War and Remembrance

Post-War Veteran Suicides May Exceed Combat Deaths

2008-05-07T12:32:00.000-04:00

Post-War Suicides May Exceed Combat Deaths, U.S. Says

The number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care, the U.S. government's top psychiatric researcher said.

Community mental health centers, hobbled by financial limits, haven't provided enough scientifically sound care, especially in rural areas, said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He briefed reporters today at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in Washington.

Insel echoed a Rand Corporation study published last month that found about 20 percent of returning U.S. soldiers have post- traumatic stress disorder or depression, and only half of them receive treatment. About 1.6 million U.S. troops have fought in the two wars since October 2001, the report said. About 4,560 soldiers had died in the conflicts as of today, the Defense Department reported on its Web site.

Read the whole story here.

US troop deaths hit 7-month high in Iraq

2008-04-30T09:04:00.001-04:00

BAGHDAD — The killings of three U.S. soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad pushed the American death toll for April up to 47, making it the deadliest month since September.

One soldier died when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. The other died of wounds sustained when he was attacked by small-arms fire, the military said Wednesday. Both incidents occurred Tuesday in northwestern Baghdad.

A third soldier died in a roadside bombing Tuesday night in the east of the capital, the military said.

The statement did not give a more specific location. But the eastern half of Baghdad includes embattled Sadr City and other neighborhoods that have been the focus of intense combat between Shiite militants and U.S.-Iraqi troops for more than a month.

In all, at least 4,059 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

US Troops Suffer Worst Week This Year

2008-04-12T21:23:00.002-04:00

BAGHDAD — A roadside bomb killed an American soldier in Baghdad on Saturday, capping the bloodiest week for U.S. troops in Iraq this year. Clashes persisted in Shiite areas, even as the biggest Shiite militia sought to rein in its fighters.

At least 13 Shiite militants were killed in the latest clashes in Baghdad's militia stronghold of Sadr City, the U.S. military said. Iraqi police said seven civilians also died in fighting, which erupted Friday night and tapered off Saturday.

The U.S. military said the American soldier was killed in a blast Saturday morning in northwestern Baghdad but did not say whether Shiite militiamen were responsible.

The death raised to at least 19 the number of American troopers killed in Iraq since last Sunday.

American casualties have risen with an outbreak of fighting in Baghdad between U.S. and Iraqi forces and the largest Shiite militia _ the Mahdi Army of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran, repeated on Saturday his demand for American soldiers to leave the country and urged his fighters not to target fellow Iraqis "unless they are helping the (U.S.) occupation."

Al-Sadr also blamed the Americans and their Iraqi allies for the assassination Friday of one of his top aides, Riyadh al-Nouri, director of his office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

Gunmen ambushed al-Nouri as he was returning home from Friday prayers, and al-Sadr followers shouted anti-American slogans at his funeral in Najaf.

4,000

2008-03-24T11:34:00.001-04:00

Here is a new song for those 4000 US Troops and the 89,000 Iraqi civilians who have died as a result of George Bush's war.

Five American Soldiers Killed in Baghdad

2008-03-10T15:10:00.004-04:00

BAGHDAD — Five American soldiers were killed and three wounded Monday when a suicide bomber walked up to their patrol on a crowded shopping street in central Baghdad and blew himself up, the military and Iraqi police said.

The blast was one of the worst single attacks on the American military since the so-called surge campaign of additional American troops to pacify the Iraqi capital and surrounding areas was begun last year.

The soldiers were on a regular daily patrol in the middle of the afternoon on a busy street of clothing, food and souvenir stores in Mansour, a relatively upscale and predominantly Sunni Arab district, when the suicide attacker, described as a young male, approached the soldiers and engaged them in conversation.

“He came up and stood beside them and started talking to them and detonated himself,” said an Iraqi police officer at the scene.

An Iraqi interpreter was wounded by the blast, which occurred about 3 p.m., said Lt. Michael Street of the Navy, a military spokesman in Baghdad.

