- The American media continues to ignore the increasingly
devastating air war being waged in Iraq against an ever more belligerent
Iraqi resistance - and, as usual, Iraqi civilians continue to bear the
largely unreported brunt of the bombing.
-
- When the air war shows up at
all in our press, it is never as a campaign, but as scattered bare-bones
reports of individual attacks on specific targets, almost invariably based
on military announcements. A typical example was reported by Reuters on
December 4th: "Two US Air Force F-16 jets dropped laser-guided bombs"
which, according to a military spokesperson, killed two "insurgents"
after they attacked an army patrol near Balad, 37 miles west of Baghdad.
On the same day, Reuters reported that "a woman and two children"
were "wounded when US forces conducted an air strike, bombing two
houses in Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad."
-
- And even this minimalist version
of the American air war rarely makes it into large media outlets in the
US.
-
- Ignoring the Obvious
-
- Author and media critic Norman
Solomon asked the following question recently: "According to the LexisNexis
media database, how often has the phrase 'air war' appeared in the New
York Times this year with reference to the current US military effort in
Iraq? As of early December, the answer is: Zero." Solomon went on
to point out that the phrase "air war" had not appeared in either
the Washington Post or Time magazine even a single time this year.
-
- Curiously enough, US Central
Command Air Force (CENTAF) reports are more detailed than anything we normally
can read in our papers. On December 6, for example, CENTAF admitted to
46 air missions over Iraq flown on the previous day - in order to provide
"support to coalition troops, infrastructure protection, reconstruction
activities and operations to deter and disrupt terrorist activities."
-
- Albeit usually broadly (and vaguely)
described, and seldom taking possible civilian casualties into account,
these daily tabulations by the Air Force often flesh out bare-bones reports
with a little extra detail on the nature of the air war. On that December
6th, for instance, the report added that "Air Force F-16 Fighting
Falcons, an MQ-1 Predator and Navy F/A-18 Hornets provided close-air support
to coalition troops in contact with anti-Iraqi forces near Balad and Ramadi."
-
- Not surprisingly, given their
source, such reports glide over or underemphasize potentially damaging
information like the fact that bombing runs of this sort are regularly
conducted in heavily-inhabited areas of Iraq's cities and towns where the
resistance may also be strongly embedded. Oblique statements like the following
are the best you are likely to get from the military: "Coalition aircraft
also supported Iraqi and coalition ground forces operations focused on
creating a secure environment for upcoming December parliamentary elections."
-
- As a result, aside from reportage
by one of the rare western independent journalists left in Iraq or the
many Arab journalists largely ignored in the US, the American air assault
on Iraq remains devastatingly ill-covered by larger outlets here. This
remains true, even as, militarily, air power begins to move center stage
at a moment when large-scale withdrawals of American ground troops are
clearly being considered by the Bush administration.
-
- I have worked as an independent
reporter in Baghdad for over eight months during the US occupation of Iraq
thus far and I can confirm that a day never passed in the capital city
when the low rumblings of an Apache helicopter or the supersonic thundering
roar of an F-16 fighter jet didn't cause me to look up for the source of
the noise. Many a night I would be awakened by the low, whumping blades
of US helicopters scouring the rooftops of the capital city - flying at
almost building height to avoid rocket-propelled grenades from resistance
fighters. I would oftentimes wonder where they were coming from, as well
as where they were going.
-
- It is impossible, really, to
miss the overt signs of the ongoing air war in Iraq when you are there,
which makes the lack of coverage all the more startling. At night, while
standing on the roof of my hotel in Baghdad during the November 2004 assault
on Fallujah, a city some 40-odd miles away, I could see on the horizon
the distant flashes of US bombs that were searing that embattled city.
-
- I often wondered how the scores
of journalists in Baghdad working for major American papers and TV networks
could continue to ignore the daily air campaign the US military was waging
right over their heads or within eyesight. Along with countless eyewitness
interviews I did on the damage caused from the air, this is what prompted
me to write Living Under the Bombs for Tomdispatch some ten months ago.
