Category: Iraq War

Lara Logan appears on Comedy Central with Jon Stewart and slams American Media’s coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She feels even with the American public tired of the wars after five longs years that is no excuse.

She uses the recent battles in Sadr City as an example. According to Lara there were 12 to 15 hour pitched battles in heavily populated urban areas that hardly got a mention in the American media.

Yes, Americans may be tired of hearing about the war but how much do they really know about what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan? And how much do they really want to know?

What is needed is for every member of the Bush administration and all members of congress to spend a month in Iraq and Afghanistan. And not in a highly protected cushy hotel in the Green Zone but embedded in an American combat unit. After a few weeks of making the rounds with the soldiers and marines perhaps a few accurate stories of how our troops really spend their nights and days would make it back to the American media.

War is a dirty, brutal business. If more of our leaders and public truly realized just how brutal and dirty perhaps we would be less inclined to engage in war.

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Those who really understand air operations know that there really is no such thing as surgical air strikes. So called surgical air strikes in Iraq are now killing civilians at increasing levels.

There are many things that can go wrong with so called surgical air strikes. One is the obvious fact that the weapons systems themselves may malfunction in some way. When released at altitude the missiles or bombs don’t have to be off course by very much, just a fraction of a degree will do it, to miss their intended target and take out another. So it is not too difficult to have a situation like the one that recently occurred in Baghdad when missiles fired at suspected insurgents from a US attack helicopter went off course and instead of hitting their target damaged a nearby Iraqi hospital and destroyed several ambulances.

A fairly common mistake is faulty intelligence. Reports come in that insurgents are hiding out in house “B”. Unfortunately, that was two days ago and the insurgents helped themselves to the use of the house while the owners were out of town. Now the insurgents are long gone and the Iraqi family who owns the house are back fearfully sleeping in their beds. Then the missiles hit the house. The US military reports mission accomplished, five more insurgents dead. After all, who really knows except the families immediate neighbors.

With the use of laser painted target guidance systems similar mistakes in misidentification can occur. A spotter team sees a group of suspicious men enter a house in a crowded urban area. Sure enough, these guys are the real deal. But they enter one house that looks like a dozen more on the same street. The spotters fix their laser beams on the identical looking house next door. A Jdam bomb released from an F-16 fighter jet is released and the systems work flawlessly. Boom, a direct hit. The house and the family living inside are totally destroyed. Too bad it was the wrong house.

Unfortunately, collateral damage is unavoidable when you are conducting air strikes in tightly packed urban areas. Collateral damage is bad enough even in low population density areas. The killing of civilians is sure to increase as air strikes are stepped up. This is what is happening in Iraq now. The US military is stepping up its use of air power in an effort to keep US causality figures down. The Pentagon wants to have some nice looking charts showing a downward trend in US causalities as evidence that the “surge” and present policies are bringing positive results.

The recent step up of American air strikes has hardly been reported in the American media. But when you really think about it recently there has not been much news coverage of any aspect of the war in Iraq. Except for the likes of John McCain who says we can win the damn thing by the year 2013 if we “stay the course”.

Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 Pentagon war planners worried about US and coalition forces getting bogged down in murderous warfare within Baghdad’s dense urban areas. The planners worst nightmare was urban fighting within the narrow street ghetto areas of Baghdad, Iraq.

Those who know anything at all about ground combat recognize that house to house fighting in urban warfare is the most dangerous ground fighting of all. Fortunately, in 2003, for the most part Saddam’s forces chose to melt away and urban warfare in Baghdad’s narrow and winding streets in their urban ghettos did not happen. That is until now.

Here we are over five years into the conflict and over the past few weeks fierce fighting is taking place in Sadr City, a densely packed urban ghetto of mostly 2,500,000 million poor people who are squarely trapped in the crossfire between Iraqi government forces, supported by the US military, and elements of the al-Mahadi Army loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr.

As described at Global Security “Subdivided into six sections, the district is one of the poorest in Baghdad. The population consists mostly of Shiite Moslems. Unemployment is rampant. Homes are in disrepair. It is also a haven for criminals released from Iraqi prisons by Saddam shortly before the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Sadr City, built by Saddam Hussein, was the scene of numerous confrontations between coalition forces and residents in 2003. Infrastructure problems still plague portions of the district. Electrical services are intermittent. Parts of some streets in some neighborhoods are flooded with sewage from long-neglected pipes. Trash pickup stopped during the war, and residents started dumping their trash on the medians in the potholed streets.”

Sadr City is one of the world’s most densely populated areas and it is in this hellhole that American troops are now engaged in house to house urban warfare. So far , as usual, it is the local civilian population who is doing most of the suffering and dieing. In an effort to keep US causalities to a minimum US forces are increasingly relying on air power to knock out suspected enemy positions.

As one might expect the use of air power in a densely packed urban center is killing a good many poor innocent civilians. One “surgical” air strike even managed to damage a hospital and to destroy a few ambulances that were parked nearby.

In the US media most of the reporting about this madness has largely fallen right out of the news. These days Americans are much more concerned about their own economy moving into a recession (for many Americans the recession has already arrived) and $123 a barrel crude oil than the news out of Iraq. A few may realize that there is a connection between $123 a barrel oil, the disastrous and horribly expensive war in Iraq, and a poor performing US economy, but they are not very vocal about the issue.