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TY for posting this extremely provocative article.
Postlist modified to increase distribution
B.T.World wrote:
> June 29, 2007
> DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA
> Surging past the gates of hell
> By Tom Engelhardt
>
> Sometimes, numbers can strip human beings of just about everything
> that makes us what we are. Numbers can silence pain, erase love,
> obliterate emotion, and blur individuality. But sometimes numbers can
> also tell a necessary story in ways nothing else can.
>
> This January, US President George W Bush announced his "surge" plan
> for Iraq, which he called his "new way forward". It was, when you
> think about it, all about numbers. Since then, 28,500 new US troops
> have surged into that country, mostly in and around Baghdad; and,
> according to the Washington Post, there has also been a hidden surge
> of private armed contractors - hired guns, if you will - who free up
> troops by taking over many mundane military positions from guarding
> convoys to guarding envoys. In the meantime, other telltale numbers in
> Iraq have surged as well.
>
> Now, Americans are theoretically waiting for the commander of US
> forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, to "report" to Congress in
> September on the "progress" of Bush's surge strategy. But there really
> is no reason to wait for September. An interim report - "Iraq by the
> Numbers" - can be prepared now (as it could have been prepared last
> month, or last year). The trajectory of horror in Iraq has long been
> clear; the fact that the US military is a motor driving the Iraqi
> cataclysm has been no less clear for years now. So here is my own
> early version of the "September Report".
>
> A caveat about numbers: in the bloody chaos that is Iraq, as tens of
> thousands die or are wounded, as millions uproot themselves or are
> uprooted, and as the influence of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's
> national government remains largely confined to the 10-square-
> kilometer fortified Green Zone in the Iraqi capital, numbers, even as
> they pour out of that hemorrhaging land, are eternally up for grabs.
> There is no way most of them can be accurate. They are, at best, a set
> of approximate notations in a nightmare that is beyond measurement.
>
> Here, nonetheless, is an attempt to tell a little of the Iraqi story
> by those numbers.
>
> Iraq is now widely considered No 1 when it comes to being the ideal
> jihadist training ground on the planet. "If Afghanistan was a
> Pandora's box which when opened created problems in many countries,
> Iraq is a much bigger box, and what's inside much more dangerous,"
> commented Mohammed al-Masri, a researcher at Amman's Center for
> Strategic Studies.
>
> CIA analysts predicted just this in a May 2005 report leaked to the
> press. ("A new classified assessment by the Central Intelligence
> Agency says Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training
> ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in al-Qaeda's early
> days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban
> combat.")
>
> Iraq is also No 2: it now ranks as the world's second-most-unstable
> country, ahead of war-ravaged or poverty-stricken nations such as
> Somalia, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo and North Korea,
> according to the 2007 Failed States Index, issued recently by the Fund
> for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine. (Afghanistan, the site of
> America's other little war, ranked eighth.) Last year and the year
> before, Iraq held fourth place on the list. Next year, it could surge
> to No 1.
>
> Number of US troops in Iraq, June 2007: approximately 156,000.
>
> Number of US troops in Iraq, May 1, 2003, the day President Bush
> declared "major combat operations" in that country "ended":
> approximately 130,000.
>
> Number of Sunni insurgents in Iraq, May 2007: at least 100,000,
> according to Asia Times Online correspondent Pepe Escobar on his most
> recent visit to the country (see The man who might save Iraq, May 5).
>
> American military dead in the surge months, February 1-June 26, 2007:
> 481.
>
> American military dead, February-June 2006: 292.
>
> Number of contractors killed in the first three months of 2007: at
> least 146, a significant surge over previous years. (Contractor deaths
> sometimes go unreported and so these figures are likely to be
> incomplete.)
>
> Number of US troops then-deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz
> and other Pentagon civilian strategists were convinced would be
> stationed in Iraq in August 2003, four months after Baghdad fell:
> 30,000-40,000, according to Washington Post reporter Tom Ricks in his
> best-selling book Fiasco.
>
> Number of armed "private contractors" now in Iraq: at least
> 20,000-30,000, according to the Washington Post. (Jeremy Scahill,
> author of the best-seller Blackwater, puts the figure for all private
> contractors in Iraq at 126,000.)
>
> Number of attacks on US troops and allied Iraqi forces, April 2007:
> 4,900.
