Iraq: Where Things Stand
Overview of Life in Iraq Four Years After Invasion

By TOM NAGORSKI
March 19, 2007— - "We spent a lot of money because I was optimistic that the situation would improve. Now I regret that decision." - Mohammad Hassin, 38, Baghdad restaurant owner

"In our final exams in college, the phone of a female student rang with a Shiite religious song...The professor was a Sunni Kurd and a former Baathist, and he became very angry and started shouting at the girl, telling her what a bad song this is." - Ayman Ali, 23, Baghdad cigarette company employee

"It is hard to say this but years ago I was praying for the death of [former president] Saddam Hussein, but today I wish he could come back to life and was in power again, because at least in his time we used to have safe water, good sewage systems, had food to eat and our children never got diarrhea," - Sahira Saleh, 41 Sadr City resident

"I am very optimistic for the future of Iraq…[because] I know its people." - Nizar Hana, Erbil businessman

"We used to live as neighbors for centuries, and there were no problems between us at all. We have married their women, and they have married our women. We attended their parties and wakes, and they did the same. But after the bombings of Samarra, things collapsed between us." - Sattar Jabbar, 41, Shiite imam, al-Jalaika mosque, al-Hahama district north of Baghdad

The Report: Overview and Conclusions

This report is the product of three parallel efforts: reporting conducted in roughly two dozen cities and towns across Iraq, by ABC News Baghdad correspondent Terry McCarthy, producer Almin Karamehmedovic, the staff of the ABC bureau in Baghdad and reporters from USA Today and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC); a nationwide poll -- one of the most comprehensive opinion surveys ever done in modern Iraq; and research culled by ABC News staffers.

It is the fifth such report since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Each one has differed somewhat in methodology while sharing a fundamental goal: to understand how Iraq and its people are faring, in comparison to the pre-invasion period. Are Iraqis better off today than before the war? Have their lives improved in tangible, quantifiable ways? Are they optimistic about the future? Such questions are what this project is all about.

The conclusions this time are unambiguous, and disturbing. Iraqis report a collapse of basic services, a steep decline in quality-of-life indices, and -- perhaps most significant -- an erosion of hope and faith that the future will bring better times. As ABC News polling director Gary Langer writes of the poll itself, it "paints a devastating portrait of life in Iraq." In the last "Where Things Stand" report (December 2005), even Iraqis who reported great difficulties in their own circumstances told us their lives were going well (71 percent); they believed that post-invasion Iraq was better than Saddam Hussein's Iraq (51 percent) and that their future was bright (64 percent). Today that hope is gone. Only 39 percent say their lives are going well, just 42 percent say life is better than it was under Saddam Hussein, and only 35 percent see better days ahead.

Optimism in Iraq has been shredded by violence that has touched a staggering number of Iraqis directly; today 53 percent report having a close friend or immediate relative who's been hurt or killed. A full 80 percent report attacks nearby -- car bombs, snipers, kidnappings, armed forces, fighting each other or abusing civilians. As Terry McCarthy reports, "car bombs and death squads have torn apart the fabric of a society where one third of all marriages used to be mixed, and people rarely asked or cared whether someone was Sunni or Shiite."

In central Iraq especially, a profound schism has opened between Iraq's Sunni and Shia Muslims. Already in December 2005, we reported that differences were growing between the groups on a range of questions -- about Iraqi politics and their lives more generally. The February 2006 bombing of the Shiite shrine at Samarra widened the divide dramatically, and drove many Iraqis on both sides to violence. Today the divide is mirrored in public opinion: 70 percent of Shiites and 83 percent of Kurds -- groups brutally suppressed by Saddam Hussein -- still favor the invasion. But 98 percent of Iraq's Sunnis -- who were empowered under Saddam -- say the invasion was wrong. Roughly half of Shiites say their lives are going well; only 7 percent of Sunnis say the same.

The violence and sectarian divide have conspired to bring down ratings for several critical aspects of daily life -- jobs, schools, power and fuel supply, and health care, to name a few. Just 16 months ago, majorities rated eight of 10 categories as "good;" today a majority in each case rank these areas as "bad." While less dramatic than the violence itself, these quality-of-life indicators continue to matter greatly to the Iraqi people.

The United States -- which only three years ago won at least grudging praise for its invasion and credit for positive developments -- today comes in for withering blame. Three years ago 51 percent of Iraqis opposed the presence of American forces on their soil; today 78 percent are opposed. Perhaps most disturbing from an American perspective, 51 percent of Iraqis now tell us it would be "acceptable" to attack U.S. or coalition forces in Iraq; in early 2004 the figure was 17 percent.

Four years on, silver linings are hard to come by. The Kurdish north remains an island of relative calm and prosperity by nearly every metric (save electricity and fuel). Certainly Iraq's Kurds believe life is improving. Having said that, ABC's Terry McCarthy discovered different ethnic tensions in Kirkuk -- not Sunni vs. Shia, but Turkmen vs. Arab vs. Kurd. Commerce continues to grow in many places, despite all the problems. And the prospect of passage of an oil law raises hopes for a more prosperous and equitable future in many parts of the country. Amid all the violence we have also found vestiges of an indomitable Iraqi optimism. Anecdotally, these are best exemplified by the Baghdad emergency-room physicians who never shrink from their work, the police recruits who keep lining up for duty, and the ballet school students still dancing, though their piano teachers are gone. Overall, for all the troubles, a majority of Iraqis -- 58 percent -- say they want Iraq to remain a single, unified state.

But for the most part, this is an unmistakably distressing portrait of a nation. Only 16 months ago, when we last conducted these surveys, we reported that Iraq stood at a turning point, with "ample reasons for optimism" and a profound faith in the future. Today that faith and optimism seem distant indeed. The question of course is whether a "turning point" has come and gone.

The Poll

This year's poll was conducted for ABC News, USA Today, the BBC and ARD German Television between Feb. 25 and March 5, 2007. Interviews were conducted with a random national sample of 2,212 Iraqi adults in every one of the country's eighteen provinces, including so-called "oversamples" in Anbar province, Basra city, Kirkuk and the Sadr City section of Baghdad. The results have a 2.5-point error margin.

The Reporters

ABC's Terry McCarthy and other ABC News producers and reporters visited 18 cities and towns across the country. These trips were complemented by reporting conducted for the project by USA Today and the BBC. In many cases ABC News went back to see people we had come to know during earlier versions of the report -- the police chief in Kirkuk, doctors at Nasariyah Hospital, a Baquba engineer and a Basra hotel manager. At every step, we were interested to learn how lives had been changed, for better or worse, since the Americans came to Iraq.

The Research

Using official reports from nongovernmental organizations and U.S. and Iraqi government agencies, as well as original reporting from both ABC News and USA Today, we have compiled statistics about life in Iraq. For each of the criteria below, we attempt to answer a simple question: Has it gotten better, worse or remained the same as compared to early 2004, when we first polled Iraqis nationwide. For the sake of these measurements, we have broken the country down into three geographic areas -- north, south and center. This breakdown is imperfect, of course; each region has significant divisions within it. The north, for example, includes both Kurdistan, which is faring comparatively well, and the non-Kurdish north, which is not. These "grades" are based on our poll, our reporting and our research.

Security

North: same or worse Central: worse South: same or worse

Security -- or the absence thereof -- has been the overriding concern for Iraqis since the invasion. Forty-eight percent cite security issues as the greatest problem in their lives, far more than said so in either 2004 or 2005. And it has been the case since we began these surveys that security troubles have damaged nearly every aspect of Iraqi life. Beyond the casualties themselves, the lack of security has kept children from schools, kept oil production below targets, shuttered businesses and stalled reconstruction projects. It has driven not only an enormous number (2 million, at last count) of people from the country, but also a broad range of people. According to a December 2006 U.N. report, "Various professional groups, including educators, medical professionals, journalists, judges and lawyers, religious and political leaders" have been targeted in the sectarian violence and forced to leave their homes.

