"I am surprised that the forces are not using air-lifting C-130 airplanes
to avoid ground transportation, which is costing us about a hundred soldiers
every month," said commanding Colonel John Jumpier of the US Air Force
during a press conference in December. About 2,000 military convoys must
use the Iraqi highways to supply the spread-out US forces with water, food,
fuel and other essential supplies. Jumpier said, "It will not be efficient
to serve our troops, but it's a chance to save some lives." He added,
"I know that there will be an increase in the chances of getting these
slow and low altitude flying C-130's shot down, but it's a risk that we
should take."
A first look at this statement and one would conclude, correctly,
that it is a very dangerous situation on the ground for US occupying forces.
Their lack of control inside the cities of Iraq is now matched by their
lack of control over the highways between them. When US military leaders
have to decide which deadly option to choose from, it reflects a tone of
despair where the safety of the troops is no longer an important issue.
No one is able to define the mission of the troops in Iraq, or for how long
this mission will last. No one at all, including George W. Bush, can explain
the US strategy in Iraq. This is because there is no strategy. With the
Iraqi resistance raging, it is not clear why the US is occupying this country
and why the US is so willing to sacrifice its soldiers there.
While news sources are divided between either concealing or
exaggerating the number of those killed in Iraq, other important statistics
about US soldiers are forgotten. These statistics give a shocking picture
about the truth of what is happening in Iraq. For example, CBS's 60 Minutes
reported last fall that 300 soldiers migrated to Canada when they received
orders to join their units heading to Iraq. 60 Minutes went on to say that
5,500 US soldiers had deserted for fear of being killed in Iraq. Some refused
to join units leaving for Iraq, but most of them escaped after arriving
in Iraq by fleeing to neighboring countries such as Turkey and Jordan. As
one soldier stated: "They deceived us when they described our mission
to Iraq as a walk in the park." He added: "I took off so that
they won't write on my grave, Deceived Dead GI in Iraq."
Smuggling American GI's is a booming business in Iraq these
days. For $1,000 and his/her weapon and uniform, any US soldier can get
him or herself out of Iraq through Kurdistan. Last April, a female US soldier
was captured by the Kurds, allies of the US, dressed like a Kurdish woman
with a face veil, attempting to cross into Turkey.
According to the New York Times, a Pentagon study revealed
that one in every six soldiers who served in Iraq requires immediate psychological
treatment. Over a million soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan in
the last two years. Steven Robinson, a NY Times military expert, believes
that the number needing treatment could jump from one to three soldiers
in every six. "There is a train loaded with people who need help that
will be coming to town for the next thirty five years," said Robinson.
These figures are the worst for the US since the Vietnam War.
"Operation Iraqi Freedom" was supposed to be short and swift.
Soldiers were promised that it would be an easy victory and that they would
be home in time for the summer of 2003. Instead, urban fighting like that
in the city of Fallujah last November, which provided unlimited possibilities
for resistance hideouts, booby-trapped houses, and roads full of roadside
bombs, put US soldiers in the position of having to live every single minute
of the day in fear of an attack. In addition, seeing Iraqis and not being
able to distinguish who is a friend and who is an enemy causes severe anxiety
to soldiers. Paul Raykhouve, commander of a Florida National Guard platoon
who served in Iraq four teen months, said: "The enemy is everywhere,
in every street, looking at you from every window, in every alley. One cannot
think straight because of nerve-wracking fear."
Frightened troops lacking both certainty about their mission
and a strong conviction about what they are doing often end up committing
war crimes, such as killing prisoners or injured people. They see in these
crimes an opportunity to get even with their enemy. Racism combines with
fear to make this killing possible. It then becomes important to win acceptance
among other soldiers to justify the crimes. The poor training and poor education
of these soldiers also stands in the way of reason and critical thinking.
They learn to copy existing models of behavior, without a code of ethics
or outside authority to prevent violations of rules of warfare. Even those
soldiers who are not convinced that it is okay to commit war crimes find
it hard to resist.
Both the political and military leadership of the US forces
are directly responsible for providing a large -scale coverup of these crimes.