>
> Percentage of US deaths from roadside bombs (IEDs, for improvised
> explosive devices): 70.9% in May 2007; 35% in February 2007 as the
> "surge" was beginning.
>
> Percentage of registered US supply convoys (guarded by private
> contractors) attacked: 14.7% in 2007 (through May 10); 9.1% in 2006;
> 5.4% in 2005.
>
> Percentage of Baghdad not controlled by US (and Iraqi) security forces
> more than four months into the "surge": 60%, according to the US
> military.
>
> Number of attacks on the Green Zone, the fortified heart of Baghdad
> where the new US$600 million US Embassy is rising and the Iraqi
> government largely resides: more than 80 between March and the
> beginning of June 2007, according to a United Nations report. (These
> attacks, by mortar or rocket, from "pacified" Red Zone Baghdad, are on
> the rise and now occur nearly daily.)
>
> Size of US Embassy staff in Baghdad: more than 1,000 Americans and
> 4,000 third-country nationals.
>
> Staff US Ambassador Ryan Crocker considers appropriate to the
> "diplomatic" job: the ambassador recently sent "an urgent plea" to
> Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for more personnel. "The people
> here are heroic," he wrote. "I need more people, and that's the thing,
> not that the people who are here shouldn't be here or couldn't do
> it."
>
> According to the Washington Post, the Baghdad embassy, previously
> assigned 15 political officers, now will get 11 more; the economic
> staff will go from nine to 21. This may involve "direct assignments"
> to Baghdad in which, against precedent, State Department officers,
> some reputedly against the war, will simply be ordered to take up
> "unaccompanied posts" (too dangerous for families to go along).
>
> Air strikes in Iraq during the "surge" months: US Air Force (USAF)
> planes are dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago,
> according to the Associated Press. "Close support missions" are up
> 30-40%. And this surge of air power seems, from recent news reports,
> still to be on the rise.
>
> In the early stages of the recent "surge" operation against the city
> of Baquba in Diyala province, for instance, Michael R Gordon of the
> New York Times reported that "American forces ... fired more than 20
> satellite-guided rockets into western Baquba", while Apache
> helicopters attacked "enemy fighters". ABC (American Broadcasting Co)
> News recently reported that the USAF has brought B-1 bombers in for
> missions on the outskirts of Baghdad.
>
> Number of years General David Petraeus, commander of the "surge"
> operation, predicts that the US will have to be engaged in
> counterinsurgency operations in Iraq to have hopes of achieving
> success: nine to 10 years. ("In fact, typically, I think historically,
> counterinsurgency operations have gone at least nine or 10 years.")
>
> Number of years Bush administration officials are now suggesting that
> 30,000-40,000 US troops might have to remain garrisoned at US bases in
> Iraq: 54, according to the "Korea model" now being considered. (US
> troops have garrisoned South Korea since the Korean War ended in
> 1953.)
>
> Number of Iraqi police, trained by Americans, who were not on duty as
> of January 2007, just before the "surge" plan was put into operation:
> about 32,000 out of a force of 188,000, according to the Associated
> Press. About one in six Iraqi policemen has been killed, has been
> wounded, has deserted, or has just disappeared. About 5,000 probably
> have deserted; and 7,000-8,000 are simply "unaccounted for". (Recall
> here Bush's old jingle of 2005: "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand
> down.")
>
> Number of years before the Iraqi security forces are capable of taking
> charge of their country's security: "a couple of years", according to
> US Army Brigadier-General Dana Pittard, commander of the Iraq
> Assistance Group.
>
> Amount of "reconstruction" money invested in the CIA's key asset in
> the new Iraq, the Iraqi National Intelligence Service: $3 billion,
> according to Escobar (see We build walls, not nations, April 24).
>
> Number of Iraqi "Kit Carson scouts" being trained in the just-captured
> western part of Baquba: more than 100. (There were thousands of "Kit
> Carsons" in the Vietnam War - former enemy fighters employed by US
> forces; the name derives from 19th-century American frontiersman
> Christopher Houston Carson.) In fact, Vietnam-era plans, ranging from
> Strategic Hamlets (dubbed, in the Iraqi urban context, "gated
> communities") to the "oil spot" counterinsurgency strategy, have been
> recycled for use in Iraq, as has a US penchant for applying names from
> America's Indian Wars to counterinsurgency situations abroad,
> including, for instance, dubbing an embattled supply depot near Abu
> Ghraib "Fort Apache".