Four of the soldiers were killed immediately by the explosion and the fifth died later from his injuries. “Initial reports indicate the explosive device was a suicide vest,” the military statement said. Iraqi police officers said the soldiers had undertaken regular patrols and were well known in the neighborhood.

While there have been other big attacks on the Americans in Iraq this year, they have been relatively rare in Baghdad as the city has become safer and more secure.

In January, militants killed nine American soldiers over two successive days in the volatile Sunni Arab heartlands north of Baghdad. Six of the soldiers died when they were clearing a house in Diyala during an offensive and insurgents detonated a large bomb hidden in the house.

Despite the overall drop in violence in Iraq, deadly assaults on American troops have continued, particularly in the northern Arab provinces, where Sunni Arab guerrillas have many strongholds.

In Diyala Province on Feb. 17, two American soldiers were shot to death, and another was wounded, according to the American military.

Five American soldiers were killed on Feb. 8 in two roadside bombings, one in Baghdad and the other in northern Iraq, the military said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?hp

Studies: Iraq Costs US $12B Per Month

2008-03-10T14:03:00.002-04:00

Although American military and Iraqi civilian casualties have declined in recent months, the rate of spending has shot up. A fully funded 2008 war budget will be 155 percent higher than 2004's, the CBO reports.

The reasons are numerous: the "surge" of additional U.S. units into Iraq; rising fuel costs; fattened bonuses to attract re-enlistments; and particularly the need to "reset," that is, repair or replace worn-out, destroyed or damaged military equipment. Almost $17 billion is appropriated this year for advanced armored vehicles to protect troops against roadside bombs.

The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show. In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the "burn" rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.

Beyond 2008, working with "best-case" and "realistic-moderate" scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion _ or more _ by 2017.

Interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $816 billion to that bottom line, they say.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has done its own projections and comes in lower, forecasting a cumulative cost by 2017 of $1.2 trillion to $1.7 trillion for the two wars, with Iraq generally accounting for three-quarters of the costs.

Variations in such estimates stem from the sliding scales of assumptions, scenarios and budget items that are counted. But whatever the estimate, the cost will be huge, the auditors of the Government Accountability Office say.

In a Jan. 30 report to Congress, the GAO observed that the U.S. will be committing "significant" future resources to the wars, "requiring decision makers to consider difficult trade-offs as the nation faces an increasing long-range fiscal challenge."

These numbers don't include the war's cost to the rest of the world. In Iraq itself, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion _ with its devastating air bombardments _ and the looting and arson that followed, severely damaged electricity and other utilities, the oil industry, countless factories, hospitals, schools and other underpinnings of an economy.

No one has tried to calculate the economic damage done to Iraq, said spokesman Niels Buenemann of the International Monetary Fund, which closely tracks national economies. But millions of Iraqis have been left without jobs, and hundreds of thousands of professionals, managers and other middle-class citizens have fled the country.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/10/studies-iraq-costs-us-1_n_90694.html

Iraq Security Forces Stand and Deliver

2007-06-07T13:11:00.000-04:00

Military Reports Slow Progress in Securing Baghdad

2007-06-05T09:35:00.000-04:00

Washington Post:

U.S. and Iraqi troops have pushed insurgents and other fighters out of about a third of Baghdad's neighborhoods under a three-month-old plan to pacify the city of 6 million people, according to a U.S. military report released yesterday.

In some parts of the city, military operations to gain control over contested areas have taken longer than projected before the Baghdad security plan started in February, both because of the number of U.S. and Iraqi troops available and the need to adjust to a constantly shifting insurgency, U.S. military officials said.

"One of our planning assumptions was that the Iraqi security forces would be able to hold [territory] in all areas, and we are finding that is not always the case," said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for the U.S. military command in Baghdad. "We are having to go back in and re-clear some areas," he said, adding that "slow progress is still progress."