The last time we polled Iraqis -- little more than one year ago -- 63 percent told us they felt "very safe" in their neighborhoods; now that figure has plummeted to 26 percent. Today three quarters of Iraqis say they lack the freedom to move about safely, or to live where they wish without persecution. Baghdad is now home to an almost unfathomable mix of violence and fear. We imagine as much, watching our daily coverage, but what we have found is startling nonetheless. As ABC News polling director Langer puts it, "essentially no one in Baghdad counts himself or herself as 'very safe,' vs. 32 percent elsewhere." Terry McCarthy and the ABC Baghdad bureau visited Sunni and Shiite "vigilante guards," armed gunmen who now number in the thousands, policing neighborhoods and sometimes carrying out revenge attacks against their sectarian enemies. The situation is moderately better in the south -- where banditry is more common than large-scale bombings. The Kurdish north remained a far brighter spot in these terms -- a place where nearly eight in 10 Iraqis feel "very safe," and where Iraqis are much less likely to have witnessed violence or even to have been indirectly affected by it.

All of this has taken a profound emotional toll. Seven in 10 Iraqis report multiple signs of possible traumatic stress: depression, difficulty sleeping and concentrating, and anger. It has also taken a toll on business and commercial traffic. Mohammad Hassin, a Baghdad restaurant owner, estimated that 70 percent of sit-down restaurants in the capital had shut down since 2003. The reasons? Food costs, fuel costs and all those well-heeled customers who have fled the country.

The violence has of course intruded on the work of reporters -- our own Bob Woodruff and CBS News' Kimberly Dozier being the highest-profile examples. And on several occasions the violence intruded on the poll-takers' work.

The good news here, such as it is, involves the hope that the U.S.-led "surge" of forces will improve matters -- and the continued growth of Iraq's security forces. The boost has seen police and army recruiting reach target levels -- though as we have learned from reporting in the last year, there are grave questions about the capability of these forces -- in particular the police, who are known to have been infiltrated by militia. While the Pentagon reports that Iraqi units are increasingly "taking the lead in operations," with 91 battalions now deemed battle-ready, a separate State Department report notes that "continued infiltration of the ISF and Iraqi Police by militia members also contributes to the escalating violence in some parts of the country." (As we write, The New York Times reports the story of a Baghdad district council member who complained that "The government, the Ministry of Interior, the army, all are sectarian." Two days after talking to the paper, the man was shot to death.)

The numbers below speak for themselves:

Statistics:

Iraqi Police killed: At least 6,208 (since war began) Iraqi civilians killed: (Estimates range widely) Brookings Index: between 53,000-59,000 Iraq Body Count: between 58,000-64,500 United Nations: 72,347 (through December 2006) Percentage of Iraqis who say someone in their own household has been harmed by current violence: 17 Iraqi journalists killed: 93 (168, including journalists' drivers and interpreters, as well as nonhostile but war-related deaths) Iraqis kidnapped: 30-40 per day (as of March 2006) Attacks on Iraqi oil and gas pipelines, installations and personnel: 391 Internally displaced people in Iraq (Note - these numbers are cumulative): 2003: 100,000 2004: 200,000 2005: 250,000 2006: 650,000 Percent of Iraqi professional class to leave the country since 2003 (as of June 2006): 40 percent Estimated number of Iraqis who have fled the country: 2,000,000 Percentage of Iraqis who say they would leave the country if they could: 30 Strength of insurgency nationwide (Estimate): November 2003: 5,000 January 2005: 18,000 October 2005: 15,000 - 20,000 October 2006: 20,000 - 30,000 Total Iraqi Forces (Police, National Guard, Iraqi Armed Forces and Border Patrol): December 2003: 99,600 Current: 328,700
Electricity and Fuel

North: worse Central: worse South: worse

From the first of the "Where Things Stand" reports, electricity has regularly ranked high on the list of most important quality-of-life indicators. In 2004, several Iraqis asked our reporters a basic question: How is it that the United States -- wealthiest nation in the world -- cannot repair our power grids?

Today, despite enormous efforts and expenditures -- the United States has invested roughly $320 million in oil and electricity infrastructure as of October 2006 -- satisfaction in this area ranks lowest among the indicators. After some initial progress between 2003 and 2006, many Iraqis have actually seen power supplies decline in the last year and a half. According to the United Nations, "The electricity sector in Iraq is in a dire state." And as Gary Langer notes, "While violence is devastating, it's sporadic; the lack of fuel and power are a lower-level discomfort, but a daily one." Today 88 percent of Iraqis say their power supply is inadequate or nonexistent; the corresponding number was 54 percent in late 2005.

The trouble is particularly acute in central Iraq. Baghdad receives considerably less power than the rest of the country, and less than it did before the U.S. invasion. As we reported last year, before the war Saddam Hussein saw to it that Baghdad residents enjoyed an almost constant supply of electricity, often by siphoning electricity from other parts of the country. Now that pattern has been reversed; beyond Baghdad, the numbers are better than prewar -- roughly 12 hours of power on average per day.

In one way, electricity presents a "good news, bad news" snapshot of the country: demand for electricity continues to rise with the proliferation of new appliances (good news -- this is illustrative of a growing economy). The bad news: The system has not kept pace, and in Baghdad it has suffered repeated setbacks. Feeder lines to electrical grids have been sabotaged. The price for substitutes -- power generators and ice, for example -- have skyrocketed.

On March 1, 2007, U.S. Brigadier Gen. Michael Walsh was asked when Iraq would enjoy full electricity capacity. His answer: 2013. And on Jan. 25, 2007, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., recalled a warning former U.S. envoy Paul Bremer had given about power blackouts -- "Iraqis," Bremer had said, "face an indefinite period of blackouts eight hours per day." Noting that Baghdad had slipped to less than seven hours per day of power, Biden said, "At this point the eight hours of daily blackouts, as Ambassador Bremer warned about, would be a dramatic step in the right direction."

Statistics:

Average Amount of Electricity Generated (megawatts):

Prewar (Estimates): Nationwide: 3,958 Baghdad: 2,500

January 2005: Nationwide: 3,289 Baghdad: 985

February 2007: Nationwide: 3,600 Baghdad: NA (last available report, April 2005: 854)

Average Hours of Electricity Per Day:

Prewar (Estimates): Nationwide: 4-8 Baghdad: 16-24

January 2005 Nationwide: 9 Baghdad: 9

September 2005 Nationwide: 13.5 Baghdad: 10.4

February 2007 Nationwide: 9.3 Baghdad: 6.0

Oil Production:

Crude production (millions of barrels/day) Prewar: 2.5 (estimate) September 2005: 2.11 February 2007: 2.08

Crude export (millions of barrels/day) Pre-ar: 1.7-2.5 (estimate) September 2005: 1.60 February 2007: 1.54

Unemployment/Availability of Jobs
North: same or worse Central: same or worse South : same or worse

Only 20 percent of Iraqis rate this area positively -- though the fact is that employment has stayed level since we reported last -- and is up sharply since the early days of the war. The latest figures we have put unemployment at anywhere between 25 and 40 percent of the population. And the security situation has made getting to and keeping businesses more difficult.

The government's main employment office reports that the great majority of the unemployed are young -- in their 20s and 30s  and we know from past reporting that young, unemployed men are leading candidates for recruitment by insurgent and terrorist groups. The employment office also tells us that lack of security is the principal problem -- "the government stopped implementing big projects," an official said, "that could have employed many more people."

There is a burgeoning "informal economy" in Iraq -- though much of our information about it comes anecdotally. Certainly there is a range of jobs in Iraq today that did not even exist prior to the war -- Iraqis hired by the U.S. and its coalition partners, Iraqi reporters and writers for the booming television, radio and newspaper trade, to name a few. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, new businesses have increased from 8,000 to more than 34,000.

Median household incomes are up -- according to our polls, from $150 a month in 2004 to $204 in 2005, to $286 today. That improvement has been largely offset by what the State Department in January 2007 reported was the second-highest rate of inflation in the world. Other economic indicators are given below: It is worth noting that while some of these are positive (most notably, a burgeoning GDP), the percentage of Iraqis who rate their economic situation negatively has more than doubled -- from 30 to 64 percent.

