Doug Lorimer
On July 14, General Peter Schoomaker, the US Army's chief of staff, told a luncheon in Washington sponsored by the Defense Forum Foundation that the US was in for a prolonged war against Iraqi anti-occupation guerrillas, now in its fourth year. "I believe that we are closer to the beginning [of the war] than we are to the end", he told the audience, which consisted mostly of congressional staffers.
Associated Press reported the next day that when asked whether the US military was winning in Iraq, Schoomaker hesitated before telling his audience: "I don't think we're losing." He added: "Where I think we are on the scale of winning, I think is a very difficult thing and I think times will tell."
AP reported that same day that the "war in Iraq has cost almost [US]$300 billion so far and would total almost a half-trillion dollars even if all US troops were withdrawn by the end of 2009, according to a recent Congressional Budget Office report". Washington's last large-scale counter-insurgency war — the 14-year-long war in Vietnam — cost $600 billion before the last US soldiers were forced to withdraw by the victorious Vietnamese resistance forces in 1975.
The CBO report, released on July 13, calculated that if this was not the case and the US war in Iraq continued for another 10 years, it would cost $700 billion, even if the average size of the US occupation forces was reduced over the next 10 years to 40,000 troops.
The July 17 Washington Times reported, on the basis of notes of discussions held "at a closed-door conference last spring at Fort Carson", Colorado, home of the US Army's First Infantry division, that "US war commanders think some level of American forces will be needed in Iraq until 2016".
The US military currently has around 130,000 military personnel in Iraq. Of these, less than 50,000 are combat troops (organised into 14 combat brigades); the rest are support personnel. By contrast, in a study released in April, Nawaf Obaid, a security consultant to the pro-US Saudi Arabian government, estimated that there are "77,000 fighters in the insurgency, drawing upon hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect supporters". His study was based on Saudi intelligence reports.
In his July 14 address, Schoomaker claimed that the US military had made "significant progress" in the past six months in training Washington's puppet Iraqi security forces.
Over the last year, Pentagon chiefs have repeatedly made similar claims, hinting that this would allow the US-trained Iraqi troops to replace the US occupation forces in their fight against the Iraqi anti-occupation guerrillas and create the conditions for the beginning of a gradual reduction of the number of US troops in Iraq.
The July 17 issue of Newsweek magazine, however, carried an article by Mike Turner, a retired US Air Fore colonel and former Middle East planner for the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which he ridiculed Pentagon claims about "making progress" in the training of pro-US Iraq security forces.
Turner wrote: "In 1997, I worked for the State Department on the development of a pan-African force of five battalions trained to sustain peacekeeping operations throughout sub-Saharan Africa. In coordination with the commander of the 5th Special Forces Group, we developed a five-year initial training schedule, which we felt was sufficient to adequately train and maintain a force of about 3000 African troops for light peacekeeping operations.
"That's five years to train 3000 troops for basic duties. Compare this, then, to the Bush administration's continuing claim that we have now 'trained' 260,000 Iraqi troops for what will inevitably be brutal, sustained and autonomous urban combat operations.
"A few weeks ago Gen. Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided the real answer. He was asked, pointedly, by a member of Congress, not how many Iraqi forces had been 'trained' but how many were capable of sustained, independent operations throughout Iraq today. His answer? None. And it's been three years.
"Pay attention, America: If the president is serious about leaving US troops in Iraq until Iraqis are capable of maintaining their own security, our grandchildren will be fighting there."
Meanwhile, on July 18 Japan completed the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq. Japan had stationed a contingent of 600 non-combat engineering troops in Samawah in southern Iraq since January 2004.
The foreign occupation force peaked at about 300,000 soldiers from 38 countries, including 250,000 US troops, in the months after the US-led invasion in March 2003. But the coalition of foreign occupiers has shrunk steadily ever since.
Italy has cut it troop contingent in Iraq from 3200 to 1600 and these will all be pulled out by the end of the year. Poland has cut its contingent from 2300 troops to 900 non-combat troops. South Korea will cut its contingent of 2600 troops, based in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, to 1600 by year's end. Denmark will reduce its contingent from 530 troops to 80.
By the end of the year, only the US, Britain and Australia will have sizeable numbers of combat troops in the predominantly Arab-inhabited areas of central and southern Iraq. There are currently 8000 British troops, and just under 500 Australians, in Iraq.
From Green Left Weekly, July 26, 2006.
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