The report by U.S. brigade and battalion commanders in Baghdad covers the last week of May and reflects a snapshot of the stage of operations in each of the city's 457 neighborhoods. It is "an internal tool" to track progress on a weekly basis and does not represent a formal assessment of the Baghdad security plan, Bleichwehl said. The report was first made public yesterday by the New York Times.

For each weekly report, the commanders gauge which neighborhoods fall into four distinct phases of military operations: disrupt, clear, control and retain.

As of the end of May, 156 neighborhoods were in the "disrupt" phase, which means to keep insurgents off balance until a full military presence can be established. Areas in that phase include much of Sadr City, where U.S. troops are conducting raids against militia leaders but have lacked manpower to sweep the large Shiite district of 2 million people.

An additional 155 neighborhoods were in the "clear" phase, in which the military goes block to block looking for weapons and fighters in order to eliminate resistance.

Commanders rated 128 neighborhoods as under "control," meaning U.S. and Iraqi forces could keep insurgents out and could protect the population. Eighteen neighborhoods were in the "retain" phase, which relies more heavily on Iraqi security forces and is aimed at ensuring that the area remains free of insurgents.

[snip]

When the U.S. military began planning late last year for an increase of about 28,700 troops in Iraq -- including about five brigades, or 17,500 combat troops, in Baghdad -- they estimated that operations to "clear" the capital would be completed by the end of July, the official said. Since then, key assumptions of the initial plan have changed, he said.

Military: 8 Memorial Day deaths in Iraq

2007-05-29T08:43:00.000-04:00

BAGHDAD - Eight American soldiers were killed in roadside bombings and a helicopter crash in a restive province north of Baghdad, the military reported Tuesday, making May the deadliest month of the year for U.S. troops in Iraq.

The Americans — all from Task Force Lightning — were killed Monday in Diyala as the U.S. commemorated Memorial Day, bringing the number of U.S. forces killed this month to at least 110.

The military said six of the soldiers died in explosions near their vehicles and two were killed in the helicopter crash. It was not clear if the helicopter was shot down or suffered mechanical problems.

Car bombing in Baghdad market kills 25

2007-05-22T15:18:00.001-04:00

BAGHDAD - A parked car bomb ripped through a crowded outdoor market Tuesday in southwestern Baghdad, killing 25 people despite a three-month-old security crackdown meant to reduce violence in the capital.

At least 60 people were wounded in the blast in the Shiite-dominated neighborhood of Amil. Nearby buildings were badly damaged and set ablaze, while others were reduced to rubble. Residents ran through the streets with buckets and pots of water, while others frantically tore through the rubble, looking for survivors. Groups of men carried bodies wrapped in tarps out of the damaged buildings.

Fadhil Hussein, 32, who sells spices in the market, said he was thrown from his stall and suffered shrapnel wounds in his back and head.

"I found myself in a pickup truck with other people. Some of them were bleeding and yelling," he said.

The street was filled with water, presumably from a water main that burst.

Sami Hussein, 25, was heading to the market with her 5-year old son when she heard the blast, "followed by gray and black smoke, which engulfed the market and made me to fall on the ground."

She suffered shrapnel wounds in her face and legs.

"I lost my son, and have no idea about his fate," she said. Medical officials at the hospital said he had been killed in the explosion.

The neighborhood has seen an increase in violence in recent weeks, and Sunni politicians expressed fears that Shiite militiamen had resumed their campaign of sectarian cleansing in Amil and nearby neighborhoods of southwestern Baghdad.

The blast came amid the U.S. and Iraqi security operation meant to flush out insurgents and restore order to Baghdad. Deadly attacks targeting civilians and police have continued, however.

U.S. military officials say insurgent groups, feeling the pressure from the crackdown, have hit back by stepping up their car bombings with their devastating death tolls. A May 6 bombing in a market in the neighboring Baiyaa district killed 30 people and wounded 80 others.

