Connections and reasons...

Today 60 people were killed by suicide bombers across Iraq. Yesterday the toll was higher. 80 people were killed. It is difficult to read this and not think about new revelations reported by McClatchy a couple of days back which asserted that the Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaeda and the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime. The use of abusive interrogation — widely considered torture — as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them."There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity. 

..."The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there." It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003.

Relatives mourned in Dhuluiya, north of Baghdad at the funeral of an Iraqi who was among the 80 killed across the country yesterday. Photo from the Associated Press

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Keith Olbermann analyzes the timelines involved in this and talks to Jonathan Landay, the McClatchy reporter who first revealed that torture was used to forcibly produce false testimony reflecting a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

A new Conciliatory Phase??

"Too often the United States starts by dictating — in the past on some of these issues — and we don't always know all the factors that are involved, what we want to do is to listen, set aside some of the preconceptions that have existed and have built up over the last several years. And I think if we do that, then there's a possibility at least of achieving some breakthroughs." - Barack Obama in an interview to Al Arabiya on Jan 26 2009

The erstwhile neo-cons who ruled us till recently will not be able to sleep tonight... or possibly for many nights henceforth...

The 'Shock and Awe' doctrine

It is instructive to compare the number of people killed on either side after the Israeli attack on Hamas (in bold below) that took place some hours back.

Reason for the Israeli attack on Hamas (from the NY Times):

The air attack came after days of warnings by Israeli officials that Israel would retaliate for intense rocket and mortar fire against Israeli towns and villages by Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza. On Wednesday alone, more than 60 rockets and mortars were fired, some reaching further than previously. While the Hamas rockets are meant to be deadly, and several houses and a factory were hit, sowing widespread panic, no Israelis were killed or seriously injured in the recent attacks.

Meanwhile over in Gaza after the Israeli response: (from CNN and the NY Times):

Israeli aircraft launched air attacks across Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 155 people, including the Hamas police chief and other officials, according to Israeli and Palestinian sources. Palestinian medical sources said 250 people were wounded in the air raid in Gaza. At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, scores of dead bodies were laid out in front of the morgue waiting for family members to identify them. Many were dismembered. Inside the hospital, relatives carried a five-month old baby who had suffered a serious head wound from shrapnel. Overwhelmed, the hospital staff seemed unable to offer help. At the Gaza City police station, at least 15 traffic police who had been training in a courtyard were killed on the spot. Tamer Kahrouf, 24, a civilian who had been working on a construction site in Jabaliya, north of Gaza City, said he saw his two brothers and uncle killed before his eyes when the Israeli planes bombed a security post nearby.

Sole matters

The following news snippet seems to be a shoo-in for phrases like 'kick starting a business'...

The shoe hurled at President George W. Bush has sent sales soaring at the Turkish maker as orders pour in from Iraq, the U.S. and Iran. The brown, thick-soled “Model 271” may soon be renamed “The Bush Shoe” or “Bye-Bye Bush,” Ramazan Baydan, who owns the Istanbul-based producer Baydan Ayakkabicilik San. & Tic., said in a telephone interview today.

“We’ve been selling these shoes for years but, thanks to Bush, orders are flying in like crazy,” he said. “We’ve even hired an agency to look at television advertising.”

2008 in photographs... 1, 2 and 3 (from Big Picture).

A man carries the body of a child recovered from the rubble of a destroyed house after an air strike in Baghdad's Sadr City in Iraq on April 29, 08'

On a curious spectacle of ‘flying shoes’ in mainstream television

As a couple of size 10 shoes sailed ungracefully over the head of leader of the free world, I took some time out to read parts of a report that chronicles the events that have led unto the colossal failure in the reconstruction of Iraq. One might think that after five years there, reconstruction might be progressing at a fast clip and infrastructural development proceeding smoothly. The report manages to convey something far from that line of thought. The report lays bare a continuous string of flawed decision making and points to the single factor that might be responsible for the quagmire that we are in now: Miscalculation. Pure and simple miscalculation.

