What the heck is going on over there?!?

[Clashman]

It looks like up to 5 U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday, another died, and another 2 captured and quite possibly dead. I've been doing some number crunching, to try and get an idea of where we're going with this all.

This is my 4 day count. Most online sources aren’t listing all the incidents together, so I'll include my sources at the bottom. Some of the reports are only showing up in snippets in the individual reports, so you kind of have to look for them.

6.24.03
6 Dead British, 8 Wounded in two apparently separate incidents in S. Iraq

6.25.03
1 Dead U.S. 2 Wounded in crash while responding to Ambush with 3 wounded U.S.

6.26.03
1 Dead U.S., 8 Wounded SW Baghdad
1 Dead U.S., 1 Wounded Bomb, Baghdad airport road
2 Missing, (probably dead), US, abducted in Baghdad
2 Dead Iraqis assisting U.S. forces in Baghdad. Grenade attack. Unconfirmed # U.S. wounded. No U.S. dead.
Smoldering U.S. army truck. Unconfirmed # wounded or dead. Witnesses report 2 US dead.
1 Dead U.S, 9 Wounded near Najaf. Killed while on patrol
1 Dead US Navy. Non-Combat related.

6.27.03
1 Dead U.S. in Baghdad. Shot while buying DVDs.

70-74 (Including missing troops) Coalition forces have died since May 1st, according to today's news and http://www.pigstye.net/iraq/wd.php.

At this rate, (70 Confirmed Dead/58 Days since the war "ended"), by September 23rd, the total Coalition deaths "After The War Ended" will equal the amount killed "During The War".

By March 19, 2004, the one year anniversary of the war:

567 Coalition Troops (176 during the war + 70 up until now + 266 days at the "After The War" rate), will have died.

Countless Iraqis Civilians will have died. http://www.IraqBodyCount.org is currently estimating between 5,570 and 7,243 civilians have been killed thus far based on news reports by journalists, hospital reports, etc, within Iraq. For various reasons this count is incomplete. Journalists cannot be present at all times and in all places, and in many cases do not even hear about many of the deaths. Many Iraqi's are unlikely to take their dead to the hospital, and simply bury them quietly. Sometimes there is noone left to report the damage, or to do counts. Iraqi hospitals were not even able to keep an accurate track at certain points during the war, as casualties woule often stream in at several per minute, and treating them was more important than counting. Also, the Iraqi Red Crescent, which is also in the process of conducting a count, was/is being denied access to some of the areas that suffered the heaviest fighting. The numbers there will probably never be known with real accuracy. This estimate also fails to take into civilians who die indirectly because of the war, from starvation, malnutrition, and disease. During the first Gulf War, 2,500 to 3,500 civilians died in the war itself, but it was estimated that more than 100,000 died needlessly when refrigeration systems failed, when easily curable diseases before the war went untreated due to a devastated health infrastructure, from drinking contaminated drinking water, etc. These factors likely also played into effect significantly in the second Gulf War, but it is questionable if they will ever be tallied.

Countless Iraqi military personel will have died. In one push during the "Battle Of Baghdad", the U.S. military boasted of killing over 2,000 Iraqis. It will be next to impossible to document soldiers deaths, and so the real number will likely never be known.

Current U.S. resentment appears to be high. There's no telling when, (or if), these attacks will slow or stop. The U.S. military does not even appear to have any concrete targets or organizations to go after, simply referring to them all as "Baathist Elements", a generalization I personally find hard to swallow. Moreover, many senior defense and government officials are stating that we will likely be in Iraq for at least another 5 years, and it seems likely that this could continue for quite some time. It sure seems to me as if Iraq is going to be causing Americans alot more problems now than it ever did before we went to war.

Sources On Attacks:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030626/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_307

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm.../ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&cid=514&ncid=514

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...nm/iraq_shooting_dc&cid=564&ncid=1473

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?p=...l=sl&nosum=0&large=0&t=1056729948

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030627/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_341

 

[Bogotron]

Umm.... It's the aftermath of a war that razed most of the infrastructure in a country? It's (parts of) the Iraqi people fed up being under US military rule?

These were the two things I (personally) was worried could happen after "the war" was finished and, unfortunately, it's come true. Overthrowing Saddam Hussein wasn't the real challenge, dealing with the consequences is. The dreaded "q" word might still rear it's head even if Bush says the war is over.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

These were the two things I (personally) was worried could happen after "the war" was finished and, unfortunately, it's come true.

Yes, the same things that everyone, including those in favor of the war assumed WOULD happen to some degree.

Overthrowing Saddam Hussein wasn't the real challenge..

Yes it was. It's just not the only challenge.