Cheney Visits Iraq

2007-05-13T08:06:00.000-04:00

Car bomb in Baghdad market kills 30

2007-05-06T10:24:00.000-04:00

BAGHDAD - A car bomb ripped through a wholesale food market in western Baghdad on Sunday, flattening cars and shops and killing at least 30 people in the deadliest of a wave of attacks across Iraq that killed at least 50 people.

The attack came amid an 11-week-old crackdown by U.S.-led forces intended to bring stability to Baghdad.

As part of that crackdown, U.S. and Iraqi forces raided the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City early Sunday, uncovering a weapons cache, a torture room and killing at least eight insurgents in a gunbattle, the military said.

In other violence, three U.S. troops were killed in separate attacks, the military said Sunday.

Two Marines were killed Saturday in fighting in Anbar province, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, and a roadside bomb killed a soldier and wounded four others Friday in western Baghdad, the military said. The deaths raised to at least 3,365 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The market blast Sunday erupted about noon in the mixed Sunni-Shiite Baiyaa neighborhood and devastated the area, reducing cars and trucks to their charred skeletons and ripping the roofs and exteriors off shops. In addition to the dead, dozens were injured.

Blood pooled in the dirt streets. Hospital officials said two pickup trucks filled with body parts were brought to the morgue.

Headline Slide Show

2007-04-25T13:35:00.000-04:00

In the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, the government's claims about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties to Saddam Hussein went mostly unchallenged by the media. Four years after "shock and awe," a big question remains: how and why did the press and the public buy it? And, was everyone on the "same page?"

View the Headline Slide Show from Bill Moyers Buying The War

Ranger: Told to conceal Tillman truth

2007-04-24T16:06:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON - An Army Ranger who was with Pat Tillman when he died by friendly fire said Tuesday he was told by a higher-up to conceal that information from Tillman's family.

"I was ordered not to tell them," U.S. Army Specialist Bryan O'Neal told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

He said he was given the order by then-Lt. Col. Jeff Bailey, the battalion commander who oversaw Tillman's platoon.

Pat Tillman's brother Kevin was in a convoy behind his brother when the incident happened, but didn't see it. O'Neal said Bailey told him specifically not to tell Kevin Tillman that the death was friendly fire rather than heroic engagement with the enemy.

"He basically just said, 'Do not let Kevin know, he's probably in a bad place knowing that his brother's dead,'" O'Neal said. He added that Bailey made clear he would "get in trouble" if he told.

Kevin Tillman was not in the hearing room when O'Neal spoke.

In earlier testimony, Kevin Tillman accused the military of "intentional falsehoods" and "deliberate and careful misrepresentations" in portraying Pat Tillman's death in
Afghanistan as the result of heroic engagement with the enemy instead of friendly fire.

"We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public," Kevin Tillman told a House Government Reform and Oversight Committee hearing. "Pat's death was clearly the result of fratricide," he said, contending that the military's misstatements amounted to "fraud."

"Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster in a month of political disasters ... so the truth needed to be suppressed," Tillman said

Car bomb kills 9 U.S. soldiers in Iraq

2007-04-23T21:07:00.000-04:00

BAGHDAD - Nine U.S. soldiers were killed and 20 were wounded Monday in a suicide car bombing against a patrol base northeast of Baghdad, the military said.

The attack occurred in Diyala province, a volatile area that has been the site of fierce fighting between U.S. and Iraqi troops, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias, according to a statement.

The nine Task Force Lightning soldiers died of injuries sustained in the blast, which also left 20 soldiers and an Iraqi civilian wounded, the military said.

Of those wounded, 15 soldiers were treated and returned to duty while five others and the Iraqi civilian were evacuated to a medical facility for further care, it added.

Identities were not released pending notification of relatives.

It was the second bold attack against a U.S. base north of Baghdad in just over two months and was notable for its use of a suicide car bomber.

