| Number 366 | March 19, 2007 |
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This Week: The Secret Air Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
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Greetings, This is a special Double Issue of Nygaard Notes, in honor of today's anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003. Welcome to all the new subscribers this week! Now, here's a little exercise for all you "Nygaardians" out there: Imagine, for a moment, that the U.S. had conducted 300 airstrikes against targets in England and Canada last week. Next, imagine that this newsletter is the first time you've heard a word about those airstrikes. Can you imagine that? No? Yet that's how many airstrikes occur every week in Iraq and Afghanistan. This issue focuses on what I am calling the secret U.S. air wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. All I can really do, given my limited resources, is to hint at what is going on, and speculate about what it might mean. All I know is that something IS going on, and the scale and ferocity of the air assaults is truly mind-boggling. How many people are being killed, or wounded, or displaced from their homes we do not know, other than the very rough estimates I provide in this issue. I hope that some of you will read and circulate this information to your friends, and to anyone who is in a position to amplify this aspect of the aggressive stance that the U.S. has chosen to take in the world. For my part, I will try to get this information published more widely, but one never knows how that will go. Even if we raise our voices it's possible that nothing will change. But if we do not raise our voices, then it is certain that nothing will change. So, let's raise our voices. In solidarity, Nygaard |
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"A secret air war is being waged in Iraq—often in and around that country's population centers—about which we can find out little. The U.S. military keeps information on the munitions expended in its air efforts under tight wraps, refusing to offer details on the scale of use and so minimizing the importance of air power in Iraq. But expert opinion holds that the forms of aerial assault being employed in that country, though hardly covered in our media, may account for most of the U.S. and coalition-attributed Iraqi civilian deaths there since the 2003 invasion." That's the opening paragraph from a February 7th article in TomDispatch by Nick Turse, entitled "Bombs over Baghdad; The Pentagon's Secret Air War in Iraq." Go read the whole article which, I hate to say, is almost unique in the U.S. media.
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It was one year ago in these pages that I reported on the air war underway in Iraq ("The Daily Airpower Summary," Nygaard Notes #322). This aspect of the U.S. occupation—the relentless, ongoing, and devastating attack on Iraq from the air—was at that time largely unreported in this country. I am shocked and outraged, although not surprised, that the same is true today. Despite the fact that the United States conducts something on the order of 75-85 airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan EVERY SINGLE DAY, it's a rare media outlet, indeed, that ever reports on the human suffering that is the result of this onslaught. Nygaard Notes does not have a Baghdad bureau (let alone a Ramadi bureau, or a Kandahar bureau, or a Taji bureau) that is able to offer first-hand accounts of this reality, but it is possible to go to some readily-available sources to get a glimpse of what might be called—bizarrely but, I think, accurately—the "secret" U.S. air wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. Providing such a glimpse is the focus of this article. The Daily Airpower Summary As I pointed out one year ago, there is a public report put up on the Internet every day by the U.S. Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF) that reports in some detail on their activities (http://www.af.mil/news/). Who knows if these reports are true or accurate, but let's say they are. They're pretty horrifying, despite the sometimes-heroic, sometimes-sterile, always-self-serving language that is found there. As an example of the heroic and self-serving, here's a headline from the summary of March 13th: "Air Controllers Direct Airpower Symphony over Iraq." Here's another, same day: "Air Force Continues Giving 100 Percent." These are standard puff pieces that one would expect from a public relations office (in this case, the Air Force calls it the "Public Affairs" office—same thing) and one has to presume that they are produced to maintain morale among active and retired military personnel, who seem to be the primary audience. Unfortunately, since the military gives out little other information, and since the media doesn't do its job very well, these puff pieces become the grist for actual "news stories" on Iraq that run in the daily press. From the military's point of view, that IS the media's job, of course. Last month the online news source TomDispatch published the only substantial article on the U.S. air war that I have seen in the past year. In the article, called "Bombs Over Baghdad; The Pentagon's Secret Air War in Iraq," reporter Nick Turse points out, "While we will undoubtedly never know the full extent of the human costs of the U.S. air campaign, just a few dogged reporters assigned to the air-power beat might, at the very least, have offered some sense of this one-sided air