But it has only been thanks to the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, a journalist
who has never even been to Iraq, that the important subject of the air
campaign there has finally been brought to public awareness on a wider
scale. In a recent interview with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman about his
latest piece in that magazine, aptly titled, Up in the Air: Where is the
Iraq War Headed Next? he commented, "Clearly there's all sorts of
anecdotal reason to believe that the bombing has gone up exponentially,
certainly in the last four or five months in the Sunni Triangle, the four
provinces around Baghdad." But he also pointed that, when it comes
to the American air campaign, "There's no statistics ... We don't
know what's going on with the air war."
-
- However, we have at least an
idea.
-
- Vietnamizing Iraq
-
- The statistics we can glean from
CENTAF indicate a massive rise in the number of US air missions in Iraq
for the month of November as compared to most previous months. Excluding
weekends - for some reason the Air Force does not make the number of sorties
they fly in Iraq and Afghanistan on Fridays and Saturdays known to the
public - 996 November sorties were flown in Iraq according to CENTAF.
-
- The size of this figure naturally
begs the question, where are such missions being flown and what is their
size and nature? And it's important to note as well that "air war"
does not simply mean US Air Force. Carrier-based Navy and Marine aircraft
flew over 21,000 hours of missions and dropped over 26 tons of ordnance
in Fallujah alone during the November 2004 siege of that city.
-
- In his recent article and interview,
Hersh rightly reflects the concern of American military men that, in any
proposed draw-down plan for American forces, Iraqi security forces are
likely to be given some responsibility for Air Force targeting operations.
After all, they'll be the ones left on the ground. It's an idea, he reports,
that is "driving the Air Force crazy," because they fear it may
involve them in a future revenge war of ethnic and religious groups in
Iraq.
-
- Even Pentagon figures indicate
that 10-15% of laser-guided munitions don't land where intended, but having
those munitions land (or not land) where "the Iranians" intend
doesn't please US officials. Senior intelligence personnel complained to
Hersh that "Iran will be targeting our bombers."
-
- Ironically, President Nixon's
Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird recently wrote an article in Foreign
Affairs magazine arguing that his "withdrawal" policy of "Vietnamization"
during that war, actually worked. (It involved withdrawing American troops
while fiercely increasing the American air war in what was then South Vietnam
and surrounding countries.) So, argues Laird, would "Iraqification."
- "The truth about Vietnam that revisionist historians
conveniently forget is that the United States had not lost when we withdrew
in 1973. I believed then and still believe today that given enough outside
resources, South Vietnam was capable of defending itself, just as I believe
Iraq can do the same now."
-
- Though Laird's rewriting of the
history of the last years of the Vietnam War (and his own dismally failed
policies) may be striking at this moment, he is clearly hardly alone in
holding onto the idea that a "withdrawal" that would involve
ever more bombs dropped and missiles fired from American aircraft is now
the way to go. In a classic case of history repeating itself (as tragedy
but also possibly farce), the Bush administration appears to be seriously
considering an "Iraqification" policy of its own.
-
- US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel
Karen Kwiatkowski used to work in the Pentagon and for the National Security
Agency before retiring in 2003. Well known as a Pentagon whistleblower
for speaking out about Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's corrupt Office
of Special Plans in which so much of the pre-war "intelligence"
for Iraq was cherry-picked and passed on, Kwiatkowski has been consistently
critical of the Bush Administration.
-
- Kwiatowski believes the administrations'
new policy of substituting air power for troops harkens back to the failure
of Vietnam. "Let me see if I have this right," she says in an
interview with Tomdispatch.
- "We have a foul-mouthed Texan in the White House,
facing a domestically unpopular war that he never expected to have to fight.
In order to stop a persistent anti-American insurgency in a faraway country,
this President will now escalate the use of air power, striking deep into
the heart of insurgency strongholds and destroying the will of those that
support the insurgency.
-
- "This sounds like a replay of Rolling Thunder, March
1965. The Pentagon, led by the last remnant of those who were supposed
to have directly experienced the danger of politicized wars managed out
of the White House and the sheer uselessness of air power to win hearts
and minds, must indeed be out of its collective mind to support a strategic
shift like this."
-
- It is important to note that,
as in Vietnam, troop morale in Iraq now seems to be plummeting. According
to the Army's own figures, in a study conducted last summer with all units
in Iraq, 56% of them reported either "low" or "very low"
morale. Keep in mind that towards the end of the war in Vietnam, the Army
was in a state of ongoing revolt and incipient collapse. By the time direct
US involvement ended with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973,
the sort of mixed morale statistics seen in our military in Iraq last summer
would have been an impossible dream.
