A New Salvo of Bright Spinning Lies- Bush Downplays Growing Iraq Air War

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December 23, 2005
http://www.antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=8296

"What's on the horizon for 2006 is that the Bush administration will strive to put any real or imagined reduction of U.S. occupation troop levels in the media spotlight. Meanwhile, the Pentagon will use massive air power in Iraq.

Yes, we should demand swift withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But, at this point, to do so without also demanding an end to U.S. bombing of Iraq is to fall into a trap laid by the war makers in Washington. This kind of thing has happened before – with devastating results for people trying to survive a Pentagon air war that was receiving little U.S. media attention.

The Nixon administration was eager to divert attention from the slaughter in Southeast Asia to peace talks in Paris – and to the gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam over a period of more than three years. In general, the networks were all too willing to oblige.

The negotiations and withdrawals served as diversions from bloody facts of the continuing war. The tonnage of U.S. bombing actually increased – while the networks' focus moved away from the ongoing bloodshed. At NBC, for instance, "although combat footage was sent to New York from the Saigon bureau every day for two months following the decision , it was aired only three times on the evening news," journalist Edward Jay Epstein noted. "The preceding year, when there had been almost the same number of American combat deaths during the same period, combat stories were shown almost every night of the week."

full article: http://www.antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=8296

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Bombing people to death is so much more conservative.....

and compassionate.... cheaper too. Reduces the deficit. Removes ugly stains. Lasts long time.

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2. The soldiers left behind will suffer the growing resentment and reprisals

They say the Iraqi troops aren't ready. Our troops need to stay . . .

. . . until they're ready. Ready for what? Why should the new government's security goals be our own? Are all enemies of the new regime there enemies of the U.S.? Why should our soldiers be used to sort that out?

We know that they are still being sent out on search and destroy missions and all sorts of 'anti-insurgent' raids. Most of these missions and raids are almost certainly directed at other Iraqis opposed to the government our troops are propping up. At this point our soldiers are just muckraking along with the Shiite-dominated militias we have funded, equipped, and supported. This same band of armed government loyalists, Shiite and Kurdish combatants, is the force that many, in and out of government, both republicans and Democrats, say they rely on to take over 'security' of Iraq so our soldiers can withdrawal.

Our soldiers are now mercenaries of a supposedly independent government, our military the inevitable arm of an authority in active armed conflict with Iraqis in opposition to the propped up authority. Americans don't know who our soldiers are being asked to kill and who they are dying for. That shouldn't be a secret anymore. We know that Bush wants to use the troops for anything that keeps them in place for future meddling. They're his protection racket for the oil that we're 'holding for the Iraqis. They're his personal prop for victory speeches. They're his hired muscle in hell's kitchen, waiting for a new contract.

But, they are also our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, waiting for some rationality to their mission . . . and a ticket home. Our leaders should spell out just what they expect our soldiers to do in Iraq that is in tune with our own values and democratic principles. To ask them to defend anything less is a tyranny of leadership in Washington and Foggy Bottom.

We have to separate what Bush wants from our military from what their role should actually be in Iraq. We have undertaken an unprecedented leap past the U.N., our allies (and for most of the occupation, the will of the American people), to deploy and maintain troops in Iraq at Bush's whim and insistence. It's time for Congress to take the keys to our military away from Bush and put them back in that box labeled 'Superpower'. Our soldiers have done their job. They shouldn't be used as pawns in these legislators and leader's shifting for political advantage.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. Above all else.... the Iraqis cannot be allowed to make their own

economic decisions, cut their own deals, determine with whom they will do business....

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0805-07.htm
The Hand-Over That Wasn't: Illegal Orders give the US a Lock on Iraq's Economy
by Antonia Juhasz

Officially, the U.S. occupation of Iraq ended on June 28, 2004. But in reality, the United States is still in charge: Not only do 138,000 troops remain to control the streets, but the "100 Orders" of L. Paul Bremer III remain to control the economy.

These little noticed orders enacted by Bremer, the now-departed head of the now-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority, go to the heart of Bush administration plans in Iraq. They lock in sweeping advantages to American firms, ensuring long-term U.S. economic advantage while guaranteeing few, if any, benefits to the Iraqi people.