The dreaded "q" word might still rear it's head even if Bush says the war is over.

When did Bush say the war was over?

 

[Bogotron]

Joe DeFuria:

When did Bush say the war was over?

Ummm... (searches cnn in vain) Umm... He didn't. He said combat (operations?) was over. Guess the war is still "going strong".

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Ummm... (searches cnn in vain) Umm... He didn't. He said combat (operations?) was over. Guess the war is still "going strong".

I believe he typically says the "major" combat operations over, and every time I've heard he or the administration comment on these incidents, they ususally say things along the lines of "this serves as a reminder that even though the major offensive is over, there is still dangerous work to do, and lives at risk..." or something to that effect.

In any case, we all agree that every loss of life is regrettable.

 

[pax]

Well respected military analyst Gwynn Dyer said one of 2 things would likely happen when the US got to Baghad. Either Saddam and what was assumed to be a few hundred thousand of his loyalists would put up one big fight and lose. Or his army would 'melt' away to fight another day... seems the latter is whats happening...

Lebanon act 2...

 

[diarrhea_splatter]

You could also look at it like this, they still have no power or sewage that we promised we would give them. Wouldn't you be pissed if a country came in to "liberate" you and all they do is tell you what to do? Who are foreigners to tell you what to do?

 

[Willmeister]

adsf

You could also look at it like this, they still have no power or sewage that we promised we would give them. Wouldn't you be pissed if a country came in to "liberate" you and all they do is tell you what to do? Who are foreigners to tell you what to do?

It takes time for things to be rebuilt. Granted. But maybe if they spent more time on machinery that pumps drinking water and sewage instead of oil for export, this wouldn't be an issue the rising tide of militant Iraqis could use... The fact that US forces can pump oil and not water just lends credence to the view that the USA is only there for oil. Iraqis be damned.

You do have a point about American imposed martial law. The Iraqis might not be too impressed with the freedom their soon-in-coming curfews will bring them.

 

[Silent_One]

Here's an interesting opinion written by Thomas Friedman that may put things in better prospective for everyone-
http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Jun/06222003/commenta/68247.asp
Too soon to tell the outcome in Iraq

By Thomas Friedman
THE NEW YORK TIMES

There was a nice little story out of Iraq the other day. An Irish businessman sent his private jet to Baghdad where it picked up eight Iraqi mentally handicapped athletes who wanted to take part in the Special Olympics, which open this week in Ireland. What makes the story even more poignant is the fact that Saddam Hussein's twisted son Odai had been the head of Iraq's regular Olympic Committee, and was known for torturing Iraqi Olympic athletes who did not perform well. At the Special Olympics everyone counts, and everyone is a winner, just for trying. In the old Iraq it was dangerous to be an Olympic athlete if you did not win. Will it be possible to create a new Iraq where it is safe to be a Special Olympics athlete, where it is safe to be vulnerable?

It's too soon to tell. In a fluid situation like Iraq, there are 10 things happening every day. All you want is that six out of the 10 be positive and moving upward. Right now, talking to U.S. officials, I'd say the score in Iraq is about five to five.

On the positive side, street life is coming back all over, restaurants and shops are reopening, Baghdad is getting about 18 hours of electricity now, and gasoline lines, a mile long four weeks ago when I was last in Iraq, are now virtually gone. Security has improved, but it still has a long way to go. Schools have been operating. Newspapers are exploding and political parties are forming.

The regional news is also net positive. The student uprising in Iran, the stutter-step movement toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace, the ferment within Saudi Arabia, Tuesday's elections in Jordan, are all trends that were enhanced by the downfall of Saddam's regime. Far from the Arab street, or press, rising against the United States, the Arab media are replete with introspection and even self-criticism of how the Arab world mishandled Saddam.

On the negative side are two huge unresolved issues. Contrary to the blather of the Bush team, we have not finished the war, and we have yet to establish an interim Iraqi political authority that can eventually work together to govern Iraq -- instead of Saddam's iron fist or ours.

The war ended too soon. Because there was no battle for Baghdad, Falluja, Tikrit and the other Sunni Muslim strongholds that were the base of Saddam's power, many elements of Saddam's regime and two divisions of Republican Guards just melted into the woodwork -- instead of being killed or captured. (There are also disturbing signs lately that the Iraqi Sunnis, who have dominated Iraq forever and are not eager to see Iraqi Shiites rule, are recruiting Sunni Arab fighters from around the region, particularly from Wahhabi groups in Saudi Arabia, to join the battle against the United States.)