-
- Getting large numbers of troops
out while intensifying the air war might seem then like a reasonable formula
for solving certain of this administration's problems without abandoning
its basic Iraq policies, but this will undoubtedly prove a perilous undertaking
in its own right, as Hersh recently pointed out: "A key element of
the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President's public statements,
is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower.
The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of
American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the
over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase
unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what."
-
- One can easily imagine the potential
for disaster at a future moment when Shia and Kurdish militia members in
Iraqi army uniforms would be calling down air-strikes on Sunni neighborhoods,
settling old scores as civilian casualties went through the roof.
-
- Current Trends
-
- But visions of a frightful future
in Iraq should not be overshadowed by the devastation already caused by
present levels of American air power loosed, in particular, on heavily
populated urban areas of that country.
-
- CENTAF reports, for example,
that on November 14th of this year, "Air Force F-15 Eagles, MQ-1 Predators
unmanned aerial vehicles and Royal Air Force Tornado GR4 aircraft flew
air strikes against anti-Iraqi forces in the vicinity of Karabilah. The
F-15s dropped precision-guided bombs and the Predators fired Hellfire missiles
successfully against insurgent positions." The tactic of using massively
powerful 500 and 1,000 pound bombs in urban areas to target small pockets
of resistance fighters has, in fact, long been employed in Iraq. No intensification
of the air war is necessary to make it a commonplace.
-
- The report from November 14th
adds, "Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons flew air strikes against anti-Iraqi
forces near Balad. The F-16s successfully dropped a precision-guided bomb
on a building used by insurgents. F-16s and a Predator also flew air strikes
against anti-Iraqi forces in the vicinity of Karabilah. The Predator successfully
fired a Hellfire missile against insurgent positions."
-
- The vagueness of certain aspects
of such reports from CENTAF is troubling, however. The reasons for bombing
raids are usually given in generic formulas like this typical one found
in official statements released on November 24th and 27th: "Coalition
aircraft also supported Iraqi and coalition ground forces operations to
create a secure environment for upcoming December parliamentary elections."
Such formulations, of course, tell us, as they are meant to, next to nothing
about what may actually be happening - and as the air war is virtually
never covered by American reporters in Iraq, these and other versions of
the official language of air power are never seriously considered, questioned,
explored, or compared to events on the ground.
-
- Another common mission, as stated
on the 17th, 22nd and several other days in November (and used again in
CENTAF's December statements) has been the equally vague: "included
support to coalition troops, infrastructure protection, reconstruction
activities, and operations to deter and disrupt terrorist activities."
-
- One of the busier days for the
US Air Force in Iraq recently was the last day of November, when 59 sorties
were flown. CENTAF reported that "F-15 Eagles successfully dropped
precision-guided munitions against an insurgents' weapons bunker near Baghdad.
F-16 Fighting Falcons, an MQ-1 Predator and Navy F/A-18 Hornets and F-14
Tomcats provided close-air support to coalition troops in contact with
anti-Iraqi forces near Al Hawijah, Al Mahmudiyah and Fallujah." In
addition, Royal Australian Air Force were also flying surveillance and
reconnaissance missions that day, as the British Air Force often does on
other days.
-
- Weaponry
-
- A broad overview of the types
of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft the US military is employing in
Iraq gives an idea of the scope of the air war currently underway and the
sort of destructive power available on an everyday basis. It can also offer
hints of what we might expect in an air-power intensified draw-down future.
-
- While this is in no way an inclusive
list, fixed-wing aircraft include the F-14D Tomcat and F/A 18 fighter jets
which are being used by the Navy and Marines. The F-18 fires the laser-guided,
630 pound Maverick Missile (at a cost of $141,442 per shot, by the way).
In addition, both the F-14 and F/A 18 fire a 20mm hydraulically operated
gatling gun which emits between 4,000 and 6,000 rounds per minute at a
range of "several thousand yards."
-
- The Air Force is using F-15 Eagle
and F-16 Falcon fighter jets, along with AF MQ-1 Predator drones which
are armed with Hellfire missiles. AV-8 Harrier fighter jets have also been
used in Iraq as have AC-130 gunships, especially in urban battles like
the fighting for Fallujah last year. These planes are capable of circling
targets for long periods while raining thousands of rounds of ammunition
per minute down from above. Then there is the A-10 Warthog military jet
which is used as ground support, as it is capable of firing 4,200 armor
piercing 30mm rounds per minute.