The Bremer orders control every aspect of Iraqi life — from the use of car horns to the privatization of state-owned enterprises. Order No. 39 alone does no less than "transition from a … centrally planned economy to a market economy" virtually overnight and by U.S. fiat.

Although many thought that the "end" of the occupation would also mean the end of the orders, on his last day in Iraq Bremer simply transferred authority for the orders to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi — a 30-year exile with close ties to the CIA and British intelligence.

[meganmonkey]

4. This article makes a very important point

about the civilian casualties from the air strikes, and the lack of coverage of these activities.

Kick and rec.

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5. indeed

Tom Engelhardt wrote December 14, 2000 in the article referenced within this one: 'An Increasingly Aerial Occupation':

"It's worth remembering that the U.S. began its war of choice in Iraq with a massive (and massively promoted) "shock and awe" air and cruise-missile attack on Baghdad. The administration was then proud of our one-sided ability to inflict massive, targeted damage on that country's capital and happy to have it televised. But ever since, the air war and its urban destruction have been kept in the shadows, which might be considered, if not evidence of the military equivalent of shame, then at least, of an "out of sight/out of mind" mentality. Whether by design or not, the U.S. military seems to have kept reporters off air bases and aircraft carriers (after, at least, that first burst of air assault was over). And with the exception of a few helicopter rides over Iraq granted to favored reporters and pundits, usually with their favored generals, reporters simply have not been up in the sky, nor have they – for reasons I find hard to fathom – bothered to look up for the rest of us (as Dahr Jamail indicates in the piece that follows). As 2004 ended, one TV journalist wrote me:

"My own experience of Iraq is that while we're all constantly aware of the air power, we're rarely nearby when it's deployed offensively. Perhaps that explains why we don't see it. One does 'hear' the airpower all the time though. Fighters and helicopters used to protect convoys; helis shipping people back and forth to bases, or hunting in packs across towns; AWACS high up. I've even watched drones making patterns in the sky. So why don't we film it?"

It's a question that still hasn't been answered – or even asked in public."

http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=8255

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6. Military Confirms Surge in Airstrikes in Iraq

Military Confirms Surge in Airstrikes

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 24, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122301473_pf.html

U.S. airstrikes in Iraq have surged this fall, jumping to nearly five times the average monthly rate earlier in the year, according to U.S. military figures.

Until the end of August, U.S. warplanes were conducting about 25 strikes a month. The number rose to 62 in September, then to 122 in October and 120 in November.

Several U.S. officers involved in operations in Iraq attributed much of the increase to a series of ground offensives in western Anbar province. Those offensives, conducted by U.S. Marines and Iraqi forces, were aimed at clearing foreign fighters and other insurgents from the Euphrates River Valley and establishing Iraqi control over the Syrian border area.

With the Pentagon preparing to reduce the level of U.S. ground forces in Iraq next year, some defense experts have speculated that U.S. airpower will be used more intensively to support operations by Iraq's fledgling security forces and protect U.S. advisers embedded with them. Indeed, American commanders have said that U.S. air forces in the region will not be drawn down as quickly as ground forces."

[Stephanie]

7. Seymour Hersh told us about this weeks ago >>>

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5464306

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/051205fa_fact

UP IN THE AIR
Where is the Iraq war headed next?
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2005-12-05
Posted 2005-11-28

<excerpt>

A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.

***

Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: “I said to the President, ‘We’re not winning the war.’ And he asked, ‘Are we losing?’ I said, ‘Not yet.’ ” The President, he said, “appeared displeased” with that answer.

***

“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,” the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said. Bush’s public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official said, “but Bush has no idea.”

***

The Air Force’s worries have been subordinated, so far, to the political needs of the White House. The Administration’s immediate political goal after the December elections is to show that the day-to-day conduct of the war can be turned over to the newly trained and equipped Iraqi military. It has already planned heavily scripted change-of-command ceremonies, complete with the lowering of American flags at bases and the raising of Iraqi ones.