House, Senate Negotiators Agree on War-Funding Bill

2007-04-23T16:41:00.000-04:00

House and Senate negotiators reached agreement today on final war-funding legislation that would begin bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq as early as this July, setting a goal of ending U.S. combat operations no later than March of next year.

The deal, which will come to final votes in the House and Senate Wednesday and Thursday, sets up a veto clash with President Bush by week's end. Congressional Democrats had considered making all dates for withdrawing U.S. troops advisory, hoping to persuade Bush to sign the bill, which would provide more than $100 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But once the president made it clear a veto was inevitable, Democratic leaders decided to stick to binding dates, at least for the initial troop pullouts.

Bush "is the only person who fails to face this war's reality -- and that failure is devastating not just for Iraq's future, but for ours," Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) declared in a speech this afternoon.

The legislation would maintain House-passed language setting strict requirements for resting, training and equipping troops. But it would also grant the president the authority to waive those restrictions, as long as he publicly justifies the waivers.

The bill establishes benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet, including the establishment of a program to disarm militias. The benchmarks also require reductions in sectarian violence, the easing of rules that purged the government of all former Baath Party members, and passage of a oil revenue-sharing law.

Congress set to defy Bush on Iraq war

2007-04-22T11:24:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A fight between the U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush over the Iraq war is set to come to a head this week when Democrats are expected to send him $100 billion to pay for continuing combat while setting timetables for withdrawing troops.

Bush has promised to veto any bill setting dates for removing U.S. combat soldiers from the Iraq war, now in its fifth year.

But when a Democratic-controlled panel of Senate and House of Representatives members meets on Monday to iron out differences between their respective bills, the product is expected to contain 2008 withdrawal dates.

Many lawmakers have been speculating those dates might be nonbinding, as sketched out by a Senate-passed bill.

"The longer we continue down the president's path, the further we will be from responsibly ending this war," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), who on Thursday said the war in Iraq was "lost."

The Nevada Democrat, who called for a change of course in Iraq, made his remarks during a week in which he and Bush traded barbs and as violence and killings in Iraq again spiked.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (news, bio, voting record) of Illinois, who holds a Democratic leadership position in the House, said final touches on the Iraq war language ought to be finished by this weekend. That will be the basis for Monday's work session on the bill.

Last month, the House approved a bill setting a September 1, 2008, deadline for all U.S. combat troops to leave Iraq. The Senate's softer approach calls for some troop withdrawals this year leading to a nonbinding goal of having most of the 146,000 soldiers leave Iraq by March 31, 2008.

Nearly all Republicans in Congress voted against the deadlines.

In recent days, however, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said Congress' debate on deadlines was helpful. In Baghdad on Thursday, he also told Iraqi leaders that the United States cannot indefinitely commit troops.

The full House could vote on Wednesday on the controversial war-funding bill, the same day Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, is due to brief senators in a closed session.

Analysis: Iraq Surge May Be Extended

2007-04-21T08:20:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon is laying the groundwork to extend the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq. At the same time, the administration is warning Iraqi leaders that the boost in forces could be reversed if political reconciliation is not evident by summer.

This approach underscores the central difficulty facing President Bush. If political progress is not possible in the relatively short term, then the justification for sending thousands more U.S. troops to Baghdad - and accepting the rising U.S. combat death toll that has resulted - will disappear. That in turn would put even more pressure on Bush to yield to the Democratic-led push to wind down the war in coming months.

If the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki does manage to achieve the political milestones demanded by Washington, then the U.S. military probably will be told to sustain the troop buildup much longer than originally foreseen - possibly well into 2008. Thus the early planning for keeping it up beyond late summer.

More than half of the extra 21,500 combat troops designated for Baghdad duty have arrived; the rest are due by June. Already it is evident that putting them in the most hotly contested parts of the capital is taking a toll. An average of 22 U.S. troops have died per week in April, the highest rate so far this year.