Statistics:

Nationwide Unemployment:

June 2003: 50-60 percent September 2005: 27-40 percent January 2007: 25-40 percent

Median Household Monthly Income:

2004: $150 2005: $204 2007: $286

Iraq GDP (U. S. $ billions):

2002: 20.5 2003: 13.6 2004: 25.5 2005: 34.5 (estimate) 2006: 48.5 (projected)

Water/Waste

North - same or worse Central - worse South - same or worse

Sewage treatment and clean water -- taken for granted, perhaps, in this country -- continue to rate as extremely important quality-of life issues in Iraq. A top U.S. general briefed ABC News reporters recently and shared his frustration over the slow pace of clean water and sewage projects. "You cannot overstate this," the general said. "Iraqis drinking bad water, Iraqi kids walking in sewage. It's a killer."

Overall, our poll found yet another erosion in optimism here -- only 30 percent of Iraqis believe their clean water supply is "good," down from 58 percent just a year and a half ago, despite significant effort and money being spent on bringing potable water and sewage treatment to more Iraqis. According to the U.S. government, Iraqi Relief and Reconstruction Fund (IRRF)-funded water projects have added or restored potable water treatment for approximately 5.35 million Iraqis who did not have access to potable water in April 2003.

Facts on the ground help explain the poll numbers. Particularly in central and northern Iraq, the water situation has worsened. The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) finds a slight improvement in water supplies in the south, but a deterioration elsewhere. The United Nations reports a significant increase -- 70 percent -- in cases of diarrhea among children since January 2006; the rise is 40 percent among adults. The United Nations and other NGOs involved in water treatment say the highest incidents have come in the Anbar Province towns of Hit, Rumana and parts of Fallujah and Ramadi. Sixty percent of people in Anbar Province are currently drinking river water.

Violence and looting have hurt this sector, too. UNICEF transports water into Iraq each day, a service that reaches roughly 350,000 people -- but the organization's deliveries have been severely limited in the last year because of daily looting. Potable water systems throughout Baghdad have been destroyed, and aid workers are reluctant to move in and fix them because of security concerns.

Statistics:

Access to clean drinking water: 32 percent of population
Access to a good sewage system: 19 percent of population

Education

North: same or worse Central: worse South: same or better

In our last report we were able to note "an almost unqualified success story" in the realm of education. Large majorities of Iraqis in the north, south and central parts of the country told us they believed that education where they lived had improved.

Today that positive outlook has taken a beating: Only 43 percent of Iraqis rate their local schools as "good" -- down from 74 percent in December 2005. There has been a stark drop in the numbers of children attending school -- not a reflection of the quality of schools, necessarily, but the safety of the schools. "Simply getting to class," according to one account, "has become an accountable risk for many&" According to Iraq's Ministry of Education, only 30 percent of 3.5 million Iraqi elementary-school children are attending classes -- a remarkable drop from 75 percent two years ago. While the vast majority of schools remain open and the government has instituted a relocation program for families who want to move their kids to safer areas, millions of children are receiving a sporadic education at best. The Education Ministry has hired thousands of guards to protect schools, and it recently increased teachers' salaries by 20 to 50 percent in an attempt to entice them to stay in their jobs.

A joint study by the Ministry and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) last year found that of those who do not attend school, 74 percent are female. Aid agencies estimate that thousands of Iraqi parents do not send their daughters to school for cultural reasons and because of the general insecurity in the country.

Several ABC News personnel have witnessed the troubles first hand. Correspondent Dan Harris was at a university campus when gunfire broke out; a Baghdad primary school teacher, who asked not to be identified by name, said many parents pulled children from the school once they learned it was guarded by the Mahdi Army; and a 28-year-old mother of two told USA Today that her children now keep cell phones in class so that she can check on their safety -- and that they "talk about the bodies they see in the street, about the car bombs, and the explosions."

Statistics:

Education professionals killed (since 2003): 155

Overall attendance rate:

2006: 50 percent

Elementary school attendance rate:

2004: 75 percent 2006: 30 percent

Since 2003, USAID has rehabilitated nearly 3,000 schools and supplied, together with UNESCO, 20 million new textbooks.

Health Care

North: same or worse Central: worse South: same The ICRC reports that "health services and infrastructure have steadily deteriorated," calling the situation in Baghdad "particularly critical." Dr. Ibraheem Maroof, of Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital, told us that "Our hospital is the main center for emergencies in Baghdad -- and most of our equipment is not functioning." From our survey, we know this much: That in our last poll 62 percent of Iraqis told us the availability of health care was "good;" today that figure has dropped by half, to 31 percent.
Medical staff in Iraq today often lack adequate protection; more than half the country's registered doctors have fled, according to the ICRC -- a shocking and obviously damaging development. One doctor -- a 29-year-old general practitioner named Hassanain Abdul Jabaar, told us he quit because the trip to his Baghdad hospital had become too dangerous. "I think I'm done," he said. "There is no hope for the medical practice in Iraq."

Certainly more money has been spent on health care since the prewar time -- but again, Iraqis in many parts of the country are not seeing the benefits. The health care system continues to suffer the effects of disrepair, lack of medicines, and poor equipment. "You can see the nice wards," Dr. Jareer Razaq Aziz told us at the main hospital in Nasariyah, "but there are no drugs." Hospitals and clinics are hampered by the problems in other areas -- poor sanitation and water supply, sporadic electricity and of course the threat of violence. The highest-profile example of this: the kidnapping, in November 2006, of the Deputy Minister of Health.

One note regarding the sectarian divide: The fact that the Ministry of Health is run by Shiites may account for the relative consistency noted by Iraqis in the south. A story of promise and potential is the building of the Basra Children's Hospital -- a $77 million project that is due to be completed in July 2008.

Statistics:

Hospitals built since invasion: none

Doctors and pharmacists murdered: 200 (approx.)

Doctors who have fled abroad: 15,000 (approx.)

Ambulance drivers in Baghdad:

2003: 80 2007: 400

Availability of Goods

North: same or worse Central: worse South: same

Commerce has been a good-news area, since we began putting together these reports. This year it presents a puzzle. In December 2005, 60 percent rated this area as "good;" now that figure is 38 percent. Part of this may reflect overall malaise; part, economic deprivation; part, the difficulties and dangers inherent in simply traveling to purchase available goods. In our poll, 54 percent of Iraqis -- rising to 74 percent among Sunni Arabs -- told us they often stay away from markets and other crowded areas in order to avoid trouble. And yet if they do venture out, Iraqis in many parts of the country can buy a wider variety of goods -- and in some cases more Iraqis have done so. Residents of Sadr City told us they have possessions -- appliances in particular -- they never dreamed of having before the war. The figures under "statistics" below show huge jumps in the number of Iraqis with cell phones and Internet service -- as well as a huge jump in virtually all forms of available media.

One can find -- as Terry McCarthy did at the southern port of Abu Flus, the Iranian border crossing at Zurbathia, or the northern city or Erbil -- places where goods and services are moving at rates higher than before the war, and where commerce has survived -- thrived, even -- despite the violence. Open borders, the lifting of prewar sanctions, and more disposable income have all contributed to an explosion in commerce.

During his travels in the Kurdish north, Terry McCarthy found a real-estate boom -- personified most dramatically by a proud and hopeful man named Nizar Hana, who is bankrolling a huge mall -- to the tune of 1 billion dollars -- in the center of Erbil.

Statistics:

Telephone subscribers:

Prewar: 833,000 (estimate; ONLY land lines since Iraq had no cellular network) January 2004: 600,000 January 2005: 2,449,139 August 2005: 4,590,398 January 2007: 8,100,000 (approx) Mobile telephone in household:

February 2004: 6 percent November 2005: 62 percent March 2007: 89 percent Internet subscribers (Does not include unregulated users at Internet cafes):

Prewar: 4,500 (estimate) January-April 2004: NA May 2004: 54,000 March 2005: 147,076 August 2006: 197,310

Washing machine in household:

February 2004: 44 percent November 2005: 54 percent March 2007: 59 percent

Commercial television stations:

Prewar: 0 January 2005: 10 October 2005: 44 March 2006: 54

Commercial Radio Stations:

Prewar: 0 January 2005: 51 October 2005: 72 March 2006: 114

Independent newspapers and magazines:

Prewar: 0 January 2005: 100 October 2005: more than 100 March 2006: 268

Iraqi Airways average daily passengers:

2005: 300 2006: 1,500

Iraqi Airways average daily flights:

2005: 3-4 2006: 10-12

Local Government

North: same Central: worse South: same

The last "Where Things Stand" report was published on the eve of the December 2005 elections -- when faith in both the electoral process and public institutions ran fairly high.