>
> Number of Iraqis who have fled their country since 2003: estimated to
> be between 2 million and 2.2 million, or nearly one in 10 Iraqis.
> According to independent reporter Dahr Jamail, at least 50,000 more
> refugees are fleeing the country every month.
>
> Number of Iraqi refugees who have been accepted by the United States:
> Fewer than 500, according to Bob Woodruff of ABC News; 701, according
> to Agence France-Presse. (Under international and congressional
> pressure, the Bush administration has finally agreed to admit another
> 7,000 Iraqis by year's end.)
>
> Number of Iraqis who are now internal refugees in Iraq, largely
> because of sectarian violence since 2003: at least 1.9 million,
> according to the UN. (A recent Red Crescent Society report, based on a
> survey taken in Iraq, indicates that internal refugees have quadrupled
> since January 2007, and are up eightfold since June 2006.)
>
> Percentage of refugees, internal and external, under 12: 55%,
> according to the president of the Red Crescent Society.
>
> Percentage of Baghdadi children, 3 to 10, exposed to a major traumatic
> event in the past two years: 47%, according to a World Health
> Organization survey of 600 children. Fourteen percent of them showed
> symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. In another study of 1,090
> adolescents in Mosul, that figure reached 30%.
>
> Number of Iraqi doctors who have fled the country since 2003: an
> estimated 12,000 of the country's 34,000 registered doctors since
> 2003, according to the Iraqi Medical Association. The association
> reports that another 2,000 doctors have been slain in those years.
>
> Number of Iraqi refugees created since UN Secretary General Ban Ki-
> Moon declared a "humanitarian crisis" for Iraq in January 2007: an
> estimated 250,000.
>
> Percentage of Iraqis now living on less than $1 a day, according to
> the UN: 54%.
>
> Iraq's per capita annual income: $3,600 in 1980; $860 in 2001 (after a
> decade of UN sanctions); $530 at the end of 2003, according to
> Escobar, who estimates that the number may now have fallen below $400
> (see Baghdad up close and personal, May 2). Unemployment in Iraq is
> about 60%.
>
> Percentage of Iraqis who do not have regular access to clean water:
> 70%, according to the World Health Organization. (Eighty percent "lack
> effective sanitation".)
>
> Rate of chronic child malnutrition: 21%, according to the WHO. (Rates
> of child malnutrition had already nearly doubled by 2004, only 20
> months after the invasion.) According to the United Nations Children's
> Fund (UNICEF), "about one in 10 children under five in Iraq [is]
> underweight".
>
> Number of Iraqis held in US prisons in their own country: 17,000 by
> March 2007, almost 20,000 by May 2007 and surging.
>
> Number of Iraqis detained in Baquba alone in one week this month in
> Operation Phantom Thunder: more than 700.
>
> Average number of Iraqis who died violently each day in 2006: 100 -
> and this is undoubtedly an underestimate, since not all deaths are
> reported.
>
> Number of Iraqis who have died violently (based on the above average)
> since Secretary General Ban declared a "humanitarian crisis" for Iraq
> in January 2007: 15,000 - again certainly an undercount.
>
> Number of Iraqis who died (in what Juan Cole terms Iraq's "everyday
> apocalypse") during the week of June 17-23, 2007, according to the
> careful daily tally from media reports offered at the website
> Antiwar.com: 763, or an average of 109 media-reported deaths a day.
> (June 17: 74; June 18: 149; June 19: 169; June 20: 116; June 21: 58;
> June 22: 122; June 23: 75.)
>
> Percentage of seriously wounded who don't survive in emergency rooms
> and intensive-care units, because of lack of drugs, equipment, and
> staff: nearly 70%, according to the WHO.
>
> Number of university professors who have been killed since the
> invasion of 2003: more than 200, according to the Iraqi Ministry of
> Higher Education.
>
> The value of an Iraqi life: a maximum of $2,500 in "consolation" or
> "solatia" payments made by the US military to Iraqi civilians who died
> "as a result of US and coalition forces' actions during combat",
> according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. These
> payments imply no legal responsibility for the killings.