The Sunni Saddam loyalists have reconstituted themselves as the "Party of Return," and the message they have been sending around Iraq is that Saddam is coming back -- and when he does he will cut out the tongues of anyone who supported America. This has frozen many Iraqis, which is why the war has to be finished and Saddam & Sons brought in dead or dead. Right now we need to find Saddam much more than his nukes.

And this leads to the challenge for L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, who's off to a good start. Can the United States, working with Iraqis, pull together a moderate, legitimate political center that will bring Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and other Iraqi factions into some kind of self-sustaining governing coalition? The plan is for Bremer, by July, to form a "political council" of Iraqis that will serve as a shadow Cabinet, appoint Iraqi interim ministers, and oversee the writing of a new constitution, educational reform, legal reform and privatization. This needs to happen soon. People in Iraq need to feel self-government taking hold. It will make America's stay much easier.

If you see Iraqis starting to work together in a centrist coalition, and security being consolidated by a rebuilt Iraqi police force, then you can be just a little bit optimistic. If you don't see that happening, you can start worrying.

If I were President Bush, I would have double the number of U.S. troops there and be throwing so much food and investment into Iraq that people there would think they had won the jackpot. Why the president is not doing that beats me, and it could end up beating him.

(bold mine)

 

[Vince]

How many police/enforcement die in any nation-state during a 24 hour period? Right now the US and UK are fullfilling these roles, of course there is the old regime which is promoting much of this and I don't mean to downplay this or say it's directly correlatable - but when put into perspective with the organized crime, gangs, street robbers, rapists, and killers who each day kill roughly the same amount of enforcement personel in any nation-state, this is hardly unheard of.

 

[pax]

Ya true the scale of this hasnt become serrious yet. A real insurgency by the baathists and saddams consituency hasnt yet really manifested itself. But like the occupation itself it might only be beginning.

 

[Clashman]

How many police/enforcement die in any nation-state during a 24 hour period? Right now the US and UK are fullfilling these roles, of course there is the old regime which is promoting much of this and I don't mean to downplay this or say it's directly correlatable - but when put into perspective with the organized crime, gangs, street robbers, rapists, and killers who each day kill roughly the same amount of enforcement personel in any nation-state, this is hardly unheard of.

http://www.camemorial.org/2001.htm#2001

California, with a population about 1 and 1/2 times the size of Iraq, and plenty of tough crime-ridden areas, had 12 officers die in 2001, 9 in 2002, and 4 so far this year. I think it's safe to say that what we're seeing so far is a bit on the high side. Heck, U.S. soldiers are being killed off at a rate far faster than Israeli soldiers in Palestine are. In close to 3 years, around 800 Israelis have been killed in total, and the military figure is significantly lower. If this is insignificant, than so are Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

 

[Vince]

of course there is the old regime which is promoting much of this and I don't mean to downplay this or say it's directly correlatable

Learn to read. I never said this was a perfect parallel - Hell, a war just happened there, I mean use some common sence. To directly compare them with California which is hardly a warzone and hardly facing the same post-regime crisis as Iraq just shows utter ignorance. But the underlying point is that these acts happen everywhere and as Pax well stated that at this point it's minimal and that there is no mass insuregency... yet.

There are places in some inner-cities (as O'Reilly just pointed out when he visited Chicago) that experiences over 100 homicides in a 6 month period. People disapear, the police won't even dare venture into these neighborhoods. To claim that this type of situation isn't a world-wide phenomina is wrong.

 

[pax]

Its not the number of casualties we need to see tho its the number of attacks in a given time frame... What has happend so far could be accounted for by some of the foreign fighters that entered the country shortly before the war ended. I suspect a real insurgency would involve several dozen if not hundreds of attacks a day from saddams mainly sunni constituency which could number anywhere from 1-300 000 fighters if it still exists.

I dont think we've seen that yet.

 

[Clashman]

Learn to read yourself, Vince. I also specifically mentioned Israel and Palestine, and U.S. soldiers are being killed off in far greater numbers than Israeli soldiers are. Besides, it wasn't me who first correlated violence in Iraq with areas in the United States, it was your buddy Donald Rumsfeld

 

[Himself]

Bleh, what a mess.

 

[Silent_One]

Bogotron wrote:

Umm.... It's the aftermath of a war that razed most of the infrastructure in a country?

Most of the infrastructure was razed in the first gulf war. After the first war Saddam spent a great deal of money on his palaces but not on the infrastructure. In the last war the Coalition forces went to great llengths to try to avoid destruction of the remaining infrastructure.

diarrhea_splatter wrote:

You could also look at it like this, they still have no power or sewage that we promised we would give them.