A colossal miscalculation of what the United States would face after the shock and awe of the initial firebombing campaign was complete. Miscalculations that seemed to have spawned countless trial and error governance experiments executed on the fly to fix mistakes even as scores of innocent civilians were mowed down by roving Sunni/Shia death squads. To borrow from the science of project management, when one conceives of a project without a coherent project plan or roadmap, one is forced to adapt to the 'whack a mole' approach to running the same. Just as soon as a problem pops up, the response to tackling the problem turns out to be tactical, imprecise, short sighted and novel in every instance.

The ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ nature of the invasion did not account for any strategic thinking with respect to the larger picture at hand – that Iraq was a country full of living, breathing people just like you and me. Instead, the focus on removing Saddam and the elaborate framework that he had built to syncretize power so consumed the war planners that governance of the country and its people were relegated to being nothing but afterthoughts. Afterthoughts that have come to haunt us in the form of flying shoes sailing unceremoniously on mainstream television. In many ways, one hopes that the fiasco in Iraq will serve as a constant and present reminder towards large nations to think twice, breathe deeply and weigh options before starting to meddle in places where they have little idea of local mores, customs, sects or culture.

The following incident featuring the creator of the phrase 'known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns' vividly illustrates the sheer ignorance with which a senior strategist like the United States Defense Secretary went into Iraq.

On the eve of the invasion, as it began to dawn on a few officials that the price for rebuilding Iraq would be vastly greater than they had been told, the degree of miscalculation was illustrated in an encounter between Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, and Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant general who had hastily been named the chief of what would be a short-lived civilian authority called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.
The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq.
“What do you think that’ll cost?” Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.
“I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” Mr. Garner said.
“My friend,” Mr. Rumsfeld replied, “if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”
In a way he never anticipated, Mr. Rumsfeld turned out to be correct: before that year was out, the United States had appropriated more than $20 billion for the reconstruction, which would indeed involve projects across the entire country.

An American soldier watches President Bush's televised apology for Abu Ghraib. Iraq 2004. Photo by Ashley Gilbertson. From here.

Monday Quotable

"I have learned a long time ago. When they come up and say this has to be done and has to be done immediately, there is no other way of doing it, you have to sit back and take a deep breath and nine times out of 10 they are not telling the truth"

- Republican Senator Jim Inhofe asserting that Henry Paulson might have decided who to dole out the $700,000,000,000.00 taxpayer financed bailout money based on his Wall Street friendships.

It is funny, while Inhofe was referring to the extreme haste with which Sec. Paulson rushed the TARP legislation through Congress by invoking that 'all will be lost' if we do not pass it, one could almost apply Inhofe's comments verbatim to the case made for the Iraq war.
If we do not learn from history, we are condemned to repeat it again, again and again...

The Poker Game, Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (1844-1934), oil on canvas, 41" X 50". (Image from Sotheby's)

Nettlesome numbers

Even if numbers bore most people, it is important to get ones head around some of the taxpayer money wasted by the quagmire in Iraq.

A report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that Iraq will generate $86 billion this year from oil revenues.

The box on the left shows the amounts allocated in the budgets for stabilization, electricity, security and water resource development in Iraq. It is indeed striking that while similar amounts were allocated (~$30 billion) by both Iraq and America, we have managed to spend 70% of our taxpayer money on Iraqi infrastructural development while Iraq (who is already flush with $86 billion this year from oil revenues) has spent only a little over 10% of its own money. Why are we even financing their reconstruction when they have the money to do this?

A final bit of sobering news is that the Iraq war is costing approximately 12 billion taxpayer dollars a month according to Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz.

Image from the today's New York Times newspaper.

On Powell for Obama

Today the media is drunk on the fact that Gen. Colin Powell has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama's candidacy for the presidency of the U.S. I am not sure if this is that much of a big deal.

Here was one man who could single handedly have prevented the Iraq fiasco. Here was one man who could have asked tougher questions to his boss and his direct reports before he lied to the United Nations (full transcript here) about the State of Iraq amassing WMDs. I remember watching that speech and actually believing him. I had a funny feeling that a highly decorated military man would not stand up in front of the United Nations and spew lies. At the end of that speech, I was thinking that it might be the right move after all - Iraq and Saddam Hussein must indeed be stopped in their tracks.