-
- At this point, bombs used commonly
range in explosive power from 250-2,000 pounds, with cluster bombs, the
MK-77 500 pound fire bomb (napalm) and the infamous White Phosphorous also
having been employed at various moments. The Joint Direct Attack Munition
(JDAM) bomb, ranging from 250-2,000 pounds, was used extensively during
the most recent military operation against Fallujah. The 2,000 pound variety,
for example, has the capacity to blast a crater in a concrete street 70
feet in diameter and 30 feet deep. This size of bomb has a blast radius
of 110 feet within which a human being will die, while fragmentation from
the bomb casing can achieve velocities up to 9,000 feet per second and
reach areas over 3,000 feet away from the detonation site.
-
- The US military is also using
a wide variety of helicopters offensively in Iraq. These include the Apache,
Kiowa, Black Hawk, Cobra, Pave Low, Chinook, and Iroquois.
-
- Most of the available data -
and it's minimal - about how all this airpower is being used in Iraq comes
from the Air Force. One of their news reports from June, 2005, for example,
typically reported a single incident in which air power was brought to
bear: "Coalition aircraft dropped seven precision-guided bombs while
providing close-air support to coalition troops in the western Al Anbar
province of Iraq on June 11. Anti-Iraqi forces had taken refuge in buildings
in an attempt to shield themselves from coalition attack. An estimated
40 insurgents were killed."
-
- Brig. Gen. Allen G. Peck, deputy
combined forces air component commander, added "Our job was to provide
close-air support and intel to coalition troops in direct contact with
anti-Iraqi forces. Airpower support extends well beyond dropping munitions.
Our top priority is providing close-air support and reconnaissance to our
Soldiers, Marines and coalition forces in contact with enemy forces on
the ground."
-
- The Air Force claims that "nearly
70 percent of all munitions used by the air component since the start of
the operation have been precision-guided," and "every possible
precaution is taken to protect innocent Iraqi civilians, friendly coalition
forces, facilities and infrastructure." However, a serious study of
violence to civilians in Iraq by a British medical journal, the Lancet,
released in October, 2004, estimated that 85% of all violent deaths in
Iraq are generated by coalition forces and claimed that many of these are
due to US air strikes. While no significant scientific inquiry has been
carried out in Iraq recently, Iraqi medical personnel, working in areas
where US military operations continue, report to me that they feel the
"vast majority" of civilian deaths are the result of actions
by the occupation forces.
-
- Given the US air power already
being applied largely in Iraq's cities and towns, the prospect of increasing
it is chilling indeed. As to how this might benefit the embattled Bush
administration, we return to Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski:
- "Shifting the mechanism of the destruction of Iraq
from soldiers and Marines to distant and safer air power would be successful
in several ways. It would reduce the negative publicity value of maimed
American soldiers and Marines, would bring a portion of our troops home
and give the Army a necessary operational break. It would increase Air
Force and Naval budgets, and line defense contractor pockets. By the time
we figure out that it isn't working to make oil more secure or to allow
Iraqis to rebuild a stable country, the Army will have recovered and can
be redeployed in force."
-
- But if current trends continue,
the end of the US occupation in Iraq may more closely resemble the ending
in Vietnam - a view Kwiatkowski agrees with. The political climate at home
may force a decrease in the number of US troops in Iraq, but the compensatory
upswing in air power meant to offset this will be inevitable and will inevitably
lead to unexpected problems. Why? Because the Bush administration will
still be committed to permanently hanging onto a crucial group of four
or five mega-military bases (into which billions of construction and communications
dollars have already been poured) along with a massive embassy, directing
political and military "traffic" from the heart of Baghdad's
Green Zone - and that means an unending occupation of Iraq, something that,
air power or no, can only mean endless strife.
-
- Dahr Jamail is an independent
journalist from Anchorage, Alaska. He has spent eight months reporting
from occupied Iraq, and recently has been giving presentations about Iraq
around the US. He regularly reports for Inter Press Service, and contributes
to the Independent, the Sunday Herald, and Asia Times as well as Tomdispatch.com.
He maintains a website at: dahrjamailiraq.com.
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