``This is certainly a price that we're paying for this increased security,'' Adm. William Fallon, the senior U.S. commander in the Middle East, told a House committee Wednesday. He also said the United States does not have ``a ghost of a chance'' of success in Iraq unless it can create ``stability and security.''

The idea of the troop increase, originally billed by the administration as a temporary ``surge,'' is not to defeat the insurgency. That is not thought possible in the near term. The purpose is to contain the violence - in particular, the sect-on-sect killings in Baghdad - long enough to create an environment in which Iraqi political leaders can move toward conciliation and ordinary Iraqis are persuaded of a viable future.

So far the results are mixed, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this week during a visit to Iraq that he wants to see faster political progress by the Iraqis. ``The clock is ticking,'' he said, referring to the limited time the administration can pursue its strategy before the American public demands an end to the war.

Gates also said he told al-Maliki that the United States will not keep fighting indefinitely.

Gates' remarks reflected the administration's effort to strike a balance between reassuring the Iraqis of U.S. support and pressuring their leaders to show they can bring the country together and avert a full-scale civil war.

Costs of the War by Congressional District

2007-04-19T11:45:00.000-04:00

The following table lists the cost of the Iraq War, including a portion of the $100 billion current proposal, for each congressional district in the state of Ohio.

Alongside the cost is what the people of Ohio could have if the money was spent locally instead.

AMERICANS AGAINST ESCALATION RELEASES OHIO NATIONAL GUARD READINESS REPORT

2007-04-19T11:32:00.000-04:00

For Immediate Release
Contact: Brian Rothenberg, Executive Director

COLUMBUS - Volunteers from Military Families Speak Out and ProgressOhio delivered to Sen. George Voinovich's office today a national readiness report produced by ProgressOhio partner Americans Against Escalation in Iraq. The report concludes that The National Guard and Reservists of the United States are not properly equipped or trained to go into a war zone.

In fact, in a March report to Congress, the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves reported in that nearly 90 percent of National Guard units are not ready to respond to crises at home and abroad. [1]

[1] Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, Second Report to Congress, 3/1/07

"AAEI's study indicates that lack of properly equipping troops continues to be a major concern regarding escalation of the war," said Brian Rothenberg, Executive Director of ProgressOhio.org. "Ohio will spend an additional $5.6 billion dollars on troop escalation while 90% of National Guard troops nationwide are not ready to respond at home and abroad over equipment issues."

For a full review of the report, please click the link to IRAQ READINESS REPORT. (pdf)

Sen. Voinovich's office was chosen after he had expressed reservations about troop escalation and because he is a former Governor and Commander in Chief of Ohio's National Guard. "Senator Voinovich continues to blink on actions about escalation, instead of backing up his rhetoric about his concerns over the war's escalation," said Rothenberg.

America 's hidden war dead

2007-04-19T10:17:00.000-04:00

More than 770 civilians working for U.S. firms have lost their lives supporting the military in Iraq, and some families are now speaking out

HOUSTON -- Like thousands of other Americans who have served in Iraq since the U.S. intervention began four years ago, Walter Zbryski came home in a coffin. Only his coffin was not draped in an American flag or accompanied by a military honor guard.

Instead, the mangled body of the 56-year-old retired firefighter from New York City was shipped back to his family in June 2004 in the bloodied clothes in which he died, with half of his head blown away, according to Zbryski's brother Richard.

"I viewed the body," Richard Zbryski said. "What really upset me was that he was laying there floating in at least 6 inches of his own body fluids. They didn't even clean him up for us."

Zbryski's death was not counted among the official tally of more than 3,200 American military personnel who have been killed in Iraq, nor was it noted by the Defense Department in a news release. That's because Zbryski was not a soldier--he was a truck driver working in the private army of hundreds of thousands of contractors hired by the Pentagon to support the logistical side of the massive American war effort in Iraq.