war." Even sitting in my office here in Minneapolis, I am able to find some information in the daily CENTAF reports, known as "airpower summaries," that begins to bring a few things into focus about the secret air component of the U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here's a sample from the week of March 3-9: "In Afghanistan this week 330 close-air-support missions were flown in support of the International Security Assistance Force and Afghan troops..." Meanwhile, "In Iraq this week, coalition aircraft flew 327 close-air-support missions for Operation Iraqi Freedom." A "Close-Air-Support" mission, or CAS, is the term used for "Dropping bombs in support of ground troops—also known as an airstrike." In other words, according to the Air Force's own numbers, the U.S. is conducting an average of 93 airstrikes per day in the two countries. And that is only the air assaults conducted by the Air Force. This number, Turse reminds us, "does not include guided missiles and unguided rockets fired, or cannon rounds expended; nor, according to a CENTAF spokesman, does it take into account the munitions used by some Marine Corps and other coalition aircraft or any of the Army's helicopter gunships. Moreover, it does not include munitions used by the armed helicopters of the many private security contractors flying their own missions in Iraq." "Private security contractors" is the current euphemism for "mercenary soldiers." The same exact phrase is always used to describe these airstrikes: The CAS "missions included support to coalition troops, infrastructure protection, reconstruction activities and operations to deter and disrupt terrorist activities." Almost never will one see the words "killed" or "casualties" in these reports, with a couple of exceptions. The first exception is when a U.S. airstrike is reported as having killed "terrorists." (I take a look at how this works elsewhere in this issue, where I do a little case study of one such incident, in the Iraqi town of Taji, as it appeared in the media in this country.) The other exception to the policy of avoiding any mention of death or suffering is, of course, when a member of the occupation forces is killed. U.S. casualties are regularly reported, as in this story from March 5th: "Air Force Heroes: 20 Fallen Airmen Honored in Afghanistan." They are referring to 20 airmen killed since 2001, or about 4 per year. I have been unable to find reliable figures on the numbers of innocent Afghanis killed in that period—that inability tells you something in itself— and we may never know that number. But it surely is far greater than 20. The Grisly Arithmetic of the U.S. Air War Despite the Air Force's claims of "smart" weapons and precision missiles, we cannot allow ourselves to imagine that this phenomenal assault does not cause enormous human suffering. Nick Turse cites the 2006 report "Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-sectional Cluster Sample Survey" from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, published in the October 2006 issue of the British medical journal The Lancet. I think this is the best estimate of the number of people who have died in Iraq—violently and otherwise—as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation. Turse tells us that the Lancet report "estimated 655,000 ‘excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war.' The study ... found that from March 2003 to June 2006, 13% of violent deaths in Iraq were caused by coalition air strikes. If the 655,000 figure, including over 601,000 violent deaths, is anywhere close to accurate—and the study offered a possible range of civilian deaths that ran from 392,979 to 942,636—this would equal approximately 78,133 Iraqis killed by bombs, missiles, rockets, or cannon rounds from coalition aircraft between March 2003, when the invasion of Iraq began, and last June when the study concluded." Adds Turse, "According to statistics provided to TomDispatch by The Lancet study's authors, 50% of all violent deaths of Iraqi children under 15 years of age, between March 2003 and June 2006, were due to coalition air strikes." The 2006 Lancet study was an update of an earlier study done in 2004. Speaking at that time, Dr Les Roberts, who led the study, told the BBC that "Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths [in Iraq since the U.S. invasion] and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most of the violent deaths." The independent group "Iraq Body Count" reminds us that, whenever explosive devices are used, including car bombs and air strikes, however many people are killed, the devices "will generally create at least three times as many wounded." Here, then, are the final rough numbers, as best I can figure them: Every day, seven days a week, between 50 and 100 Iraqis die as a result of "coalition" airstrikes. Every airstrike, in other words, kills about one Iraqi, and wounds three more. Updating the numbers from the Lancet study, we discover that overall, since the U.S. invaded Iraq, somewhere between 102,180 and 147,051 Iraqis have been killed by U.S. airstrikes. Between 306,540 and 441,153 have been wounded. This past Thursday, according to the most recent Airpower Summary, 79 more airstrikes were launched by the U.S. Air Force in Iraq and Afghanistan. The reports for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, when released, will be about the same. And this "airpower symphony" will go on until activists and other citizens understand how the "lesson of Vietnam" is being applied