US officials want their puppet Iraqi government to agree to a long-term "status of forces agreement" that would give the US military "broad authority to conduct combat operations and guarantee civilian contractors specific legal protections from Iraqi law", the January 25 New York Times reported.
The NYT reported that there are currently 154,000 private contractors employed by the Pentagon in Iraq, including at least 13,000 private security guards. A decree was issued in June 2004 by the US-led occupation authority that granted Pentagon-employed non-Iraqi contractors immunity from the Iraqi legal processes.
However, in the wake of widespread Iraqi public outrage at the deliberate shooting of 17 unarmed Iraqis by the US Blackwater private security guards in Baghdad last September, a draft bill to revoke the contractor immunity decree has been before the Iraqi parliament since October 31.
The status of forces agreement that US officials are seeking is intended to provide a legal justification for the presence of US troops in Iraq after the UN Security Council's October 2003 mandate for their presence expires on December 18.
There are currently 158,000 US troops in Iraq. This number will drop back to 130,000 — the average number deployed in 2006 — by the end of July as US combat units' complete the 15-month war-zone tours imposed by the Pentagon early last year to carry out the post-January 28,000-strong troop "surge". US troops' war-zone deployments had previously been for 12 months.
Last November 26, US President George Bush and Iraqi PM Nuri al Maliki signed a "declaration of principles" setting out the framework for negotiating these formal agreements. The declaration promises that the US military will protect the current Iraqi regime from "internal or external threats".
While the US has status of forces agreements with about 80 countries, none of them formally commit the US military to defend any foreign government from "internal threats".
Permanent bases
The NYT also reported that US war secretary Robert Gates and the top US commanders in Iraq have indicated they envisage having US troops in Iraq for many years to come. At a media briefing on January 17, General Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 US commander in Iraq, who is in charge of day-to-day US military operations, said that a substantial US troop presence in Iraq would be needed for "five to 10 years".
US officials have repeatedly denied they want to have permanent bases in Iraq. But when Bush signed into law the 2008 congressional defence policy bill on January 28, he added a "signing statement" asserting his "right" as US commander-in-chief to ignore a number of the law's provisions.
Among the measures he singled out was a prohibition on his administration spending any funds on the construction of permanent bases in Iraq.
On February 3, the Pentagon confirmed that 40 US troops had died in Iraq in January — almost twice as many as December's death toll of 23. The Pentagon attributed 23 of the 40 fatalities to "improvised explosive devices" (booby-trap or roadside bombs), the most powerful of which it calls "explosively formed projectiles".
The February 3 Washington Post reported that, "Attacks using those bombs were a near-daily occurrence in mid-2007 as the [insurgent] groups reacted to the US military counteroffensive known as 'the surge'. From April through October, detonations of the powerful weapons happened nearly every day, on average, with a peak of 36 in July.
"The US military's ability to find the bombs has not notably improved. In January 2007, before the surge began, 31 such bombs were planted. US troops found 14 before they were detonated; the other 17 went off. Last month's numbers were similar: The same number were planted, and US troops detected 16, with 15 exploding."
The Post reported that Colonel Allen Batschelet, the chief of staff of the US Army's division occupying Baghdad, attributed the continued success of roadside bomb attacks against US troops as due to most Iraqis indifference to such attacks. Batschelet told the Post: "The biggest thing that makes this difficult to defeat is that the Iraqis don't care. They don't turn in a lot of tips. We don't get a lot of help."
Indeed, a poll conducted last September for the American Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC and the Japanese NHK TV channel found that a solid 57% of Iraqis said they approved of attacks on US and other foreign occupation forces.
Dire conditions
Agence France Presse reported on February 3 that "Baghdad is drowning in sewage, thirsty for water and largely powerless, an Iraqi official said on Sunday in a grim assessment of services in the capital five years after the US-led invasion.
"One of three sewage treatment plants is out of commission, one is working at stuttering capacity while a pipe blockage in the third means sewage is forming a foul lake so large it can be seen 'as a big black spot on Google Earth', said Tahseen Sheikhly, civilian spokesman for the Baghdad security plan.
"Sheikhly told a news conference in the capital that water pipes, where they exist, are so old that it is not possible to pump water at a sufficient rate to meet demands — leaving many neighbourhoods parched.
"A sharp deficit of 3,000 megawatts of electricity adds to the woes of residents, who are forced to rely on neighbourhood generators to light up their lives and heat their homes."
AFP reported that General Jeffrey Dorko of the US Gulf Regional Division, which is engaged in "reconstruction" projects, told the Baghdad press conference that the demand for electricity was likely to outstrip supply for several years because many Iraqi power stations had been damaged or destroyed and commissioning new ones would take anything up to four years.
Despite 13 years of crippling international economic sanctions, Baghdad had 16-24 hours of power daily in March 2003, just before the US-led invasion of Iraq. But after almost five years of US military occupation, with US$4.6 billion having been provided in "reconstruction" contracts to US corporations to repair Iraq's war-damaged electricity system, Baghdad now averages only six hours of electricity per day, half as much as the rest of the country, according to the US State Department.
Corruption
The US-based Environmental News Service reported last November 1 that, "Corruption and mismanagement have severely affected the rehabilitation of the electricity networks. The Iraqi Commission for Public Integrity has cited former electricity minister Muhsin Shlash, who served in 2005 and 2006, in a corruption inquiry. He has not been charged.
"Another ex-electricity minister, Iraqi-American Ayham al-Samarie, who the commission also charged with corruption, broke out of prison in December 2006 with the help of a private foreign security firm, according to the Iraqi authorities."
Former judge Radhi al-Radhi, the then head of the public integrity commission, fled Iraq last August, alleging numerous threats to his life from corrupt Iraqi officials. He told US legislators in October that the Iraqi government had "lost" $18 billion in reconstruction funds through rampant corruption and that 31 integrity commission employees had been killed because of their work. He accused Maliki of consistently blocking corruption investigations, especially probes of his associates and family.
The ENS article noted that "Washington has been the biggest investor in Iraq's reconstruction and its electricity infrastructure", adding: "US government investigators have found serious accounting discrepancies ... In one audit, at least $10 billion of $57 billion in US reconstruction and troop support funds for Iraq was squandered in contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, according to the US Government Accountability Office."