Doug Lorimer
A secret survey of Iraqi public opinion undertaken in August for the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) shows that up to 65% of Iraqis support attacks by the Iraqi armed resistance on the US-led occupation forces.
Reporting on the poll results, the October 23 London Sunday Telegraph commented that it "demonstrates for the first time the true strength of anti-Western feeling in Iraq after more than two-and-a-half years of bloody occupation.
"The nationwide survey also suggests that the coalition has lost the battle to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people."
The Sunday Telegraph reported that the MoD survey was "conducted by an Iraqi university research team that, for security reasons, was not told the data it compiled would be used by coalition forces".
According to the Sunday Telegraph, the MoD poll found 82% of Iraqis are "strongly opposed" to the presence of US and other foreign troops in their country. Seventy-two per cent said that the US-led occupation forces have made their lives less secure.
Reliable figures on the number of Iraqis killed since the US-led invasion in March 2003 are not available, largely because the US-led forces say they do not count "civilian" deaths.
However, several non-governmental organisations that compile figures from news media reports say the number of Iraqis killed since the invasion is at least 25,000, possibly many more.
The Iraq Body Count group reported in July that of the nearly 25,000 Iraqis reported by the media as being killed in violent attacks in the first two years of the war, nearly 37% were caused by US-led forces, with common criminals causing 36%. Iraqi resistance fighters accounted for 9.5%.
'Reconstruction' failure
The poll also found the occupiers' multi-billion-dollar "reconstruction" programs had failed to provide the big majority of Iraqis with basic infrastructure services. Seventy-one per cent said they rarely get safe clean water, 47% never have enough electricity, 70% say their sewerage system rarely works and 40% of those in the British-occupied south of Iraq are unemployed.
The October 19 Washington Post reported that US officials overseeing spending of the US$20 billion allocated by the US Congress two years ago to repair Iraq's water, electricity, health services and its oil industry to pre-occupation levels had told a congressional sub-committee hearing the previous day that up to 80% of "reconstruction" project funds were being spent on providing US and other foreign corporate contractors with "private security contractors", i.e., mercenary soldiers.
The October 23 London Sunday Times reported that Tim Spicer, the former head of the Sandline International mercenary supply firm and now head of the London-based Aegis Defence Services, estimated that there is now one foreign mercenary for fewer than 10 US soldiers in Iraq, probably saving the Pentagon the cost of fielding an entire extra division. There are currently nearly 160,000 US troops in Iraq.
The Sunday Times reported that mercenaries working for the Pentagon and US "reconstruction" contractors "saturate highways of war-torn Iraq, their armoured Land Cruisers and Chevrolet Suburbans packed with armed men brandishing rifles to clear traffic in which a suicide bomber may be lurking out of their way ...
"The [private security] companies employ as many as 25,000 armed foreigners and Iraqi civilians; many are special-forces veterans from the British and American armies. They also recruit many soldiers from South Africa and ex-Gurkhas."
The October 19 Washington Post article reported that Christopher Shays, the sub-committee's Republican chairperson, remarked that "limited visible progress improving basic services frustrates Iraqis who wonder why a liberating coalition that conquered their nation in less than two months can't keep the lights lit after two years".
On October 18, Democratic Party members on the sub-committee issued a report based on figures provided by the US government auditors showing that, despite the handing over to US vice-president Dick Cheney's Haliburton oil services company of $2.2 billion in US government funds for the repair of Iraq's oil industry, the country's crude oil output remained below its pre-occupation level of 2.6 million barrels of oil per day.
The report cited the assessment of a former senior planner at the Iraqi oil ministry of Haliburton's oil infrastructure work: "I think we had the worst quality of US service, staff and companies ... We had maximum rhetoric and minimum results on the ground."
The report noted that, "Without adequate electricity, households cannot use basic appliances or air conditioning, businesses cannot operate effectively to employ Iraqis, water pumps cannot provide drinkable water, and oil refineries cannot operate at full capacity ...
"By late August 2005, Iraqis living in Baghdad had just two hours of [electric] power followed by four hours without power throughout a day. Nationwide, Iraqis had power for just 50% of the day. Some days are even worse. On July 31, for example, those living in Baghdad had one hour of power followed by four and a half hours without power."
This was despite the expenditure of $4.4 billion in US government funds on electric power industry "reconstruction" contracts to US corporations.
The report noted that in June, the auditor of the US government's international aid agency (USAID) had found that of the $1.1 billion it had paid out to the San Francisco-based Bechtel corporation in electricity "reconstruction" contracts, $744 million had been "spent" on failed or cancelled projects.
US troop deaths pass 2000
On October 25, the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq since the March 2003 US-led invasion passed the 2000 mark. This is a higher figure than US troop fatalities during the first four years of the US war in Vietnam (1961-65, when just over 1800 US soldiers had died).
Only 139 of all the US troop deaths in Iraq occurred before US President George Bush's May 1, 2003, declaration that the "major combat" phase of the war was over.
While it took eight to nine years before a majority of US residents favoured the immediate or rapid withdrawal of all US troops from Vietnam, the latest Gallup poll, released on October 13, found that 56% of respondents favour the rapid withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Only 36% say troop levels should be maintained or increased.
The previous month's Gallup poll had found that only 21% of those surveyed believed the US would win the Iraq war. Another 20% of respondents said the US was capable of winning in Iraq, but probably would not.
US casualty rates in Iraq have averaged 2.2 per day over the course of the war, according to a study released on October 21 by Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
But according to Cordesman, the mainstream news media's focus solely on the rising US death toll without including the wounded "grossly understates the sacrifice and cost of war in an era of advanced medical services and weapons" and often disguises the intensity of combat that US soldiers face in Iraq.
"Frankly, anybody who watches the pattern of combat and looks at the suffering it inflicts has got to look at the wounded figures and realize they are far more serious in terms of the numbers affected than the numbers killed", he told the Knight Ridders Newspapers wire service.
As of October 21, the number of US troops who had been wounded in the Iraq war was 15,220, according to the Pentagon. Of those, 7159 were so seriously injured that they haven't been able to returned to duty.
Twenty-three per cent of US troop deaths in Iraq have occurred in Baghdad. Another 23% of US deaths have occurred in the country's western Anbar province, which stretches from the city of Fallujah, 55 kilometres west of Baghdad, to the Syrian and Jordanian borders.
The October 22 New York Times reported that in Ramadi, a city of 400,000 residents and the capital of Anbar province, Iraqi resistance fighters "are waging their fiercest war against US troops, attacking with relative impunity just blocks from Marine-controlled territory. Every day, the Americans fight to hold their turf in a war against an enemy who seems to be everywhere but is not often seen.
"In the past six weeks, 21 Americans have been killed here, far more than in any other city in Iraq and double the number of deaths in Baghdad."
The NYT reported that most of the US soldiers who have died in Ramadi since September have been killed by homemade bombs exploding under patrolling US armoured personnel vehicles.
US bases in and around Ramadi, the NYT reported, "are regularly pelted with rockets and mortar shells, and when troops get out of their vehicles to patrol, they are almost always running."
"You can't just walk down the street for a period of time and not expect to get shot at", Marine Corps Major Bradford Tippett told the NYT.
From Green Left Weekly, November 2, 2005.
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