I also remember a feeling of betrayal that swept across the nation when it was conclusively proved that all the talk of finding stockpiles of yellow cake uranium, WMDs and chemical weapons turned out to be a complete fabrication. Remember vividly…
I am not so sure if this endorsement is such a big deal especially when Sen. Barack Obama actually voted against going to war in Iraq.

Detail from a painting by Winslow Homer (1836 - 1910), 'Sounding Reveille', oil on canvas, 13" X 19", 1865 (image from a Christie's book)

On yesterday's debate

If yesterday's debate was a contest on who could appear folksier, homely and cutesy then Gov. Sarah Palin hit the ball out of the park. Of course, that is not what debates that help us choose leaders for our nation are about - or is it? With nowhere to go but upwards, she did not have a meltdown that most predicted. In fact, she came off as very articulate, very clear and lucid on every answer - except that her responses were not really answers to the questions posed. She managed to go off tangent to just about any and every question asked of her on policy, healthcare, Iraq and domestic affairs. She also relied on this strange circular logic where on the one hand she said that Sen. McCain will enforce strict governmental oversight while in a retort right after said that government is the problem and needs to get out of the way… One cannot have it both ways!
When did expectations sink so low that when reactions the next day are 'Thank god she did not embarrass us' became the standard to judge vice presidential candidates?

Sen. Biden on the other hand was fairly calm and collected with his answers. His answers were more direct and to the point and he managed to produce pertinent answers to questions asked of him. In particular, I was shocked by the following factoid ‘we have spent more money -- we spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we spent on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan building that country’. I have not fact checked this, but if true is simply an astounding example of misguided leadership. Of course, expectations that his answers would be long winded, empty and airy were not fulfilled. Here again we breathed a sigh of relief and said, ‘Thank god, he did not shame the campaign with his gaffes’. Of course, he was definitely, very definitely more Presidential of the two and handily won the debate.

In our fervent prayers that candidates scrape by and not embarrass themselves, we are lowering the bar for ourselves in general and for the country at large.

In keeping with her style, Palinesque moments that had a 'Kouric interview' feel to them abounded - some of them here:

• “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be all, end all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet” – magnetic poetry alert.
• “The reason we don't read about Afghanistan anymore in the paper, it's succeeded.” – the last I checked there was a growing Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan slowing winding its way into Pakistan.
• “As we discuss ANWR there, at least we can agree to disagree on that one. I will keep pushing him on ANWR” – I have no idea what she meant here…

Full transcript here.

Comment

When the invasion of Iraq was underway in full force and things were just starting to go south, a popular refrain among people that I met was the following: 'Let our boys finish what they started', which I thought was a callous and flippant response. A similar situation unfolds today with Russia riding shotgun over Georgia. I wonder how many people would say things like 'Let the ruskie boys finish what they started' in reference to this conflict that is slowly starting to mirror the quagmire in Iraq.

Mashup

Lewis Lapham mashes up Gitmo, Milton, Iraq and Sean Bell in a three page broadside against erosion of individual rights in the July issue of Harpers.

The trillion dollar war

This analysis, first published in 2005 is still relevant (as outlandish it might have sounded then). A trillion is a big number.

Of body counts and love letters

The New York Times today produced four full length pages that incorporated black and white photographs of the faces of the latest 1000 soldiers killed in action over in Iraq. I guess it was published to remember two anniversaries coming close to each other around this time: The war entering the sixth year and the 'round number' of four thousand soldiers killed in the conflict.
I tried reading through the names and after a while, I got lost in the mind numbing implications of missed connections behind these black and white closely spaced photographs. Around me, I counted about four people reading the Times and I waited to see their reactions as they got to this page. Two of them registered no recognition - they passed over these four pages of dead faces like one passes over a back page advert for used cars. One had a look of resignation and flipped over to the next page for more news and a fourth person stared at it for a long time, closed the paper, threw it into the trash can and looked out the window across the New York harbor.

I also remember doing a quick mental calculation to see how many pages the Times would need to print the nameless faces of the estimated 600,000 Iraqi citizens slaughtered during the course of this war and it comes out to about 2400 full sheet newsprint sized pages.

From the journal (copy of letter here) of Specialist Daniel Gomez, an Army combat medic writing to Ms Katy Broom, the love of his life.