This is a misconception. What exactly was "promised" and by when was it "promised"? For example this article in the New Your Times on June 13, 2003 paints a different picture:

In Iraq, Things Really Aren't That Bad
By GEORGE WARD

http://www.puk.org/web/htm/news/nws/news030614a.html

Two months after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraq is widely depicted as a nation in chaos, with armed gangs dominating Baghdad's streets amid a widespread breakdown of public services. Having returned from Iraq two weeks ago, I believe this picture is distorted. In fact, we may soon look back at the postwar looting as only a bump in a long road.

Before the war, those of us planning for post-conflict Iraq worried about these possibilities: up to one million refugees, widespread food shortages, epidemics, acute homelessness, a shutdown of the oil industry and general lawlessness.

In the end, only the last became reality. Particularly in Baghdad, large-scale looting and street crime have severely damaged public facilities, and made it difficult for ordinary Iraqis to reclaim their lives
......<snip>.....Still, Iraq is in most respects further along the road to recovery than we could have expected before the war. All major public hospitals in Baghdad are again operating. Sixty percent of Iraq's schools are open. Nationwide distribution of food supplies has resumed. Despite some damage to the oil wells, petroleum production exceeds domestic needs, and exports should begin again soon. More Iraqis are receiving electric power than before the war. This progress is the result of efforts by capable Iraqi civil servants working with experts from the coalition governments and international humanitarian groups.

This is not to say that the problems Clashman has brought up are not valid. Indeed, as Joe says every loss of life is regrettable. But negative perceptions seem to prevail and cloud reality.

(edit; spelling / grammer)

 

[Bogotron]

Bogotron wrote:

Umm.... It's the aftermath of a war that razed most of the infrastructure in a country?

Most of the infrastructure was razed in the first gulf war. After the first war Saddam spent a great deal of money on his palaces but not on the infrastructure.

People still had water and power. Water supplies looked a bit touch and go some places early in the war, but were brought back after a couple of weeks (have you any idea what it's like in a desert country with no water? I imagine it can get pretty bad after "only" a couple of days.), but power is still a touchy subject from what I've read.

Unfortunately pay-to-read: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=417714

Asked about Baghdad's lack of electricity at an air-conditioned press conference, Paul Bremer, the American head of the occupation authority, looking cool in a dark suit and quiet purple tie, simply asserted that, with a few exceptions, Baghdad was now receiving 20 hours of electricity a day. "It simply isn't true," said one Iraqi, shaking his head in disbelief after listening to Mr. Bremer. "Everybody in Baghdad knows it."

Only 15 minutes' walk from Mr. Bremer's office Shamsedin Mansour, a poor shopkeeper in an alleyway off al-Rashid street, gave a bleak picture of how he and his neighbours live. "We have had no electricity for six days," he said. "Many of our people are suffering from heart problems because of the heat. We live with as many as 42 people in a house and do not have the money to buy even a small generator. Without light at night it is easy for gangs of thieves with guns to take over the streets, and the shooting keeps us awake. If we try to protect ourselves with arms, the Americans arrest us.

 

[Silent_One]

(have you any idea what it's like in a desert country with no water? I imagine it can get pretty bad after "only" a couple of days.)

Yes. I've been to Saudia Arabia twiice, both times in the summer months. The avaerage daily temp. was 110 degrees, although with the breeze off the Red Sea it was somewhat bearable ( I was in Jeddah). At the time, and still today, many poor areas of the city had no power. Never had it. In the country side whole villiges had no power. I imagine the same in Iraq. I'm sure the Independent, or any paper for that matter, can report events such as you site, however I do not believe they reflect the complete situation accurately.

 

[Dave H]

Bogotron wrote:

Umm.... It's the aftermath of a war that razed most of the infrastructure in a country?

Most of the infrastructure was razed in the first gulf war. After the first war Saddam spent a great deal of money on his palaces but not on the infrastructure.

People still had water and power.

After the first Gulf War? Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about.

Large segments of the population, especially in the southern Shia areas (those areas which perhaps-not-coincidentally rose up against Saddam in the aftermath of the '91 war), went without power and treated water for years after the war, in many cases up until the war this year. The power plants were, in many cases, bombed by the US and never repaired. (Among other things, lack of electricity means otherwise-functioning water treatment facilities cannot run.) Water treatment plants were not targeted, but many of the replacement parts needed to keep them running are dual-use and were banned under the sanctions regime.

Where did you think the figures of 4-500,000 people dead from sanctions came from? For some it was malnutrition, but the majority of those dead came from water-borne disease.

Just because 99% of the international press are staying in Baghdad and only see what happens there, doesn't mean it's 99% of the country. Other parts were doing much worse before the war, and are doing a bit better (and a lot better compared to how they used to be) now.