Today we found several signs of eroding support for the leaders of Iraq. Public support for democracy has fallen to roughly 40 percent. Views of the performance of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki are negative -- though his ratings mirror the sectarian divide; more than 6 in 10 among Kurds and Shiites support the Prime Minister; 96 percent of Sunnis disapprove.

Generally speaking, trust in public institutions is sharply divided along sectarian lines -- very low among Sunnis, far higher among Shiites and Kurds. This is the case whether the institution in question is the national government, local government, the army or the police. One smaller, still critical example: There remains no true consensus on what legal system to use; courts do not exist in many areas and are corrupt and ineffective in others.

Finally, 42 percent of Iraqis today say their country is in a civil war. Another 24 percent see one as likely.

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

It has been increasingly challenging for me to keep hope for Iraq like it is for so many.
The point that Frum doesn't contextualize is the relatively short period of time Iraq has been on this 'democracy path'. A scant four years which by any other standard is very short.

In our era of media sensory overload, it feels so much longer.

However having said that, the MO/method of operation in removing a 'bad actor' like Saddam Hussein is really more the question ... actually not his removal, but the planning for the aftermath or post war.

I hear often that the USA made many mistakes in the execution of the war. This is true.
However, I don't often hear about the tribal structure of this region and the power they yield

When I interviewed Capt. Jess Humphreys, he told of a tribal Sheik that one of his Seargeant had discovered. It was actually the son of the official tribal sheik, but for all facts and purposes, he was the acting power broker as his father was in his later years.

Capt. Jess met with this sheik, who incidentally was educated at the University of Utah and spoke fluent english, he said early on in the conversation: "I've been waiting for you!"

In the ensuing hours and subsequent meetings, Capt. Jess told me he was convinced that this tribal sheik was the real deal.

Capt. Jess tells how he wrote a DETAILED report for his chain of command, passing along the offer of the tribal Sheik to put together approximately 50 tribal sheiks from all over Iraq IF the commanders of the Iraqi freedom operation would attend. There they would cooperate on how to calm Iraq and help bring peace.

The particular tribal sheik had influence with over 1.2 Million Iraqis as I recall.

Capt. Jess tell me that there was NO FOLLOW UP FROM HIS COMMANDERS!

This is consistent with the interview i had with (RET) Gen. Joe Hoer (a four star and former commander at CENTCOM after the first Gulf War), when he told me that his conversations with his buddies at the Pentagon in the build up to the current Iraq operation, was that there would be :

"no tribal sheiks involved in the NEW IRAQ!"

To me, this is the heighth of arrogance and lack of planning on the part of American leaders. Unfortunately that includes Bush 43 and his inner circle of Cheney and Rumsfeld. THE ASSUMPTIONS made on this war are one thing, but the LACK OF CONTINGENCY PLANS is QUITE ANOTHER!

The idea that somehow the Iraqi's, who had a central form of government under Saddam, was well known, the reality that basic services came from one source was well known. The reality that 3% of the Sunni Baathist, by in large, RULED the 97% was well known. The genocide of Saddam against the Kurds and the Shia was well known and part of the UN Resolutions against him. The deep tribal nature of that part of the world was well known, or was readily known.

The idea that somehow in some mystical way, this culture steeped in deep traditions of REVENGE, would all of a sudden reconcile without an overwhelming force to FORCE THEM TO COMPLY is ridiculous.

As General Joe Hoers said to me in our interview (i'm paraphrasing)

"What do you think all of these tribal factions were going to come together, hold hands around the campfire and sing 'KUMBAYA' ....
COME ON GIVE ME A BREAK!"

In other words, ITS A RIDICULOUS THOUGHT! Even to the point in which a four star would say: "It's CRIMINAL"... and he wasn't talking about Saddam!

Yes mistakes are made in war. Wars are messy business. However this type of planning for a nation as strong as the USA, with as many resources as the USA, is so short sighted that it is disgraceful.

The media drum beat with its own distortions, does as good of a job polarizing our populace as do the insurgency, the foreign fighters including those from Al Queda and Iranian influences which are active in Iraq today.

While it is true that casualties are relatively low with just over 3200 KIA, and some 20,000 + injured, this doesn't releave the responsiblity of our Commander n Chief and his inner circle for resonable forsight in a matter of taking our country to war.

While it is true that as many troops would have been killed in the states if they were not deployed, by motorcycle accidents, auto accidents, and various other natural causes than have died in Iraq.
I remember reading that approximately 700 per year die stateside. This doesn't even cover those who die in training for war in the military. Considering the number of murders in Detroit are often higher than our troops in Baghdad would claim, it puts a relative balance to how distorted our media has made the cost in terms of human life.

While it is popular to memorialize each and every US death, which is should be, it is a indictment on the lack of balanced reporting in the worlds media. Even Fox News!

The reality is that Saddam murdered some 50 000 per year, by the UN's own estimates. That is over 4000 a month. At least the efforts for freedom and the death of over 100,000 Iraqi's isn't the same old 3% killing at will the 97% whom they choose.

PERHAPS DEMOCRACY would have worked quicker and better by partnering with the tribal sheiks who were for the most part happy of his ouster. This aside from the 3% ruling Sunni Baathist who lost power.

So far, the jury may be still out, but the learning curve of bringing FREEDOM to the middle east by way of democracy with the type of planning for this war has not netted the type of gain we had hoped for.

The Balkans present us with a probable model in which the various smaller groups broke into their own states, and eventually began building self interest trade and a switch to capitalism in which economic connectivity and DFI-Direct Foreign Investment is the goal.

It can happen, it has happened, and eventually it will hopefully happen in the middle east within Iraq.

=======================================================
Who Wins in Iraq?

Samuel Huntington
By David Frum
Posted: Monday, March 19, 2007

ARTICLES
Foreign Policy (March/April 2007)
Publication Date: March 1, 2007


Resident Fellow
David Frum

President George W. Bush's speeches on the Iraq war described a skilled and educated population eager to live in freedom as soon as they could be emancipated from the dictator who tyrannized them. He compared Iraq to Germany and Japan--nations that built decent societies after their dictatorships were overthrown by force. He stressed again and again the universality of democratic ideals and challenged those who doubted whether these ideals could win support in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Instead, Americans have seen Iraqis divide into warring tribes. They have seen Sunnis rally to al Qaeda's murderous gangs and Shiites rally to brutal militias. They have seen Iraq's communities wage savage war.

Events in Iraq appear to have confirmed the worst fears of the great political scientist Samuel Huntington.

What went wrong? The answer you hear from more and more Americans: The Iraqis went wrong. Democracy promotion now ranks last among Americans' surveyed foreign-policy priorities. Between early 2002 and early 2006, the proportion of Americans who described Islam as promoting violence rose from 14 percent to 33 percent. Fifty-eight percent of Americans answered "yes" to the (slightly different) question of whether Islam had more violent followers than other religions. In other words, thanks to the bloody clashes that have exploded in Iraq, more Americans today view Islam as a violent faith than immediately after terrorists killed 3,000 Americans in Islam's name.

Events appear to have confirmed the worst fears of the great political scientist Samuel Huntington. In his landmark 1993 article, "The Clash of Civilizations," the Harvard professor wrote, "[The] centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam is unlikely to decline. It could become more virulent." A decade before President Bush argued that democracy promotes peace, Huntington had observed, "In the Arab world . . . Western democracy strengthens anti-Western political forces."

As they turn against the Iraq war, Americans seem also to have rejected the sunny assumptions about the Middle East upon which it was founded. Bush argued that terrorism was the work of a tiny handful of extremists, repudiated by the vast majority of Middle Easterners. His fellow Americans no longer believe him. More and more are coming to believe that Islam really is inherently hostile to democracy and the West. Civilizations are clashing. Paul Wolfowitz has lost. Sam Huntington has won.

David Frum is a resident fellow at AEI.