Soldiers are subjected to an emotional extortion known as "Uniform
Code of Loyalty and Secrecy." Furthermore, the political strength of
the US is used to provide immunity for these soldiers from an international
war crimes tribunal. This leads to normalizing the criminal behavior of
servicemen, who know they can act with impunity.
Caught in frenzy of mass killing, most soldiers develop psychological
stress and mental trauma as a result of serving in Iraq. This stress, predictably,
has been taken out on defenseless Iraqi civilians. Many Iraqis are killed
everyday simply because US soldiers suspected that they were resistance
members. The horrific stories about US soldiers executing wounded Iraqis
or sexually assaulting Iraqi prisoners reveal the severe psychological conditions
that US troops are living under.
Upon finishing service in Iraq, these soldiers will no longer
have Iraqis to murder at will. The weapons they were trained to use will
be left behind. These two things -- without their knowing it -- had become
important in their lives. Without them their return to US society, where
there is little social support, will often mean poverty, alcohol, drugs,
domestic violence, divorce, and suicide. In order not to face themselves,
the lies they were told, and the crimes they committed, these soldiers will
return to what they learned in Iraq - crime, drug trafficking, prostitution,
rape, armed robbery, child abuse, racism, and rallying around the flag.
The government of the US will then have to engage in another
massive coverup. This time it will be to avoid admitting any responsibility
for the psychological illnesses of its servicemen, and for providing no
resources to treat them. Damaged soldiers will become a supply of felons
to the US justice system, which long ago stopped caring about any kind of
social justice. The justice system will in turn deliver the veterans to
the prison system, the US's largest growth industry.
Information about the number of US causalities in Iraq is
available on the web site of the Pentagon, a building which some are now
calling the "War Hub." This information covers only those who
are officially US citizens enlisted with different military services. Hired
security contractors, or mercenaries, and recruits who are not citizens
who enlisted to obtain a "green card," are not counted or mentioned.
A large number of the green card recruits are from Mexico and Central America.
There are no organizations to look after their rights or help them once
they're in Iraq. Most of them are buried in Iraq when killed. A videotape
produced and distributed by the "Majles Shora Al-Mojahideen in Fallujah,"
one of the most important military wings of the Iraqi resistance, showed
a burial site discovered outside the Iraqi city of Samarra with tens of
bodies in US military body bags. The dead where dressed in US uniforms.
It is estimated that as many as 40% of the US troops serving in Iraq are
green card recruits.
The website of the Pentagon divides the causalities in Iraq
into three categories:
1)"Combat Causalities" -- 1,300 dead, and 9,000
injured since March, 2003. Both figures are false.
2) "Non-Combat Causalities." The site does not report
how many of these were injured or killed. Last fall, 60 Minutes concluded
that the figure could be around 3,000 killed and over 25,000 injured.
3) "Coalition Causalities." Information under this
category was posted briefly, then deleted. The figures showed 750 killed
and 1,034 injured. It is not clear who these people were. If they were "coalition
forces," then why are their countries not claiming them?
The US government has gained a reputation of systematically
lying to its population and the rest of the world, but a few facts about
Iraq are emerging despite efforts to conceal them:
* Political stability and security in Iraq is non-existent.
This goes to the heart of the claimed US goal in Iraq. The US justified
its removal by military means of Saddam as a way to create a better and
more stable country. Instead, Iraqis are caught in poverty, hunger, and
terrible violence every day as a direct result of US forces. Iraq is not
a better place today, as Tony Blair and George Bush have claimed. And after
Fallujah no one any longer believes the US is trying to bring freedom to
the Iraqis.
* That great lie, the "war on terrorism," has failed
to crush what the US calls international terrorism. US citizens are not
safer today than they were on September 11, 2001. In fact, the most powerful
force in the US -- its military machine - is now completely vulnerable to
lethal attacks by the ever-growing Iraqi resistance. Normally, the military
is established to defend or attack those labeled enemies of the state. In
the case of the US, its military is designed to twist the arms of those
who do not agree with its imperial agenda. The US is clearly involved in
practicing terrorism by military means to achieve its strategic interests
everywhere around the globe. But in Iraq, the mighty US military, with over
150,000 well-armed troops, is very nervous and suffers from low morale,
and in the eyes of the world has lost the moral edge. Furthermore, the war
is not a well supported cause in the US. This time the risk of getting killed
in Iraq is real. This time the enemy is real.