More than 770 civilian contractors working for American companies have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion began on March 20, 2003, according to an obscure office inside the U.S. Department of Labor, which loosely tracks the figures. If those deaths--of truck drivers and cooks, laundry workers and security guards--are added to the military toll, the human cost of the U.S. war effort in Iraq is nearly 25 percent higher.

Now the family members of some of those American workers killed and injured in Iraq are raising their voices, complaining that the contributions of their loved ones have been forgotten by the U.S. public. Some allege that the workers were put in harm's way without adequate protection. Others charge that their own financial and psychological hardships have been ignored by the contracting companies that promised to help them.

"I think these deaths are glossed over and swept under the carpet," said Hollie Hulett, whose husband, Stephen, 48, was killed in an ambush in Iraq on April 9, 2004, while driving a truck for KBR, formerly Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of oil services giant Halliburton. "I don't think anybody, including the Pentagon and the companies that hire these contractors, want it to be known that it is that dangerous over there and they are sending them out into a mess."

Critics of the war, and some members of Congress, have begun pressing the Bush administration to disclose more details about the Pentagon's reliance on private contractors to pursue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Defense Department officials conceded in congressional testimony last year that they do not keep track of how many contractors are at work in Iraq and Afghanistan or how many casualties they have suffered.

"We want to know how many contractors and subcontractors there are, the total cost of the contracts, the number of dead and wounded contractors," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has introduced a bill to require the Bush administration to collect and publicize such information. "This is basic information. . . . When you don't even count [the contractor deaths], you mask the cost in life of this war."

The most common estimate of the number of contractors currently working for U.S. firms in Iraq is 100,000, according to military analysts, but that figure includes unknown proportions of Americans, Iraqis and citizens of other countries.

Casualties understated?

The most recent statistic for deaths among those contractors is 770 as of the end of 2006, according to the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Division of the U.S. Labor Department, which computes the figures from workers' compensation claims filed under the federal Defense Base Act.

But those figures, which also count 7,761 contract workers injured in Iraq, appear to understate the actual number of casualties because they do not include killings of off-duty workers. Nor do they specify the nationalities of the dead and wounded.

What is more clear is that KBR, the Houston-based company that holds the largest Pentagon services contract, has more than 50,000 employees and subcontractors at work in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait who are driving fuel and supply trucks, cooking meals, delivering mail and generally supporting the U.S. military in the region. So far, according to the company, 99 KBR employees have been killed on the job, most of them in Iraq.

Read the rest of the story from The Chicago Tribune

4 bombs kill 157 people in Baghdad

2007-04-18T10:10:00.000-04:00

BAGHDAD - Four large bombs exploded in mostly Shiite areas across Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 157 people and wounding scores as violence climbed toward levels seen before the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to pacify the capital began two months ago.

In the deadliest of the attacks, a parked car bomb detonated in a crowd of workers at the Sadriyah market in central Baghdad, killing at least 112 people and wounding 115, said Raad Muhsin, an official at Al-Kindi Hospital where the victims were taken.

A police official confirmed the toll, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Among the dead were several construction workers who had been rebuilding the mostly Shiite marketplace after a bombing destroyed many shops and killed 137 people there in February, the police official said.

The market is situated on a side street lined with shops and vendors selling produce, meat and other staples. It is also about 500 yards from a Sunni shrine.

About an hour earlier, a suicide car bomber crashed into an Iraqi police checkpoint at an entrance to Sadr City, the capital's biggest Shiite Muslim neighborhood and a stronghold for the militia led by radical anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The explosion killed at least 30 people, including five Iraqi security officers, and wounded 45, police said.

Black smoke billowed from a jumble of at least eight incinerated vehicles that were in a jam of cars stopped at the checkpoint. Bystanders scrambled over twisted metal to drag victims from the smoldering wreckage as Iraqi guards staggered around stunned.

Earlier, a parked car exploded near a private hospital in the central neighborhood of Karradah, killing 11 people and wounding 13, police said. The blast damaged the Abdul-Majid hospital and other nearby buildings.

