- The "cakewalk war" is now two and one-half
years old. US casualties (dead and wounded) number 20,000. As 20,000 is
the number of Iraqi insurgents according to US military commanders, each
insurgent is responsible for one US casualty.
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- US troops in Iraq number about 150,000. Obviously, US
troops have not inflicted 150,000 casualties on the Iraqi insurgents. US
troops have perhaps inflicted 150,000 casualties on the Iraqi civilian
population, primarily women and children who are the "collateral damage"
of the "righteous" and "virtuous" US invasion that
is spreading civilian deaths all over Mesopotamia in the name of democracy
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- What could the US have possibly done to give America
a worse name than to invade Iraq and murder its citizens?
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- According to the September 1 Manufacturing & Technology
News, the Government Accounting Office has reported that over the course
of the cakewalk war, the US military's use of small caliber ammunition
has risen to 1.8 billion rounds. Think about that number. If there are
20,000 insurgents, it means US troops have fired 90,000 rounds at each
insurgent.
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- Very few have been hit. We don't know how many. To avoid
the analogy with Vietnam, until last week the US military studiously avoided
body counts. If 2,000 insurgents have been killed, each death required
900,000 rounds of ammunition.
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- The combination of US government owned ammo plants and
those of US commercial producers together cannot make bullets as fast as
US troops are firing them. The Bush administration has had to turn to foreign
producers such as Israel Military Industries. Think about that. Hollowed
out US industry cannot produce enough ammunition to defeat a 20,000 man
insurgency.
-
- US military analysts are beginning to wonder if the US
has been defeated by the insurgency. Increasingly, Bush administration
spokesmen sound like "Baghdad Bob." On September 19 the Washington
Post reported that US military spinmeister Major General Rich Lynch declared
"great success" against the insurgency that had just inflicted
the worst casualties of the war, including a three-day mortar attack on
the "safe" Green Zone.
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- Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, says: "We can't
secure the airport road, can't stop the incoming (mortar rounds) into the
Green Zone, can't stop the killings and kidnappings." The insurgency
controls most of Baghdad and the Suni provinces.
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- With its judgement lost to frustration, the US military
has 40,000 Iraqis in detention--twice the number of estimated insurgents.
Who are these detainees? According to the Washington Post, "Many of
the men detained in Tall Afar last week were rounded up on the advice of
local teenagers who had stepped forward as informants, at times for what
American soldiers said they suspected amounted to no more than settling
local scores."
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- Obviously, the US, not knowing who or where the insurgents
are, is just striking blindly, creating a larger insurgency.
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- The Iraq government, despite being backed by the US military,
is unable to control movements across the Iraqi - Syrian border. So the
Bush administration has passed the buck to Syria. Puny Syria is declared
guilty of not doing what the US military cannot do.
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- Adam Ereli, the demented US State Department spokesperson,
denounced the Syrian government for "permitting" insurgents to
cross the border. The US government cannot prevent a steady stream of one
million Mexicans from illegally crossing its border each year, but Syria
is supposed to be able to stop a couple hundred foreign fighters from sneaking
across its border.
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- Ereli misrepresents Syria's inability to be "an
unwillingness" which indicates that Syria is consorting with terrorists,
not only in Iraq, but also in Lebanon and Palestine. Does this sound like
Syria being set up for invasion?
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- According to news reports, at Ted Forstmann's annual
meeting of movers and shakers last weekend, US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay
Khalilzad, predicted that US troops will soon enter into Syria. Simultaneously,
the Bush administration is desperately trying to orchestrate a case that
it can use to attack Iran.
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- Stalemated in Iraq, the White House moron intends to
attack two more countries.
-
- At the Human Rights Conference on September 9, the former
Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, described Americans as "people
with blood-soaked hands."
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- "Who are the terrorists," asked Mahathir, the
Iraqis or the Americans?
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- The entire world is asking this question.
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- _____
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- Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments
and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics
education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California
at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good
Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
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