>
> For rare "extraordinary cases" (and let's not even imagine what these
> might be), payments of up to $10,000 were approved last year, with the
> authorization of a division commander. According to Walter Pincus of
> the Washington Post, "We are not talking big condolence payouts thus
> far. In 2005, the sums distributed in Iraq reached $21.5 million and -
> with violence on the upswing - dropped to $7.3 million last year, the
> GAO reported."
>
> The value of an Iraqi car, destroyed by US forces: $2,500 would not be
> unusual, and conceivably the full value of the car, according to the
> same GAO report. A former US Army judge advocate, who served in Iraq,
> has commented: "The full market value may be paid for a Toyota run
> over by a tank in the course of a non-combat related accident, but
> only $2,500 may be paid for the death of a child shot in the
> crossfire."
>
> Percentage of Americans who approve of Bush's actions in Iraq: 23%,
> according to the latest post-"surge" Newsweek poll. The president's
> overall approval rating stood at 26% in this poll, just 3 points above
> those of only one president, Richard Nixon at his Watergate worst, and
> Bush's polling figures are threatening to head into that territory. In
> the latest, now-two-week-old National Broadcasting Corp/Wall Street
> Journal poll, 10% of Americans think the "surge" has made things
> better in Iraq, 54% worse.
>
> The question is: What word best describes the situation these Iraqi
> numbers hint at? The answer would probably be: no such word exists.
> "Genocide" has been beaten into the ground and doesn't apply. "Civil
> war", which shifts all blame to the Iraqis (withdrawing Americans from
> a country its troops have not yet begun to leave), doesn't faintly
> cover the matter.
>
> If anything catches the carnage and mayhem that were once the nation
> of Iraq, it might be a comment by the head of the Arab League, Amr
> Mussa, in 2004. He warned: "The gates of hell are open in Iraq." At
> the very least, the "gates of hell" should now officially be
> considered miles behind us on the half-destroyed, well-mined highway
> of Iraqi life. Who knows what IEDs lie ahead? We are, after all, in
> the underworld.
>
> Tom Engelhardt is editor of Tomdispatch and the author of The End of
> Victory Culture. His novel, The Last Days of Publishing, has recently
> come out in paperback. Most recently, he is the author of Mission
> Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and
> Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch
> interviews.
>
> (Copyright 2007 Tomdispatch. Used by permission.)
>
Postlist modified to increase distribution
B.T.World wrote:
> June 29, 2007
> DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA
> Surging past the gates of hell
> By Tom Engelhardt
>
> Sometimes, numbers can strip human beings of just about everything
> that makes us what we are. Numbers can silence pain, erase love,
> obliterate emotion, and blur individuality. But sometimes numbers can
> also tell a necessary story in ways nothing else can.
>
> This January, US President George W Bush announced his "surge" plan
> for Iraq, which he called his "new way forward". It was, when you
> think about it, all about numbers. Since then, 28,500 new US troops
> have surged into that country, mostly in and around Baghdad; and,
> according to the Washington Post, there has also been a hidden surge
> of private armed contractors - hired guns, if you will - who free up
> troops by taking over many mundane military positions from guarding
> convoys to guarding envoys. In the meantime, other telltale numbers in
> Iraq have surged as well.
>
> Now, Americans are theoretically waiting for the commander of US
> forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, to "report" to Congress in
> September on the "progress" of Bush's surge strategy. But there really
> is no reason to wait for September. An interim report - "Iraq by the
> Numbers" - can be prepared now (as it could have been prepared last
> month, or last year). The trajectory of horror in Iraq has long been
> clear; the fact that the US military is a motor driving the Iraqi
> cataclysm has been no less clear for years now. So here is my own
> early version of the "September Report".
>
> A caveat about numbers: in the bloody chaos that is Iraq, as tens of
> thousands die or are wounded, as millions uproot themselves or are
> uprooted, and as the influence of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's
> national government remains largely confined to the 10-square-
> kilometer fortified Green Zone in the Iraqi capital, numbers, even as
> they pour out of that hemorrhaging land, are eternally up for grabs.
> There is no way most of them can be accurate. They are, at best, a set
> of approximate notations in a nightmare that is beyond measurement.
>
> Here, nonetheless, is an attempt to tell a little of the Iraqi story
> by those numbers.
>
> Iraq is now widely considered No 1 when it comes to being the ideal
> jihadist training ground on the planet. "If Afghanistan was a
> Pandora's box which when opened created problems in many countries,
> Iraq is a much bigger box, and what's inside much more dangerous,"
> commented Mohammed al-Masri, a researcher at Amman's Center for
> Strategic Studies.