The US public must decide on supporting a policy of war that
is killing their own children and the Iraqi people, or fighting against
the war by taking drastic measures --measures that go beyond vigils and
feel-good political demonstrations. We may be sure that if what we are told
about Iraq by the US government does not look good, the actual truth must
be a great deal worse. The truth about Iraq is that "the mighty US
GI's" are not so mighty.
Re: The Mighty US GI's: Lied To, Used, And Losing
For what it is worth about the number of Causalities:
Communiqué From Consultative Council
of Mujahideen Of Fallujah
Jan 05, 2005
By Muhammad Abu Nasr, Free Arab Voice; Edited by JUS
The Consultative Council of Mujahideen of Fallujah has issued
a communiqué concerning the nature and results of the fighting that
took place between the occupation and the Mujahideen in the city between
6 November 2004 and 2 January 2005. The communiqué, a copy of which
was obtained by Mafkarat al-Islam, gave reasons for the withdrawal of resistance
forces from the northern neighborhoods of the city and from the al-‘Askari
neighborhood in the city’s eastern section. It also gave a count of
US and British losses as well as those suffered by the Mujahideen.
The withdrawal of the Mujahideen from parts of the city, the
communiqué stated, was part of a governing military plan that aimed
at drawing occupation troops into narrow alleys and streets in the city,
where tanks and armored vehicles could be surrounded. The aim was to avert
heavy US aerial bombing of Fallujah. Such bombing had made it impossible
for Mujahideen to remain on open ground on the edges of the city. On the
other hand, it was also easier to attack US tanks and armored vehicles when
they were inside the city, where it was also possible for Iraqi sharp shooters
to pick off US troops.
The communiqué said that no Mujahideen had retreated
or had run from battle. Rather, the Mujahideen adopted a kind of hit and
run tactic wherein the “run” was designed to draw US troops
after the fighters, where they could be “hit”.
The communiqué gave a final count of occupation forces’
losses up to 2 January 2005 as follows:
• More than 6,500 US troops killed and 700 more wounded
• More than 425 British troops killed and about 325
wounded
• A large number of Americans and Britons captured,
some of whom were killed during escape attempts
• More than 1,350 tanks and armored vehicles destroyed
• About 800 Humvees and personnel carriers destroyed
• 41 aircraft, including three fighter planes, shot
down
• 200 US light and medium weapons seized, as well as
hundreds of scopes, bayonets, compasses, bullet-proof vests, and classified
maps of occupation positions in al-Anbar Province.
As to Mujahideen losses, the communiqué stated that
721 Resistance fighters had been killed, including fraternal Arab fighters
from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Qatar, Kuwait,
Algeria, and the Sudan. In addition, 215 others had been wounded, but most
of them were now in good health and were once again carrying arms.
The communiqué criticized and condemned al-Jazeera
satellite TV which it called “Silent TV,” and the al-‘Arabiyah
satellite TV station which it said preferred to cover the fighting from
the side of the enemy rather than from the side of the Mujahideen. The same
goes for all the other stations, the communiqué said. Not only that,
but those stations broadcast images of the suffering of the people of Fallujah,
the tears of its children in the refugee camps, the laments of its women
over the loss of their children, but failed to show any scenes of the heroism
of Fallujah’s Mujahideen that would arouse a sense of pride in their
children. The communiqué goes on to say that in fact these stations
became mouthpieces broadcasting what America wanted and desired. The only
exception were certain internet websites, the communiqué said, that
covered the heroism and triumphs of the Mujahideen.
The communiqué promised that the information offices
of the resistance organizations would be distributing pictures and films
showing their fighting against the occupation forces. It also promised that
there would be more resistance operations on every inch of the Iraqi territory
in coming days.
All information posted on this web site is
the opinion of the author and is provided for educational purposes only.
It is not to be construed as medical advice. Only a licensed medical doctor
can legally offer medical advice in the United States. Consult the healer
of your choice for medical care and advice.