Shadow Zones in Bush's Iraq Policy
    By Philippe G lie
    Le Figaro

    Thursday 12 January 2006

    While George W. Bush thumps the official line, unspoken facts about the military, political, and economic realities of the war in Iraq pile up.

    George W. Bush never tires of repeating his arguments about the war in Iraq. He still has two speeches to go on this week's program to prove that the Iraq war constitutes an essential element of the "global war against terrorism," that democracy will spread from Baghdad, and that the coalition is progressing, slowly but surely, to victory.

    This official rhetoric has become so repetitive that public opinion and the media hardly pay attention to it any more. Yet, one may draw precious information from what the American president does - and does not - say. For the attempt at transparency begun last month, with the publication of a "national strategy" that for the first time lists the challenges to be met, has its limits.

    Paul Bremer, former proconsul in Baghdad, has just highlighted that point by the publication of his book, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope (Simon & Schuster). There he relates his efforts to convince the decision-makers in Washington that the level of troops on the ground was inadequate. After a particularly deadly month of April, he sent a memo to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, pleading for the deployment of 500,000 American troops, over a tripling of military manpower in Iraq. He also defended that request before George Bush at the White House. He was never to receive a response and would leave his position a month later.

    Coalition of the Not-at-all-Willing

    The official talking point never varies on this critical issue: "The president considers that decisions with regard to troop levels must be based on the recommendations of the military commanders on the ground," his spokesman Scott McClellan reiterated Monday. The semantics of this statement are noteworthy: during his period in power, Bremer was presented as the main master-builder of the American strategy in Iraq, the one who was counted upon to adapt that strategy to the realities on the ground. In fact, when he asked for such a fundamental change, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld deferred to the advice of generals whose opinion was strangely similar to his own, and did not even bother to respond.

    Paul Bremer also confirms another obvious, unspoken fact: "We never really saw the insurrection coming," he acknowledged on NBC. And he shoots a few arrows into the "coalition of the not-at-all-willing." Even listening carefully, one no longer hears George Bush say anything about his allies in Iraq. Perhaps because the coalition is crumbling. At the end of December, Ukraine completed the withdrawal of its 1,650 soldiers and Bulgaria, that of its 460 men. The Netherlands keeps barely 50 soldiers there; South Korea and Poland have announced the imminent departure of a third of their troops and Italy, the withdrawal of 300 men. About 23,000 soldiers from 24 countries remain in Iraq, versus 50,000 from 38 countries in 2003.

    In the same way, so as not to draw attention to desertions, the Pentagon has forgone disciplinary procedures against service dodgers. Eighty reservists who didn't answer the call to duty will be erased from the rolls without the "honorable" mention, but not one has been declared a deserter or prosecuted, any more than the 383 others whose traces have been lost. If one adds in exemptions, 32% of those called up for Iraq have not gone.

    Fuzzy Accounts

    In spite of the requirements for budgetary transparency, the war's accounts are sometimes lost in the web of unspoken facts. For the Pentagon, military operations cost 4.5 billion dollars a month, that is, 173 million dollars a day. Added to that are the bills for reconstruction, the operation of a 5,000-person embassy, and assistance in Iraqi troop training - which take the total forecast for the end of 2006 to close to 500 billion dollars. For Nobel Prize-winning economist and war opponent Joseph Stiglitz, the indirect costs (notably for oil and healthcare) could bring the bill up to 2,000 billion dollars in 2010.

    When the actual accomplishments on the ground are catalogued, the result is less Pharaonic. The 18.4 billion dollar package voted in in 2003 allowed 3,600 renovation projects to be contracted (900 schools, 160 medical centers, 1,300 kilometers of asphalt). But 25% of the costs have been sucked up by security expenses, and much remains to be done, as electricity and oil production both still remain inferior to their pre-war levels. In 2003, George Bush had promised Iraqis "the best infrastructure in the region." In the budget proposal that will be submitted to Congress next month, no supplementary funds for reconstruction have been provided for: "The United States never intended to completely reconstruct Iraq," explains General William McCoy. "This was just supposed to be a jump-start."

    In an article that appeared in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, Leon Fuerth, former advisor to Vice President Al Gore, proposes a political trade-off that says a lot about the situation: six months of Democratic support on Iraq in exchange for "radical improvements in the flow of information to the Congress and the American people."