Eating Iraq

In a remarkably short amount of time, the "conventional wisdom" of America's media-political class has embraced the idea that George W. Bush's escalation of the Iraq war in 2007 has been a "success." This highly dubious notion -- based on nothing but the fact that the horrific murder rate spawned by Bush's act of aggression has momentarily abated to previous levels of savagery that were once considered catastrophic -- now serves as the basic assumption of the "debate" about the Iraq war, especially among the punditry and out on the campaign trail.

But on the ground in Iraq, where some good reporting still filters through the white noise machine of the corporate media, the picture is much different. Iraq is being eaten alive by the corruption of collaborators with the American occupation, by the relentless spead of disease and extreme privation -- and of course, by continuing violence, including the increased use of civilian-slaughtering airstrikes by the "surging" American forces, and by "ethnic cleansing" and other brutal operations by terrorists and sectarian militias now in the pay of the Bush Administration.

That continuing violence can clearly be seen in the latest report from IraqBodyCount.org, which estimates that at least 1,100 Iraqi civilians were killed by war-related violence in November, including at least 75 civilians killed directly by U.S. forces. This is what the great and the good in America now call "success." (And remember, IBC's estimates routinely err on the side of caution; they are to be regarded more as baseline figures, not totals.)

What's more, as the Guardian reports, the relative lowering of the death rate seems largely the result of a decision by the main opponents of the American occupation -- the Sunni militias and the Shiite army of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- to wait out the escalation, which even the most enthusiastic surge advocates admit cannot be sustained militarily for much longer. Another factor is of course the Bush Administration's move to buy off some of Sunni groups that have killed multitudes of American troops, giving the supposedly former insurgents money, guns, uniforms – and territory to rule with an iron rod.

The corruption seething throughout the Iraqi government – a mirror image of the rot in the house of Iraq's masters in Washington – was well captured in a New York Times story over the weekend. As the paper reports:

Jobless men pay $500 bribes to join the police. Families build houses illegally on government land, carwashes steal water from public pipes, and nearly everything the government buys or sells can now be found on the black market.

Painkillers for cancer (from the Ministry of Health) cost $80 for a few capsules; electricity meters (from the Ministry of Electricity) go for $200 each, and even third-grade textbooks (stolen from the Ministry of Education) must be bought at bookstores for three times what schools once charged.

"Everyone is stealing from the state," said Adel Adel al-Subihawi, a prominent Shiite tribal leader in Sadr City, throwing up his hands in disgust. "It's a very large meal, and everyone wants to eat..."

And the extent of the theft is staggering. Some American officials estimate that as much as a third of what they spend on Iraqi contracts and grants ends up unaccounted for or stolen, with a portion going to Shiite or Sunni militias. In addition, Iraq's top anticorruption official estimated this fall — before resigning and fleeing the country after 31 of his agency's employees were killed over a three-year period — that $18 billion in Iraqi government money had been lost to various stealing schemes since 2004.

The collective filching undermines Iraq's ability to provide essential services, a key to sustaining recent security gains, according to American military commanders. It also sows a corrosive distrust of democracy and hinders reconciliation as entrenched groups in the Shiite-led government resist reforms that would cut into reliable cash flows.

Of course, this is not really news to anyone who's been paying attention in the past few years. Nor is the corruption solely the result of native larceny; at least $8 billion or more of Iraq's money "disappeared" when it was under the direct control of Bush's viceroy, Jerry Bremer. This flood of sleaze is flowing into many coffers between the Tigris and the Potomac.