US State Department Says Christian Autonomy in Iraq is Being Considered

GMT 3-20-2007 15:58:26
Assyrian International News Agency
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Iraq's Christians suffer much from persecution and are fleeing the country. Yesterday Metro published articles on why equally many Iraqi refuges seek shelter in Södertälje, Sweden, as in the entire U.S. Iraq's non --Muslim minorities, most of them Assyrians (Syriacs and Chaldeans) face systematic cleansing in the shadow of the Iraq war. Now even the U.S department for Foreign Affairs is ringing the alarm bell exclusively for Metro by stating that they regard the situation seriously and that they have taken several measures in order to stop the persecution. One of the solutions can be a safe haven. In talks with Metro the U.S department for Foreign Affairs has opened up for the possibility to give Christians, and other minorities, in Iraq an area of their own, where they will be safe.

In the north of Iraq, just south of Kurdistan, there is an area named Nineveh which is almost entirely populated by Iraq's minorities, most of them Christians. Many are now calling for this area to become an administrative area of its own, a protective zone, where Christian Iraqis can feel safe.

The Kurds needed protection in 1991. The year 2007 others are in need of protection. We are working to enhance the consciousness among members of Congress and request from the American Congress to support that Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs and other minorities who live parallel to them in the north part, which is called the Nineveh Plaines, shall have their own administrative area. There is support for this in the Iraqi constitution says Michael Youash from the think-tank called Iraqi Sustainable Democracy Project in Washington.

In an email to Metro the responsible civil servant from the U.S department for Foreign Affairs stresses that the most important issue is for Iraq to remain a united -- federal country. Previously the plan included three federations, one for Sunni Muslims, one for Shia Muslims and one for Kurds, but now the creation of yet another federation is thinkable for the department for Foreign Affairs.

The President of the Assyrian Federation of Sweden, Simon Barmano, says he supports the proposition and wants the Swedish government to act so the Assyrians may have a sanctuary. That is also the standpoint of Fredrick Malm, spokesman of the Swedish co-governing liberal party, Folkpartiet, on issues of political refugees.

"I support autonomy for the Assyrians in Nineveh," he says, "But their safety and security must also be guaranteed."

Another reason for wanting a safe haven is the possibility that the large number of refuges, now living under terrible circumstances in the neighbouring countries, may return.

"If we have an own administrative area where protection is guaranteed then many of the refugees in the neighbouring countries can chose to return instead of go to western countries," says Barmano

By Nuri Kino
www.metro.lu

Free Speech--but Only for Our Enemies
By David Frum
Posted: Monday, March 19, 2007

ARTICLES
National Post (Canada)
Publication Date: March 17, 2007


Resident Fellow
David Frum

You can criticize Hezbollah even in Saudi Arabia. You can attack Hamas even in Kuwait. But don't think of doing either at San Francisco State University (SFSU).

On Oct. 17, 2006, the tiny beleaguered local band of College Republicans organized an anti-terrorism rally. The students had made paper copies of Hamas and Hezbollah flags. At the rally, they trampled the flags underfoot.

And why not? Under American law, a publicly funded university like SFSU is considered a branch of the government. It must respect all the rights and freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution and its local state constitution. The courts have repeatedly held that the constitutional right of free speech protects protest activities like the burning of the American flag. So if it's legal to burn the American flag, surely it must be legal to trample the flags of murderous terrorist organizations, right? Right? Right?

Over the past half dozen years, campus radicalism in the United States has taken on an increasingly sectarian and anti-Semitic tone.

But that's not how modern universities act. To them, Old Glory may be barbecue starter, but a terrorist flag is a sacred symbol.

Prodded by the local Palestinian student group, SFSU's student government voted to condemn the College Republicans. The university then charged the College Republicans with "attempts to incite violence," "creating a hostile environment" and "acts of incivility." It set up a special committee to judge the charge--including two of the student council members who had already voted to condemn the College Republicans.

On March 15, the university held a formal hearing on the charges. If it finds against the College Republicans, they could face financial penalties or potentially the dissolution of their organization.

You might wonder: What on earth does the university think it is doing? Why is it according greater respect to the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah than it could (or would!) to the American flag?

The University explains that the two trampled flags contained the Arabic word, "Allah." According to university spokeswoman Ellen Griffin, "I don't believe that the complaint is about the desecration of the flag. I believe that the complaint is about the desecration of Allah." Oh really?

Imagine, for example, that the local Palestinian students association were to burn a Union Jack, as they regularly burn U.S. and Israeli flags. The Union Jack features a Christian cross. Four Christian crosses actually. Does anybody seriously imagine that the San Francisco State University would penalize them?

That's not exactly a rhetorical question.

Over the past half dozen years, campus radicalism in the United States has taken on an increasingly sectarian and anti-Semitic tone--and SFSU has been the scene of some of the worst offenses.

In April, 2002, Muslim students organized a pro-Palestinian rally on the SFSU campus. To advertise their event, they distributed a flyer with a picture of a dead baby alongside the words: "Canned Palestinian children meat--slaughtered according to Jewish rites under American license."

No disciplinary action was taken against the students: The groups that had printed the flyer did not even lose their university subsidy. The university president, Robert Corrigan, did send a letter of protest to the student groups, but if you read it (it's posted at www.sfsu.edu/~news/response/nohate.htm), you will I think be struck by its strangely apologetic, excuse-making tone:

In speaking as strongly as I have in this letter, I am doing no more than you asked--working to eliminate discrimination and combat racism. And this is just as much a protection for Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians as it is for Jews and Israelis. I recognize that these are times of great anguish, as well as anger, and I know that one moment, one flier, does not define this group or its individual members.

The next month, Jewish students at SFSU organized a pro-Israel rally. After the rally ended, a small group of volunteers lingered to clean up. Suddenly they were swarmed by a much larger group of pro-Palestinian students. According to an eyewitness, the pro-Palestinian students shoved the Jewish students against the wall of the rally area and screamed anti-Semitic slogans. The Palestinian students demanded the lowering of an Israeli flag flying from a university building--and university officials hastened to comply. Again, no discipline was imposed.

There is obviously something profoundly wrong on American campuses--and not only American campuses, as the unhappy history of Canada's Concordia University reminds us. Apologists for terrorism receive maximum protection for the most vicious bigotry, for menace and intimidation, and even outright violence. Yet that zeal for free speech vanishes altogether when opponents of terrorism engage in much, much milder forms of protest. This goes beyond double standards. It is a moral collapse.

The SFSU College Republicans will prevail in the end. Even if the university sanctions them, those sanctions will be appealed to federal court and swiftly overturned. It is the universities for whom we should worry. They lack the courage to defend the freedom without which they cannot live.

David Frum is a resident fellow at AEI.

I've been saying that we, the USA, should look at the Hezbullah 'model'.
While this isn't exactly that, it does give the president the tools to 'do something'.
This writer is the type who will ultimately will cause the fall of the US if he type of thinking prevails.

=====================================================
Jeremy Scahill reports on the Bush Administration's growing dependence on private security forces such as Blackwater USA and efforts in Congress to rein them in. This article is adapted from his new book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Nation Books).

On September 10, 2001, before most Americans had heard of Al Qaeda or imagined the possibility of a "war on terror," Donald Rumsfeld stepped to the podium at the Pentagon to deliver one of his first major addresses as Defense Secretary under President George W. Bush. Standing before the former corporate executives he had tapped as his top deputies overseeing the high-stakes business of military contracting--many of them from firms like Enron, General Dynamics and Aerospace Corporation--Rumsfeld issued a declaration of war.

"The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America," Rumsfeld thundered. "It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk." He told his new staff, "You may think I'm describing one of the last decrepit dictators of the world.... [But] the adversary's closer to home," he said. "It's the Pentagon bureaucracy." Rumsfeld called for a wholesale shift in the running of the Pentagon, supplanting the old DoD bureaucracy with a new model, one based on the private sector. Announcing this major overhaul, Rumsfeld told his audience, "I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself."