>
> CIA analysts predicted just this in a May 2005 report leaked to the
> press. ("A new classified assessment by the Central Intelligence
> Agency says Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training
> ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in al-Qaeda's early
> days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban
> combat.")
>
> Iraq is also No 2: it now ranks as the world's second-most-unstable
> country, ahead of war-ravaged or poverty-stricken nations such as
> Somalia, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo and North Korea,
> according to the 2007 Failed States Index, issued recently by the Fund
> for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine. (Afghanistan, the site of
> America's other little war, ranked eighth.) Last year and the year
> before, Iraq held fourth place on the list. Next year, it could surge
> to No 1.
>
> Number of US troops in Iraq, June 2007: approximately 156,000.
>
> Number of US troops in Iraq, May 1, 2003, the day President Bush
> declared "major combat operations" in that country "ended":
> approximately 130,000.
>
> Number of Sunni insurgents in Iraq, May 2007: at least 100,000,
> according to Asia Times Online correspondent Pepe Escobar on his most
> recent visit to the country (see The man who might save Iraq, May 5).
>
> American military dead in the surge months, February 1-June 26, 2007:
> 481.
>
> American military dead, February-June 2006: 292.
>
> Number of contractors killed in the first three months of 2007: at
> least 146, a significant surge over previous years. (Contractor deaths
> sometimes go unreported and so these figures are likely to be
> incomplete.)
>
> Number of US troops then-deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz
> and other Pentagon civilian strategists were convinced would be
> stationed in Iraq in August 2003, four months after Baghdad fell:
> 30,000-40,000, according to Washington Post reporter Tom Ricks in his
> best-selling book Fiasco.
>
> Number of armed "private contractors" now in Iraq: at least
> 20,000-30,000, according to the Washington Post. (Jeremy Scahill,
> author of the best-seller Blackwater, puts the figure for all private
> contractors in Iraq at 126,000.)
>
> Number of attacks on US troops and allied Iraqi forces, April 2007:
> 4,900.
>
> Percentage of US deaths from roadside bombs (IEDs, for improvised
> explosive devices): 70.9% in May 2007; 35% in February 2007 as the
> "surge" was beginning.
>
> Percentage of registered US supply convoys (guarded by private
> contractors) attacked: 14.7% in 2007 (through May 10); 9.1% in 2006;
> 5.4% in 2005.
>
> Percentage of Baghdad not controlled by US (and Iraqi) security forces
> more than four months into the "surge": 60%, according to the US
> military.
>
> Number of attacks on the Green Zone, the fortified heart of Baghdad
> where the new US$600 million US Embassy is rising and the Iraqi
> government largely resides: more than 80 between March and the
> beginning of June 2007, according to a United Nations report. (These
> attacks, by mortar or rocket, from "pacified" Red Zone Baghdad, are on
> the rise and now occur nearly daily.)
>
> Size of US Embassy staff in Baghdad: more than 1,000 Americans and
> 4,000 third-country nationals.
>
> Staff US Ambassador Ryan Crocker considers appropriate to the
> "diplomatic" job: the ambassador recently sent "an urgent plea" to
> Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for more personnel. "The people
> here are heroic," he wrote. "I need more people, and that's the thing,
> not that the people who are here shouldn't be here or couldn't do
> it."
>
> According to the Washington Post, the Baghdad embassy, previously
> assigned 15 political officers, now will get 11 more; the economic
> staff will go from nine to 21. This may involve "direct assignments"
> to Baghdad in which, against precedent, State Department officers,
> some reputedly against the war, will simply be ordered to take up
> "unaccompanied posts" (too dangerous for families to go along).
>
> Air strikes in Iraq during the "surge" months: US Air Force (USAF)
> planes are dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago,
> according to the Associated Press. "Close support missions" are up
> 30-40%. And this surge of air power seems, from recent news reports,
> still to be on the rise.
>
> In the early stages of the recent "surge" operation against the city
> of Baquba in Diyala province, for instance, Michael R Gordon of the
> New York Times reported that "American forces ... fired more than 20
> satellite-guided rockets into western Baquba", while Apache
> helicopters attacked "enemy fighters". ABC (American Broadcasting Co)
> News recently reported that the USAF has brought B-1 bombers in for
> missions on the outskirts of Baghdad.