here. What I consider to be the real "lesson of Vietnam" has actually been around far longer than the U.S. war against that country. I explained this in my series on war propaganda back in 2002 (Nygaard Notes #184: "‘The Satanic Is The Guilty' The Roots of Modern War Propaganda"). The nature of that lesson was articulated in 1927 by U.S. social scientist Harold Lasswell in his book "Propaganda Technique in the World War." He put it this way: "The justification of war can proceed more smoothly if the hideous aspects of the war business are screened from public gaze." The various justifications for the war in Iraq have by now all been more or less discredited, but the U.S. propaganda apparatus continues to attempt to screen from public gaze the "hideous aspects" of their operations in Iraq, particularly the so-far still secret air war. This special issue of Nygaard Notes is a small attempt to break the secrecy. |
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During the one-week period of March 3rd through the 9th, dates that were randomly selected for study by Nygaard Notes, the U.S. Air Force reported a total of 327 British/U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and 330 in Afghanistan. Here are some examples of incidents reported in the official Air Forces Daily Airpower Summary, each followed by the same one-word summary of how they were covered in the media of the country conducting the attacks, that is, the United States. March 3: Of the 41 airstrikes in Afghanistan on this particular day, here's just one: "In Afghanistan March 3, a B-1B Lancer dropped guided bomb unit-31s and GBU-38s on anti-coalition insurgents in an open area near Kajaki. A joint terminal attack controller (JTAC) confirmed direct hits, removing the insurgent threat." Unreported. March 4: Of the 41 airstrikes in Afghanistan on this day, here's just one: "In Afghanistan, an Air Force B-1B Lancer dropped guided bomb unit-31s on a building near Sangin containing anti-coalition insurgents. A joint terminal attack controller confirmed a direct hit." Unreported. March 5: Of the 45 airstrikes in Iraq on this day, here's just one: "In Iraq, Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons dropped guided bomb unit-38s, destroying an anti-Iraqi insurgent building near Mosul." Unreported. [It's not as if nobody reports things. On this day, the Air Force
had nothing to say, as usual, about civilian deaths. But the Los Angeles
Times ran this single sentence on this day, in an unrelated story: "Afghan
officials said ... that nine civilians died in a U.S. airstrike north
of Kabul."] March 7: Of the 57 airstrikes in Afghanistan on this day, here's just one: "In Afghanistan March 7, a B-1B Lancer dropped guided bomb unit-38s and GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munitions on enemy personnel and a building near Garmsir, in support of Operation Achilles. The on-scene joint terminal attack controller and ground forces observed direct hits." Unreported. March 8: Of the 50 airstrikes in Iraq on this day, here's just one: "In Iraq, Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons conducted a pre-planned strike, dropping GBU-31s on a major two-lane road near As Sadah. This engagement was meant to hamper traffic coming in and out of As Sadah City from the north. The strike was successful." Unreported. March 9: Of the 45 airstrikes in Iraq on this day, here's just one: "Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt IIs fired cannon rounds at enemies hiding in brush after they engaged with coalition forces near Mahmudiyah. A JTAC reported the cannon rounds were on target." Unreported. Pick any week you like. I did the above research a few days ago, but as I was writing this on March 15th, I searched the nation's media for the week before that date, and saw that there was not a single reference to U.S. airstrikes in English-language newspapers. That's not technically true, as there were three mentions of airstrikes, but all of them referred to the June 2006 killing of "al-Qaeda chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi." (None, however, referred to the other six unfortunate people who were also killed in the Zarqawi strike.) Not a word, however, was seen in reference to the 300-plus airstrikes reported by the Air Force for the week in question, nor about the human suffering caused by them. This typical week in the U.S. press includes the wire services, National Public Radio, and everywhere else I looked in the daily media. The air war continues, the deaths mount, and the silence in the United States—even from anti-war activists—is deafening. |
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It is instructive to look at a single incident in the U.S. air war of the past month. This incident occurred on March 2nd in the town of Taji, Iraq. Exactly what happened is far from clear, but follow me as I report some of what I learned in researching this single incident. I first learned about this particular airstrike in a report in the official "Air Force News" of March 7th, when I saw the headline "Air Strikes Target, Kill al-Qaeda Terrorists near Taji, Iraq." As it turns out, we don't really know that they were "terrorists," or that they had anything to do with al-Qaeda. The article simply says that "Coalition forces believe key terrorists were killed during the air strike." Of course, these nameless "forces" may or may not "believe" a lot of things, but that means little in this context. The article points out that the "targets" in Taji were "vehicles" and "anti-aircraft artillery," which were in "an area known for terrorist activities." CENTAF reports that "The strike resulted in the destruction of the vehicle as well as the structure it was parked beside." What "structure" was that? Someone's home, perhaps? An office building? A hospital? Were there people inside? Was it deserted? We'll never know. Unlike the other 67 officially-reported U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan that day, the Taji incident was actually reported in the major newspapers in the U.S. Three of the most influential newspapers in the country—the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times—all dutifully quoted the claim that CENTAF "believes" that "key terrorists" were killed in the strike. Think about that for a moment: Here is a report on a military conflict. One side in that conflict says that they "believe" that the only human suffering that resulted from their attacks was incurred by "terrorists." And three major newspapers report this self-serving statement as "news," without a shred of evidence of any sort either being offered or, apparently, asked for. I explained this sort of reporting a bit in Nygaard Notes #322 ("Why Reporting from Iraq is So Bad") but this is even worse. The NY Times reported that "Military authorities on [March 3rd] were still investigating the identities of the gunmen and how many men were killed." This phrasing implies that the only people who may have been killed were "men," in fact "gunmen." Never considered is the possibility that civilians—some of whom perhaps had no guns, perhaps were not "men"—might have been killed. And this despite the Air Force itself reporting that a "structure" was destroyed, which should at least be worth an inquiry, one might think. The results of the military's "investigation" into this incident, if it actually occurred at all, have yet to be reported and likely never will be, since they rarely are. The results of such an institution's investigation of itself would hardly be credible, in any case, but one could imagine a media system that might follow up on stories like this. It requires quite a bit of imagination. I wondered about Taji being "an area known for terrorist activities." Well, Iraqis certainly may consider it so. The LA Times mentions, in a 76-word brief at the end of an article about something else, that Taji is "the site of a major U.S. air base." The Times doesn't say how "major" it is, but it's pretty major. Taji is one of the 14 "enduring" bases that the U.S. has constructed in Iraq. As such, it is a symbol, in fact part of the reality, of the U.S. project of maintaining a more-or-less permanent military presence in that country. Taji is home of the "largest PX in Iraq, which has a Subway, Burger King and Pizza Hut." In addition, according to the military think-tank GlobalSecurity.org, some portion of "the $18.4 billion appropriated by the U.S. Congress to support the reconstruction of Iraqi infrastructure" has gone into "building renovation; renovation and construction of medical facilities; repair of a wastewater treatment plant, and installation of sewage distribution lines" at Camp Taji. So, when the Washington Post reported that Taji is "an area where several American helicopters have been shot down in recent weeks," some Iraqis might reasonably see this not as "terror," but as a response to terror. That's surely not what the Air Force Public Affairs office meant when they referred to Taji as "an area known for terrorist activities," but such is "news" in the upside-down world of war propaganda. Turn It Upside Down The right-side up version—that is, the official version—of
the events of March 2nd is this: Watch how the story changes when looked at from another perspective: The world's most powerful country invades and occupies a sovereign nation, a nation so weak that it posed no serious threat to the superpower. The weaker nation is devastated, and a resistance to the occupation arises. After some years, the resistance acquires the capacity to respond, with limited success, to some of the violence of the occupation. Since a large part of the violence against the population is coming from airstrikes, the resistance includes anti-aircraft tactics and weapons. Now, in this version of events, who are the "terrorists?" Who is posing a "threat" to whom? Who is attacking and who is defending? From which "area" are the attacks coming? Which "area" is being defended? Of course, to have this interpretation make any sense at all, one would have to be aware of the scale, ferocity, and consequences of the U.S. air war against Iraq. Keeping such knowledge from the U.S. population, and thus preventing such an interpretation from being widely considered, is the ongoing project of the U.S. propaganda apparatus. As the example of Taji illustrates, it seems to be working quite well. So far.
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The only substantial piece on the U.S. air war that I've seen recently—and it's a good one— is an article on TomDispatch by Nick Turse, called "Bombs over Baghdad; The Pentagon's Secret Air War in Iraq" Check out Seymour Hersh, "Up
in the Air; Where Is the Iraq War Headed Next?" in the December
5th 2005 edition of The New Yorker magazine. The heroic Dahr Jamail, whose pieces can be found on his own website as well as here and there on the internet, has filed a number of pieces about the U.S. air war in Iraq, as well as some of the best reporting to be seen on any aspect of the occupation. |