Hey baby. If you’re reading this, then something has happen to me and I am sorry. I promised you I would come back to you, but I guess it was a promise I could not keep. You know I never believe in writing “death letters.” I knew if I left one for my folks it would scare them. Then I met you. We were supposed to meet, darling. I needed someone to make me smile, someone that was an old romantic like I was. I was going through a very rough time in Iraq and I was startin to doubt my mental state. Then one day after a patrol, I go to my facebook and there you were...

I can’t stop crying while I writing this letter, but I have to talk to you one last time, because maybe the last time I heard your voice I did not know it would be the last time I heard your voice....

I Love You. Go be happy, go raise a family. Teach your kids right from wrong, and have faith, darling. I think I knew I loved you even before I met. I love you, Katy. * Kiss * Goodbye

On July 18, 2007, two months after his leave, Specialist Gomez died in Adhamiya when the Bradley fighting vehicle he was in struck a roadside bomb. The explosion and flames also killed three other soldiers.

Of course, not all is gloom and doom as the following video shows.

Stuff Happens...

Not to ruin the Oscar weekend, but Opinion Research Business (ORB) group, a market research company based in England has confirmed their earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003.

Methodology: Over the 2,160 respondents who answered the questionnaire, 20% said that there had been at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict which started in 2003. Within these households the average number of deaths was 1.26 people. The last complete census in Iraq conducted in 1997 indicated a total of 4,050,597 households. Based on this our data suggests a total of 1,033,239 deaths since March 2003.

Revised Casualty data here (word document).

Maybe these numbers are way off, like sampling errors inherent in most statistical interpolations. Even assuming that they are off by 50% (a very high error rate), the numbers are still staggeringly high - half a million human beings slaughtered.

Fallout

I had talked about the above picture back in February of this year on Simplistic Art and thought that it was amazing on a number of aspects - love, a war that I never understood, women's ability to look beyond what lies on the outside and the institution of marriage - all very powerful qualities that was succinctly captured in this very compelling photograph.

Well, I will be going to see this photo and more of this kind at the Jen Beckman gallery tomorrow and look forward to this very much - as much for appreciating the artist’s (Nina Berman) vision in capturing the brief sparks of some wasted lives as for the underlying hope in the pictures that seem to spring from the most direst of times...

From the review in the Times…

‘The bride, Renee Kline, 21, is dressed in a traditional white gown and holds a bouquet of scarlet flowers. The groom, Ty Ziegel, 24, a former Marine sergeant, wears his dress uniform, decorated with combat medals, including a Purple Heart. Her expression is unsmiling, maybe grave. His, as he looks toward her, is hard to read: his dead-white face is all but featureless, with no nose and no chin, as blank as a pullover mask.
Two years earlier, while in Iraq as a Marine Corps reservist, Mr. Ziegel had been trapped in a burning truck after a suicide bomber’s attack. The heat melted the flesh from his face. At Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas he underwent 19 rounds of surgery. His shattered skull was replaced by a plastic dome, and a face was constructed more or less from scratch with salvaged tissue, holes left where his ears and nose had been.’

Of spools and reels - an interesting quote

Mathias Grünewald, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1515

“In the States, it’s like we’re in the last half of the third reel of a three-reel movie, and all we have to do is decide we’re done here, and the credits come up, and the lights come on, and we leave the theater and go on to something else," he said. "Whereas out here, you’re just getting into the first reel of five reels,” he added, “and as ugly as the first reel has been, the other four and a half are going to be way, way worse.”

--US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, as quoted in the New York Times

Meanwhile, the war rages on...

Every day the New York Times produces the tally of dead US soldiers that day. Every once in a while the list gets to me and I really don't know what to do...
Scanned below is the 'tally' for yesterday. Mind you, this does not take into account the deaths of non-military personnel, Iraqi citizens or nationals of other countries embroiled in Iraq currently.

Seen at the Venice Biennale:

Emily Prince "American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan (But Not Including the Wounded, Nor the Iraqis nor the Afghanis) 2004 to the present". Pencil on color coated vellum. Project comprised of approximately 3,800 drawings to be added to daily. Each image: 4 x 3 in. / 10.2 x 7.6 cm. Overall: 300 x 540 in. / 762 x 1371.6 cm. (Photo ripped from New York magazine)