The next morning, the Pentagon would be attacked, literally, as a Boeing 757--American Airlines Flight 77--smashed into its western wall. Rumsfeld would famously assist rescue workers in pulling bodies from the rubble. But it didn't take long for Rumsfeld to seize the almost unthinkable opportunity presented by 9/11 to put his personal war--laid out just a day before--on the fast track. The new Pentagon policy would emphasize covert actions, sophisticated weapons systems and greater reliance on private contractors. It became known as the Rumsfeld Doctrine. "We must promote a more entrepreneurial approach: one that encourages people to be proactive, not reactive, and to behave less like bureaucrats and more like venture capitalists," Rumsfeld wrote in the summer of 2002 in an article for Foreign Affairs titled "Transforming the Military."

Although Rumsfeld was later thrown overboard by the Administration in an attempt to placate critics of the Iraq War, his military revolution was here to stay. Bidding farewell to Rumsfeld in November 2006, Bush credited him with overseeing the "most sweeping transformation of America's global force posture since the end of World War II." Indeed, Rumsfeld's trademark "small footprint" approach ushered in one of the most significant developments in modern warfare--the widespread use of private contractors in every aspect of war, including in combat.

The often overlooked subplot of the wars of the post-9/11 period is their unprecedented scale of outsourcing and privatization. From the moment the US troop buildup began in advance of the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon made private contractors an integral part of the operations. Even as the government gave the public appearance of attempting diplomacy, Halliburton was prepping for a massive operation. When US tanks rolled into Baghdad in March 2003, they brought with them the largest army of private contractors ever deployed in modern war. By the end of Rumsfeld's tenure in late 2006, there were an estimated 100,000 private contractors on the ground in Iraq--an almost one-to-one ratio with active-duty American soldiers.

To the great satisfaction of the war industry, before Rumsfeld resigned he took the extraordinary step of classifying private contractors as an official part of the US war machine. In the Pentagon's 2006 Quadrennial Review, Rumsfeld outlined what he called a "road map for change" at the DoD, which he said had begun to be implemented in 2001. It defined the "Department's Total Force" as "its active and reserve military components, its civil servants, and its contractors--constitut[ing] its warfighting capability and capacity. Members of the Total Force serve in thousands of locations around the world, performing a vast array of duties to accomplish critical missions." This formal designation represented a major triumph for war contractors--conferring on them a legitimacy they had never before enjoyed.

Contractors have provided the Bush Administration with political cover, allowing the government to deploy private forces in a war zone free of public scrutiny, with the deaths, injuries and crimes of those forces shrouded in secrecy. The Administration and the GOP-controlled Congress in turn have shielded the contractors from accountability, oversight and legal constraints. Despite the presence of more than 100,000 private contractors on the ground in Iraq, only one has been indicted for crimes or violations. "We have over 200,000 troops in Iraq and half of them aren't being counted, and the danger is that there's zero accountability," says Democrat Dennis Kucinich, one of the leading Congressional critics of war contracting.

While the past years of Republican monopoly on government have marked a golden era for the industry, those days appear to be ending. Just a month into the new Congressional term, leading Democrats were announcing investigations of runaway war contractors. Representative John Murtha, chair of the Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Defense, after returning from a trip to Iraq in late January, said, "We're going to have extensive hearings to find out exactly what's going on with contractors. They don't have a clear mission and they're falling all over each other." Two days later, during confirmation hearings for Gen. George Casey as Army chief of staff, Senator Jim Webb declared, "This is a rent-an-army out there." Webb asked Casey, "Wouldn't it be better for this country if those tasks, particularly the quasi-military gunfighting tasks, were being performed by active-duty military soldiers in terms of cost and accountability?" Casey defended the contracting system but said armed contractors "are the ones that we have to watch very carefully." Senator Joe Biden, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, has also indicated he will hold hearings on contractors. Parallel to the ongoing investigations, there are several bills gaining steam in Congress aimed at contractor oversight.

Occupying the hot seat through these deliberations is the shadowy mercenary company Blackwater USA. Unbeknownst to many Americans and largely off the Congressional radar, Blackwater has secured a position of remarkable power and protection within the US war apparatus. This company's success represents the realization of the life's work of the conservative officials who formed the core of the Bush Administration's war team, for whom radical privatization has long been a cherished ideological mission. Blackwater has repeatedly cited Rumsfeld's statement that contractors are part of the "Total Force" as evidence that it is a legitimate part of the nation's "warfighting capability and capacity." Invoking Rumsfeld's designation, the company has in effect declared its forces above the law--entitled to the immunity from civilian lawsuits enjoyed by the military, but also not bound by the military's court martial system. While the initial inquiries into Blackwater have focused on the complex labyrinth of secretive subcontracts under which it operates in Iraq, a thorough investigation into the company reveals a frightening picture of a politically connected private army that has become the Bush Administration's Praetorian Guard.

Blackwater Rising

Blackwater was founded in 1996 by conservative Christian multimillionaire and ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince--the scion of a wealthy Michigan family whose generous political donations helped fuel the rise of the religious right and the Republican revolution of 1994. At its founding, the company largely consisted of Prince's private fortune and a vast 5,000-acre plot of land located near the Great Dismal Swamp in Moyock, North Carolina. Its vision was "to fulfill the anticipated demand for government outsourcing of firearms and related security training." In the following years, Prince, his family and his political allies poured money into Republican campaign coffers, supporting the party's takeover of Congress and the ascension of George W. Bush to the presidency.

While Blackwater won government contracts during the Clinton era, which was friendly to privatization, it was not until the "war on terror" that the company's glory moment arrived. Almost overnight, following September 11, the company would become a central player in a global war. "I've been operating in the training business now for four years and was starting to get a little cynical on how seriously people took security," Prince told Fox News host Bill O'Reilly shortly after 9/11. "The phone is ringing off the hook now."

Among those calls was one from the CIA, which contracted Blackwater to work in Afghanistan in the early stages of US operations there. In the ensuing years the company has become one of the greatest beneficiaries of the "war on terror," winning nearly $1 billion in noncovert government contracts, many of them no-bid arrangements. In just a decade Prince has expanded the Moyock headquarters to 7,000 acres, making it the world's largest private military base. Blackwater currently has 2,300 personnel deployed in nine countries, with 20,000 other contractors at the ready. It has a fleet of more than twenty aircraft, including helicopter gunships and a private intelligence division, and it is manufacturing surveillance blimps and target systems.

In 2005 after Hurricane Katrina its forces deployed in New Orleans, where it billed the federal government $950 per man, per day--at one point raking in more than $240,000 a day. At its peak the company had about 600 contractors deployed from Texas to Mississippi. Since Katrina, it has aggressively pursued domestic contracting, opening a new domestic operations division. Blackwater is marketing its products and services to the Department of Homeland Security, and its representatives have met with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The company has applied for operating licenses in all US coastal states. Blackwater is also expanding its physical presence inside US borders, opening facilities in Illinois and California.

Its largest obtainable government contract is with the State Department, for providing security to US diplomats and facilities in Iraq. That contract began in 2003 with the company's $21 million no-bid deal to protect Iraq proconsul Paul Bremer. Blackwater has guarded the two subsequent US ambassadors, John Negroponte and Zalmay Khalilzad, as well as other diplomats and occupation offices. Its forces have protected more than ninety Congressional delegations in Iraq, including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. According to the latest government contract records, since June 2004 Blackwater has been awarded $750 million in State Department contracts alone. It is currently engaged in an intensive lobbying campaign to be sent into Darfur as a privatized peacekeeping force. Last October President Bush lifted some sanctions on Christian southern Sudan, paving the way for a potential Blackwater training mission there. In January the Washington, DC, representative for southern Sudan's regional government said he expected Blackwater to begin training the south's security forces soon.

Since 9/11 Blackwater has hired some well-connected officials close to the Bush Administration as senior executives. Among them are J. Cofer Black, former head of counterterrorism at the CIA and the man who led the hunt for Osama bin Laden after 9/11, and Joseph Schmitz, former Pentagon Inspector General, who was responsible for policing contractors like Blackwater during much of the "war on terror"--something he stood accused of not doing effectively. By the end of Schmitz's tenure, powerful Republican Senator Charles Grassley launched a Congressional probe into whether Schmitz had "quashed or redirected two ongoing criminal investigations" of senior Bush Administration officials. Under bipartisan fire, Schmitz resigned and signed up with Blackwater.