>
> Number of years General David Petraeus, commander of the "surge"
> operation, predicts that the US will have to be engaged in
> counterinsurgency operations in Iraq to have hopes of achieving
> success: nine to 10 years. ("In fact, typically, I think historically,
> counterinsurgency operations have gone at least nine or 10 years.")
>
> Number of years Bush administration officials are now suggesting that
> 30,000-40,000 US troops might have to remain garrisoned at US bases in
> Iraq: 54, according to the "Korea model" now being considered. (US
> troops have garrisoned South Korea since the Korean War ended in
> 1953.)
>
> Number of Iraqi police, trained by Americans, who were not on duty as
> of January 2007, just before the "surge" plan was put into operation:
> about 32,000 out of a force of 188,000, according to the Associated
> Press. About one in six Iraqi policemen has been killed, has been
> wounded, has deserted, or has just disappeared. About 5,000 probably
> have deserted; and 7,000-8,000 are simply "unaccounted for". (Recall
> here Bush's old jingle of 2005: "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand
> down.")
>
> Number of years before the Iraqi security forces are capable of taking
> charge of their country's security: "a couple of years", according to
> US Army Brigadier-General Dana Pittard, commander of the Iraq
> Assistance Group.
>
> Amount of "reconstruction" money invested in the CIA's key asset in
> the new Iraq, the Iraqi National Intelligence Service: $3 billion,
> according to Escobar (see We build walls, not nations, April 24).
>
> Number of Iraqi "Kit Carson scouts" being trained in the just-captured
> western part of Baquba: more than 100. (There were thousands of "Kit
> Carsons" in the Vietnam War - former enemy fighters employed by US
> forces; the name derives from 19th-century American frontiersman
> Christopher Houston Carson.) In fact, Vietnam-era plans, ranging from
> Strategic Hamlets (dubbed, in the Iraqi urban context, "gated
> communities") to the "oil spot" counterinsurgency strategy, have been
> recycled for use in Iraq, as has a US penchant for applying names from
> America's Indian Wars to counterinsurgency situations abroad,
> including, for instance, dubbing an embattled supply depot near Abu
> Ghraib "Fort Apache".
>
> Number of Iraqis who have fled their country since 2003: estimated to
> be between 2 million and 2.2 million, or nearly one in 10 Iraqis.
> According to independent reporter Dahr Jamail, at least 50,000 more
> refugees are fleeing the country every month.
>
> Number of Iraqi refugees who have been accepted by the United States:
> Fewer than 500, according to Bob Woodruff of ABC News; 701, according
> to Agence France-Presse. (Under international and congressional
> pressure, the Bush administration has finally agreed to admit another
> 7,000 Iraqis by year's end.)
>
> Number of Iraqis who are now internal refugees in Iraq, largely
> because of sectarian violence since 2003: at least 1.9 million,
> according to the UN. (A recent Red Crescent Society report, based on a
> survey taken in Iraq, indicates that internal refugees have quadrupled
> since January 2007, and are up eightfold since June 2006.)
>
> Percentage of refugees, internal and external, under 12: 55%,
> according to the president of the Red Crescent Society.
>
> Percentage of Baghdadi children, 3 to 10, exposed to a major traumatic
> event in the past two years: 47%, according to a World Health
> Organization survey of 600 children. Fourteen percent of them showed
> symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. In another study of 1,090
> adolescents in Mosul, that figure reached 30%.
>
> Number of Iraqi doctors who have fled the country since 2003: an
> estimated 12,000 of the country's 34,000 registered doctors since
> 2003, according to the Iraqi Medical Association. The association
> reports that another 2,000 doctors have been slain in those years.
>
> Number of Iraqi refugees created since UN Secretary General Ban Ki-
> Moon declared a "humanitarian crisis" for Iraq in January 2007: an
> estimated 250,000.
>
> Percentage of Iraqis now living on less than $1 a day, according to
> the UN: 54%.
>
> Iraq's per capita annual income: $3,600 in 1980; $860 in 2001 (after a
> decade of UN sanctions); $530 at the end of 2003, according to
> Escobar, who estimates that the number may now have fallen below $400
> (see Baghdad up close and personal, May 2). Unemployment in Iraq is
> about 60%.
