapsed, the Pentagon has drawn up plans to almost double the number of US combat troops deployed in the oil-rich country by the end of this year.
Since the middle of last year, opinion polls have consistently shown that most US voters want a timetable set for the withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq. An April 18-22 Pew Research Centre poll, for example, found that 56% of US voters wanted such a timetable, with 53% wanting the troops withdrawn "as soon as possible".
A May 4-5 CNN poll found that 54% of US voters opposed President George Bush's May 1 veto of a US$124 billion war spending bill that called for all US combat troops to be withdrawn by August 2008.
Bush's January decision to send an extra 28,000 US troops to Iraq — his "surge" plan — was opposed by six out of 10 voters. Despite this, Hearst Newspapers reported on May 21, "[The] Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday.
"The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce US troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there.
"The actions could boost the number of combat soldiers from 52,500 in early January to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year if the Pentagon overlaps arriving and departing combat brigades.
"Separately, when additional support troops are included in this second troop increase, the total number of US troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 — a record-high number — by the end of the year."
The report noted that since Bush approved adding five US Army combat brigades to the 15 already deployed in Iraq, "the Pentagon has extended combat tours for units in Iraq from 12 months to 15 months and announced the deployment of additional brigades".
Lawrence Korb, an assistant defence secretary during the Reagan administration, told Hearst reporter Stewart Powell that the Pentagon deployment schedule would give the White House the capability to "get the number of troops into Iraq that we've needed there all along".
As more US troops have been deployed over the last few months, the US casualty rate has also escalated. On May 21 USA Today reported that "the first half of this year has already been deadlier than any six-month period since the war began more than four years ago". More than 530 US troops have died since the start of December.
In April, 104 US soldiers were killed in Iraq, an average rate of 3.47 killed per day. In the first 23 days of May, 80 US soldiers have died — an average rate of 3.48.
But even these figures do not indicate the true US casualty rate. The May 19 New York Times reported that data it had obtained from the US Labor Department revealed that "casualties among [US] private contractors in Iraq have soared to record levels this year".
While 244 US military personnel were killed in Iraq during the first three months of this year, figures obtained by the NYT revealed 146 US employees of private military contractors were killed — "by far the highest number for any quarter since the war began in March 2003, according to the Labor Department, which processes death and injury claims for those working as United States government contractors in Iraq".
At least 917 US contractors have been killed in Iraq, the paper reported, "along with more than 12,000 wounded in battle or injured on the job, according to government figures and dozens of interviews".
By the end of March, 3247 US military personnel had been killed in Iraq since March 2003 and about 24,000 officially counted as wounded. The figures obtained by the NYT suggest that for every four US military casualties, there has been one US private military contractor casualty. But in the first three months of this year, private military contractor fatalities have accounted for one-third of total US war deaths — though these are not included in Pentagon statistics.
"Nearly 300 companies from the United States and around the world supply workers who are a shadow force in Iraq almost as large as the uniformed military", the NYT reported. "About 126,000 men and women working for contractors serve alongside about 150,000 American troops, the Pentagon has reported."
The NYT added: "Never before has the United States gone to war with so many civilians on the battlefield doing jobs — armed guards, military trainers, translators, interrogators, cooks and maintenance workers — once done only by those in uniform.
"In the Persian Gulf war of 1991, for example, only 9200 contractors — mostly operating advanced weapons systems — served alongside 540,000 military personnel ... The Bush administration expanded the outsourcing strategy to unprecedented levels after the invasion of Iraq."
The paper reported that the sharp increase in the death rate of US contract workers in Iraq since the beginning of the year has been largely due to stepped up attacks by Iraqi anti-occupation guerrillas on US Army truck convoys delivering ammunition, fuel, food and other supplies to the US forces.
"A top security industry official", the NYT reported, "said he was told recently by American military and contracting officials that 50 to 60 percent of all [US] truck convoys in Iraq were coming under attack. Previously, he said, only about 10 percent had been hit".
The May 24 Washington Post reported that on May 21, the US embassy in Baghdad issued an internal e-mail saying that due to disruptions to truck convoys there is a "theater-wide delay in food delivery".
Asked about the problem, US military spokesperson Colonel Steven Boylan told the Post it was due to bad weather in Kuwait and along the routes north. However a spokesperson for the US embassy, which is the largest in the world with 4000 US and local staff, told the Post that no US supply truck had arrived in Baghdad for two weeks. He "attributed the delays to paperwork problems on the border, traffic jams and 'security issues'"
The Post reported that the spokesperson "said the embassy stocks three weeks of non-perishable food for use in the event of emergency, so no one was yet in danger of MREs" — military Meals Ready to Eat, freeze-dried concoctions with prescribed amounts of starch and protein, capable of withstanding parachute drops and remaining edible for three years after.
The embassy's fresh food is supplied under a US government contract with Halliburton subsidiary KBR, which also trucks fresh food and other supplies to US military bases in Iraq.
In an interview with Australia's ABC TV Lateline program on May 21, Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari declared that the Green Zone — the heavily fortified compound in the centre of Baghdad that houses the US embassy, the US military command and the offices of Washington's puppet Iraqi government — "is the most dangerous place in Iraq these days. So outside the Green Zone is much safer."
While Zebari's remarks were clearly a wild exaggeration, in recent weeks the Green Zone has come under increased attack from mortar rounds and rockets fired into it from surrounding Baghdad neighbourhoods. On May 3, the embassy instructed its staff to "remain within a hardened structure to the maximum extent possible and strictly avoid congregating outdoors". When moving outdoors, staff were ordered to wear helmets and bulletproof vests.
On May 15, the McClatchy news service reported that US embassy employees in Baghdad "are growing increasingly angry over what they say are inadequate security precautions in the heavily fortified Green Zone, where recent mortar and rocket attacks have claimed the lives of six people, including two US citizens".
"In any other embassy, we would have been evacuated", one of the employees told the news service, adding: "As always, the US government is reactive, not proactive. They are going to wait until 20 people die, then the people back in Washington will say we have a problem."