EDITORIAL
U.S. Government “Changing Course” in Iraq—To a Bloodier War

Dec 11, 2006

In the beginning of December, the Iraq Study Group headed by Baker and Hamilton, a Republican and Democrat, issued its long-awaited report calling for a “change in direction” in the U.S. war in Iraq. Most officials in Washington chimed in, calling for the same thing.

The Bush administration is now carrying out its own war policy reviews and has promised to announce plans to “change course” in Iraq before Christmas.

And what is this “change?” First of all, the Bush administration is supposed to change how it justifies the continuation of the war to an American public which overwhelmingly opposes and rejects it. They say that Bush has to blame the Iraqis for the problems.

Bush has already started to put this “change in course” in place.

But the real change is to be an intensification and worsening of the war. And the U.S. military has already stepped up the bombing of the country.

Barely one day after the Iraq Study Group issued its report, a coordinated U.S. bombing and ground attack on an Iraqi village north of Baghdad killed more than 30 Iraqis, including 10 children, who belonged to two extended families. Horrific video footage showed over a dozen charred and bloodied bodies.

At the same time, U.S. and Iraqi troops had imposed a siege on the population of the city of Haditha in Anbar province, cutting off all electricity and food for at least a week and not allowing anyone out of their homes.

The U.S. is trying to put together an Iraqi military that imposes a dictatorship over much of the country, incorporating major elements of the biggest militia, the Badr Brigade, into the state apparatus. The Badr Brigade’s notorious death squads in official government uniforms have not only been attacking rival militias, but they have been carrying out a merciless campaign of terror against the Iraqi civilian population.

The Iraq Study Group recommends that the U.S. government vastly expand the number of Special Forces, Army Rangers, Navy Seals, as well as mercenaries–that is, all the more highly-trained killers–by the thousands to torture, imprison and murder Iraqis. Of course, the Iraq Study Group says that these killers will only be “training” and “advising” the “new and improved” Iraqi military.

To do what? To impose order, in much the same way that the U.S. after the first Gulf War encouraged and armed Saddam Hussein to massacre those in the Iraqi population who attempted to gain freedom for themselves. The U.S. is trying to put together a similar or worse dictatorship in Iraq right now.

No, the U.S. military will not be reducing the number of troops in Iraq any time soon. This is confirmed by every single U.S. general, who says that, if anything, they want more U.S. troops in Iraq.

The money to pay for this stepped up war is already in the pipeline–the Bush administration’s record-breaking Pentagon emergency military appropriation of 150 billion dollars that comes on top of the 70 billion dollars that Congress already approved during just this year. It couldn’t be clearer: the U.S. government is stepping up the war.

The U.S. is leaving vast death and destruction in its wake, thereby demonstrating the horrible power and might of the U.S. military, and its intention to continue to dominate the entire Middle East region and its oil riches.

The brutal casualties continue to mount. An estimated 655,000 Iraqis have already been killed and millions more have been turned into refugees, living on the edge of starvation. At the same time, there are now 3,000 U.S. military deaths and over 150,000 U.S. soldiers so seriously wounded they are today considered “disabled.”

The entire U.S. political establishment has done nothing but lie about what it was doing in Iraq, starting with Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction. The course may be changing, but the lying isn’t.

U.S. troops out of Iraq now!