>
> Percentage of Iraqis who do not have regular access to clean water:
> 70%, according to the World Health Organization. (Eighty percent "lack
> effective sanitation".)
>
> Rate of chronic child malnutrition: 21%, according to the WHO. (Rates
> of child malnutrition had already nearly doubled by 2004, only 20
> months after the invasion.) According to the United Nations Children's
> Fund (UNICEF), "about one in 10 children under five in Iraq [is]
> underweight".
>
> Number of Iraqis held in US prisons in their own country: 17,000 by
> March 2007, almost 20,000 by May 2007 and surging.
>
> Number of Iraqis detained in Baquba alone in one week this month in
> Operation Phantom Thunder: more than 700.
>
> Average number of Iraqis who died violently each day in 2006: 100 -
> and this is undoubtedly an underestimate, since not all deaths are
> reported.
>
> Number of Iraqis who have died violently (based on the above average)
> since Secretary General Ban declared a "humanitarian crisis" for Iraq
> in January 2007: 15,000 - again certainly an undercount.
>
> Number of Iraqis who died (in what Juan Cole terms Iraq's "everyday
> apocalypse") during the week of June 17-23, 2007, according to the
> careful daily tally from media reports offered at the website
> Antiwar.com: 763, or an average of 109 media-reported deaths a day.
> (June 17: 74; June 18: 149; June 19: 169; June 20: 116; June 21: 58;
> June 22: 122; June 23: 75.)
>
> Percentage of seriously wounded who don't survive in emergency rooms
> and intensive-care units, because of lack of drugs, equipment, and
> staff: nearly 70%, according to the WHO.
>
> Number of university professors who have been killed since the
> invasion of 2003: more than 200, according to the Iraqi Ministry of
> Higher Education.
>
> The value of an Iraqi life: a maximum of $2,500 in "consolation" or
> "solatia" payments made by the US military to Iraqi civilians who died
> "as a result of US and coalition forces' actions during combat",
> according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. These
> payments imply no legal responsibility for the killings.
>
> For rare "extraordinary cases" (and let's not even imagine what these
> might be), payments of up to $10,000 were approved last year, with the
> authorization of a division commander. According to Walter Pincus of
> the Washington Post, "We are not talking big condolence payouts thus
> far. In 2005, the sums distributed in Iraq reached $21.5 million and -
> with violence on the upswing - dropped to $7.3 million last year, the
> GAO reported."
>
> The value of an Iraqi car, destroyed by US forces: $2,500 would not be
> unusual, and conceivably the full value of the car, according to the
> same GAO report. A former US Army judge advocate, who served in Iraq,
> has commented: "The full market value may be paid for a Toyota run
> over by a tank in the course of a non-combat related accident, but
> only $2,500 may be paid for the death of a child shot in the
> crossfire."
>
> Percentage of Americans who approve of Bush's actions in Iraq: 23%,
> according to the latest post-"surge" Newsweek poll. The president's
> overall approval rating stood at 26% in this poll, just 3 points above
> those of only one president, Richard Nixon at his Watergate worst, and
> Bush's polling figures are threatening to head into that territory. In
> the latest, now-two-week-old National Broadcasting Corp/Wall Street
> Journal poll, 10% of Americans think the "surge" has made things
> better in Iraq, 54% worse.
>
> The question is: What word best describes the situation these Iraqi
> numbers hint at? The answer would probably be: no such word exists.
> "Genocide" has been beaten into the ground and doesn't apply. "Civil
> war", which shifts all blame to the Iraqis (withdrawing Americans from
> a country its troops have not yet begun to leave), doesn't faintly
> cover the matter.
>
> If anything catches the carnage and mayhem that were once the nation
> of Iraq, it might be a comment by the head of the Arab League, Amr
> Mussa, in 2004. He warned: "The gates of hell are open in Iraq." At
> the very least, the "gates of hell" should now officially be
> considered miles behind us on the half-destroyed, well-mined highway
> of Iraqi life. Who knows what IEDs lie ahead? We are, after all, in
> the underworld.
>
> Tom Engelhardt is editor of Tomdispatch and the author of The End of
> Victory Culture. His novel, The Last Days of Publishing, has recently
> come out in paperback. Most recently, he is the author of Mission
> Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and
> Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch
> interviews.
>
> (Copyright 2007 Tomdispatch. Used by permission.)
>