Despite its central role, Blackwater had largely operated in the shadows until March 31, 2004, when four of its private soldiers in Iraq were ambushed and killed in Falluja. A mob then burned the bodies and dragged them through the streets, stringing up two from a bridge over the Euphrates. In many ways it was the moment the Iraq War turned. US forces laid siege to Falluja days later, killing hundreds of people and displacing thousands, inflaming the fierce Iraqi resistance that haunts occupation forces to this day. For most Americans, it was the first they had heard of private soldiers. "People began to figure out this is quite a phenomenon," says Representative David Price, a North Carolina Democrat, who said he began monitoring the use of private contractors after Falluja. "I'm probably like most Congress members in kind of coming to this awareness and developing an interest in it" after the incident.

What is not so well-known is that in Washington after Falluja, Blackwater executives kicked into high gear, capitalizing on the company's newfound recognition. The day after the ambush, it hired the Alexander Strategy Group, a K Street lobbying firm run by former senior staffers of then-majority leader Tom DeLay before the firm's meltdown in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal. A week to the day after the ambush, Erik Prince was sitting down with at least four senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, including its chair, John Warner. Senator Rick Santorum arranged the meeting, which included Warner and two other key Republican senators--Appropriations Committee chair Ted Stevens of Alaska and George Allen of Virginia. This meeting followed an earlier series of face-to-faces Prince had had with powerful House Republicans who oversaw military contracts. Among them: DeLay; Porter Goss, chair of the House Intelligence Committee (and future CIA director); Duncan Hunter, chair of the House Armed Services Committee; and Representative Bill Young, chair of the House Appropriations Committee. What was discussed at these meetings remains a secret. But Blackwater was clearly positioning itself to make the most of its new fame. Indeed, two months later, Blackwater was handed one of the government's most valuable international security contracts, worth more than $300 million.

The firm was also eager to stake out a role in crafting the rules that would govern mercenaries under US contract. "Because of the public events of March 31, [Blackwater's] visibility and need to communicate a consistent message has elevated here in Washington," said Blackwater's new lobbyist Chris Bertelli. "There are now several federal regulations that apply to their activities, but they are generally broad in nature. One thing that's lacking is an industry standard. That's something we definitely want to be engaged in." By May Blackwater was leading a lobbying effort by the private military industry to try to block Congressional or Pentagon efforts to place their forces under the military court martial system.

But while Blackwater enjoyed its new status as a hero in the "war on terror" within the Administration and the GOP-controlled Congress, the families of the four men killed at Falluja say they were being stonewalled by Blackwater as they attempted to understand the circumstances of how their loved ones were killed. After what they allege was months of effort to get straight answers from the company, the families filed a ground-breaking wrongful death lawsuit against Blackwater in January 2005, accusing the company of not providing the men with what they say were contractually guaranteed safeguards. Among the allegations: The company sent them on the Falluja mission that day short two men, with less powerful weapons than they should have had and in Pajero jeeps instead of armored vehicles. This case could have far-reaching reverberations and is being monitored closely by the war-contractor industry--former Halliburton subsidiary KBR has even filed an amicus brief supporting Blackwater. If the lawsuit is successful, it could pave the way for a tobacco litigation-type scenario, where war contractors find themselves besieged by legal claims of workers killed or injured in war zones.

As the case has made its way through the court system, Blackwater has enlisted powerhouse Republican lawyers to defend it, among them Fred Fielding, who was recently named by Bush as White House counsel, replacing Harriet Miers; and Kenneth Starr, former Whitewater prosecutor investigating President Clinton, and the company's current counsel of record. Blackwater has not formally debated the specific allegations in the suit, but what has emerged in its court filings is a series of legal arguments intended to bolster Blackwater's contention that it is essentially above the law. Blackwater claims that if US courts allow the company to be sued for wrongful death, that could threaten the nation's war-fighting capacity: "Nothing could be more destructive of the all-volunteer, Total Force concept underlying U.S. military manpower doctrine than to expose the private components to the tort liability systems of fifty states, transported overseas to foreign battlefields," the company argued in legal papers. In February Blackwater suffered a major defeat when the Supreme Court declined its appeal to hear the Falluja case, paving the way for the state trial--where there would be no cap on damages a jury could award--to proceed.

Congress is beginning to take an interest in this potentially groundbreaking case. On February 7 Representative Henry Waxman chaired hearings of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. While the hearings were billed as looking at US reliance on military contractors, they largely focused on Blackwater and the Falluja incident. For the first time, Blackwater was forced to share a venue with the families of the men killed at Falluja. "Private contractors like Blackwater work outside the scope of the military's chain of command and can literally do whatever they please without any liability or accountability from the US government," Katy Helvenston, whose son Scott was one of the Blackwater contractors killed, told the committee. "Therefore, Blackwater can continue accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money from the government without having to answer a single question about its security operators."

Citing the pending litigation, Blackwater's general counsel, Andrew Howell, declined to respond to many of the charges levied against his company by the families and asked several times for the committee to go into closed session. "The men who went on the mission on March 31, each had their weapons and they had sufficient ammunition," Howell told the committee, adding that the men were in "appropriate" vehicles. That was sharply disputed by the men's families, who allege that in order to save $1.5 million Blackwater did not provide the four with armored vehicles. "Once the men signed on with Blackwater and were flown to the Middle East, Blackwater treated them as fungible commodities," Helvenston told lawmakers in her emotional testimony, delivered on behalf of all four families.

The issue that put this case on Waxman's radar was the labyrinth of subcontracts underpinning the Falluja mission. Since November 2004 Waxman has been trying to pin down who the Blackwater men were ultimately working for the day of the ambush. "For over eighteen months, the Defense Department wouldn't even respond to my inquiry," says Waxman. "When it finally replied last July, it didn't even supply the breakdown I requested. In fact, it denied that private security contractors did any work at all under the [Pentagon's contracting program]. We now know that isn't true." Waxman's struggle to follow the money on this one contract involving powerful war contractors like KBR provides a graphic illustration of the secretive nature of the whole war contracting industry.

What is not in dispute regarding the Falluja incident is that Blackwater was working with a Kuwaiti business called Regency under a contract with the world's largest food services company, Eurest Support Services. ESS is a subcontractor for KBR and another giant war contractor, Fluor, in Iraq under the Pentagon's LOGCAP contracting program. One contract covering Blackwater's Falluja mission indicated the mission was ultimately a subcontract with KBR. Last summer KBR denied this. Then ESS wrote Waxman to say the mission was conducted under Fluor's contract with ESS. Fluor denied that, and the Pentagon told Waxman it didn't know which company the mission was ultimately linked to. Waxman alleged that Blackwater and the other subcontractors were "adding significant markups" to their subcontracts for the same security services that Waxman believes were then charged to US taxpayers. "It's remarkable that the world of contractors and subcontractors is so murky that we can't even get to the bottom of this, let alone calculate how many millions of dollars taxpayers lose in each step of the subcontracting process," says Waxman.

While it appeared for much of the February 7 hearing that the contract's provenance would remain obscure, that changed when, at the end of the hearing, the Pentagon revealed that the original contractor was, in fact, KBR. In violation of military policy against LOGCAP contractors' using private forces for security instead of US troops, KBR had entered into a subcontract with ESS that was protected by Blackwater; those costs were allegedly passed on to US taxpayers to the tune of $19.6 million. Blackwater said it billed ESS $2.3 million for its services, meaning a markup of more than $17 million was ultimately passed on to the government. Three weeks after the hearing, KBR told shareholders it may be forced to repay up to $400 million to the government as a result of an ongoing Army investigation.

It took more than two years for Waxman to get an answer to a simple question: Whom were US taxpayers paying for services? But, as the Falluja lawsuit shows, it is not just money at issue. It is human life.

A Killing on Christmas Eve

While much of the publicity Blackwater has received stems from Falluja, another, more recent incident is attracting new scrutiny. On Christmas Eve inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, an American Blackwater contractor allegedly shot and killed an Iraqi bodyguard protecting a senior Iraqi official. For weeks after the shooting, unconfirmed reports circulated around the Internet that alcohol may have been involved and that the Iraqi was shot ten times in the chest. The story then went that the contractor was spirited out of Iraq before he could be prosecuted. Media inquiries got nowhere--the US Embassy refused to confirm that it was a Blackwater contractor, and the company refused to comment.

Then the incident came up at the February 7 Congressional hearing. As the session was drawing to a close, Representative Kucinich raced back into the room with what he said was a final question. He entered a news report on the incident into the record and asked Blackwater counsel Howell if Blackwater had flown the contractor out of Iraq after the alleged shooting. "That gentleman, on the day the incident occurred, he was off duty," Howell said, in what was the first official confirmation of the incident from Blackwater. "Blackwater did bring him back to the United States."

"Is he going to be extradited back to Iraq for murder, and if not, why not?" Kucinich asked.

"Sir, I am not law enforcement. All I can say is that there's currently an investigation," Howell replied. "We are fully cooperating and supporting that investigation."

Kucinich then said, "I just want to point out that there's a question that could actually make [Blackwater's] corporate officers accessories here in helping to create a flight from justice for someone who's committed a murder."

The War on the Hill

Several bills are now making their way through Congress aimed at oversight and transparency of the private forces that have emerged as major players in the wars of the post-9/11 period. In mid-February Senators Byron Dorgan, Patrick Leahy and John Kerry introduced legislation aimed at cracking down on no-bid contracts and cronyism, providing for penalties of up to twenty years in prison and fines of up to $1 million for what they called "war profiteering." It is part of what Democrats describe as a multi-pronged approach. "I think there's a critical mass of us now who are working on it," says Congressman Price, who represents Blackwater's home state. In January Price introduced legislation that would expand the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 (MEJA) to include all contractors in a war zone, not just those working for or alongside the armed forces. Most of Blackwater's work in Iraq, for instance, is contracted by the State Department. Price indicated that the alleged Christmas Eve shooting could be a test case of sorts under his legislation. "I will be following this and I'll be calling for a full investigation," he said.

But there's at least one reason to be wary of this approach: Price's office consulted with the private military lobby as it crafted the legislation, which has the industry's strong endorsement. Perhaps that's because MEJA has been for the most part unenforced. "Even in situations when US civilian law could potentially have been applied to contractor crimes, it wasn't," observed P.W. Singer, a leading scholar on contractors. American prosecutors are already strapped for resources in their home districts--how could they be expected to conduct complex investigations in Iraq? Who will protect the investigators and prosecutors? How will they interview Iraqi victims? How could they effectively oversee 100,000 individuals spread across a dangerous war zone? "It's a good question," concedes Price. "I'm not saying that it would be a simple matter." He argues his legislation is an attempt to "put the whole contracting enterprise on a new accountable footing."

This past fall, taking a different tack--much to the dismay of the industry--Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, an Air Force reserve lawyer and former reserve judge, quietly inserted language into the 2007 Defense Authorization, which Bush signed into law, that places contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), commonly known as the court martial system. Graham implemented the change with no public debate and with almost no awareness among the broader Congress, but war contractors immediately questioned its constitutionality. Indeed, this could be a rare moment when mercenaries and civil libertarians are on the same side. Many contractors are not armed combatants; they work in food, laundry and other support services. While the argument could be made that armed contractors like those working for Blackwater should be placed under the UCMJ, Graham's change could result in a dishwasher from Nepal working for KBR being prosecuted like a US soldier. On top of all this, the military has enough trouble policing its own massive force and could scarcely be expected to monitor an additional 100,000 private personnel. Besides, many contractors in Iraq are there under the auspices of the State Department and other civilian agencies, not the military.

In an attempt to clarify these matters, Senator Barack Obama introduced comprehensive new legislation in February. It requires clear rules of engagement for armed contractors, expands MEJA and provides for the DoD to "arrest and detain" contractors suspected of crimes and then turn them over to civilian authorities for prosecution. It also requires the Justice Department to submit a comprehensive report on current investigations of contractor abuses, the number of complaints received about contractors and criminal cases opened. In a statement to The Nation, Obama said contractors are "operating with unclear lines of authority, out-of-control costs and virtually no oversight by Congress. This black hole of accountability increases the danger to our troops and American civilians serving as contractors." He said his legislation would "re-establish control over these companies," while "bringing contractors under the rule of law."

Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky, a member of the House intelligence committee, has been a leading critic of the war contracting system. Her Iraq and Afghanistan Contractor Sunshine Act, introduced in February, which bolsters Obama's, boils down to what Schakowsky sees as a long overdue fact-finding mission through the secretive contracting bureaucracy. Among other provisions, it requires the government to determine and make public the number of contractors and subcontractors (at any tier) that are employed in Iraq and Afghanistan; any host country's, international or US laws that have been broken by contractors; disciplinary actions taken against contractors; and the total number of dead and wounded contractors. Schakowsky says she has tried repeatedly over the past several years to get this information and has been stonewalled or ignored. "We're talking about billions and billions of dollars--some have estimated forty cents of every dollar [spent on the occupation] goes to these contractors, and we couldn't get any information on casualties, on deaths," says Schakowsky. "It has been virtually impossible to shine the light on this aspect of the war and so when we discuss the war, its scope, its costs, its risks, they have not been part of this whatsoever. This whole shadow force that's been operating in Iraq, we know almost nothing about. I think it keeps at arm's length from the American people what this war is all about."

While not by any means a comprehensive total of the number of contractor casualties, 770 contractor deaths and 7,761 injured in Iraq as of December 31, 2006, were confirmed by the Labor Department. But that only counts those contractors whose families applied for benefits under the government's Defense Base Act insurance. Independent analysts say the number is likely much higher. Blackwater alone has lost at least twenty-seven men in Iraq. And then there's the financial cost: Almost $4 billion in taxpayer funds have been paid for private security forces in Iraq, according to Waxman. Yet even with all these additional forces, the military is struggling to meet the demands of a White House bent on military adventurism.

A week after Donald Rumsfeld's rule at the Pentagon ended, US forces had been stretched so thin by the "war on terror" that former Secretary of State Colin Powell declared "the active Army is about broken." Rather than rethinking its foreign policies, the Administration forged ahead with plans for a troop "surge" in Iraq, and Bush floated a plan to supplement the military with a Civilian Reserve Corps in his January State of the Union address. "Such a corps would function much like our military Reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them," Bush said. The President, it seemed, was just giving a fancy new title to something the Administration has already done with its "revolution" in military affairs and unprecedented reliance on contractors. Yet while Bush's proposed surge has sparked a fierce debate in Congress and among the public, the Administration's increasing reliance on private military contractors has gone largely undebated and underreported.

"The increasing use of contractors, private forces or as some would say 'mercenaries' makes wars easier to begin and to fight--it just takes money and not the citizenry," says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has sued contractors for alleged abuses in Iraq. "To the extent a population is called upon to go to war, there is resistance, a necessary resistance to prevent wars of self-aggrandizement, foolish wars and in the case of the United States, hegemonic imperialist wars. Private forces are almost a necessity for a United States bent on retaining its declining empire."

With talk of a Civilian Reserve Corps and Blackwater promoting the idea of a privatized "contractor brigade" to work with the military, war critics in Congress are homing in on what they see as a sustained, undeclared escalation through the use of private forces. "'Surge' implies a bump that has a beginning and an end," says Schakowsky. "Having a third or a quarter of [the forces] present on the ground not even part of the debate is a very dangerous thing in our democracy, because war is the most critical thing that we do."

Indeed, contractor deaths are not counted in the total US death count, and their crimes and violations go undocumented and unpunished, further masking the true costs of the war. "When you're bringing in contractors whom the law doesn't apply to, the Geneva Conventions, common notions of morality, everything's thrown out the window," says Kucinich. "And what it means is that these private contractors are really an arm of the Administration and its policies."

Kucinich says he plans to investigate the potential involvement of private forces in so-called "black bag," "false flag" or covert operations in Iraq. "What's the difference between covert activities and so-called overt activities which you have no information about? There's no difference," he says. Kucinich also says the problems with contractors are not simply limited to oversight and transparency. "It's the privatization of war," he says. The Administration is "linking private war contractor profits with warmaking. So we're giving incentives for the contractors to lobby the Administration and the Congress to create more opportunities for profits, and those opportunities are more war. And that's why the role of private contractors should be sharply limited by Congress."