The fourth explosion was from a bomb left on a minibus in the northwestern Risafi area, killing four people and wounding six others, police said.

Also in Baghdad, four policemen were killed Wednesday afternoon when gunmen ambushed their patrol south of the city center, police said. Six pedestrians were wounded in the gunfire.

U.S. officials had cited a slight decrease in sectarian killings in Baghdad since the U.S.-Iraqi crackdown was launched Feb. 14. But the past week has seen several spectacular attacks on the capital, including a suicide bombing inside parliament and a powerful blast that collapsed a landmark bridge across the Tigris River.

17 Decomposing Bodies Found in Ramadi

2007-04-18T06:28:00.000-04:00

BAGHDAD — Police in Ramadi uncovered 17 decomposing corpses buried beneath two schoolyards in a district that until recently was under the control of al-Qaida fighters. At least 85 people were killed or found dead across the country Tuesday.

The adult bodies were discovered in the Anbar provincial capital after students and teachers returned to the schools a week ago and noticed an increasingly putrid odor and stray dogs digging in the area, Police Maj. Laith al-Dulaimi said.

He said one body had not yet been recovered from a separate burial site behind one of the schools because authorities feared it was booby-trapped with a bomb.

Ramadi had been a stronghold of Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida fighters until recently, when the U.S. forces in the region and the Iraqi government successfully negotiated with many local tribal leaders to split them off from the more militant insurgent groups.

Thousands of young Sunni men have joined the police force in Anbar province and have taken up the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq, the umbrella organization that includes al-Qaida.

In a sign that Shiite death squads are on the move again after more than two months of quiescence, 25 bodies, most tortured, were found dumped in Baghdad on Tuesday. Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his six Cabinet ministers Monday to quit the government.

In addition to the deaths in Baghdad and Ramadi, officials reported 43 other people were killed or found dead across Iraq Tuesday in nearly two dozen other violent incidents at sites that included Mosul, Fallujah, Baqouba and Tal Afar.

Al Qaeda group says Iraq a "university of terror"

2007-04-17T13:35:00.000-04:00

DUBAI (Reuters) - The head of an al Qaeda-led group in Iraq said the country has become a "university of terrorism" producing highly qualified warriors since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

In an audio recording posted on the Internet on Tuesday, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, said his fighters were successfully confronting U.S. forces in Iraq and have begun producing a guided missile called al-Quds 1 or Jerusalem 1.

"The largest batch of soldiers for jihad ... in the history of Iraq are graduating and they have the highest level of competence in the world," Baghdadi said.

He also sought to mend fences with other anti-U.S. insurgent groups in Iraq following reports of tensions between them.

"From the military point of view, one of the (enemy) devils was right in saying that if Afghanistan was a school of terror, then Iraq is a university of terrorism," said the leader of the group set up last year by al Qaeda's Iraq wing and some other Sunni groups.

Iraq: Sadrists to leave Cabinet

2007-04-16T09:56:00.000-04:00

BAGHDAD - Radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers to withdraw from
Iraq's coalition government on Monday, the head of his parliamentary bloc said.

The move, while unlikely to topple Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's regime, would deal a significant blow to the U.S.-backed leader, who relied on support from the Sadrists to gain office.

Al-Sadr's ministers will "withdraw immediately from the Iraqi government and give the six Cabinet seats to the government, with the hope that they will be given to independents who represent the will of the people," said Nassar al-Rubaie, head of al-Sadr's bloc, reading a statement from the cleric.

Al-Sadr, who wields tremendous power among Iraq's majority Shiites, has been upset about recent arrests of his Mahdi Army fighters in the U.S.-led Baghdad security crackdown. He and his followers have also criticized al-Maliki for failing to back calls for a timetable for U.S. troops to leave the country.

Meanwhile, thousands upset about poor city services marched peacefully through the streets of Iraq's second largest city on Monday, demanding the provincial governor's resignation despite calls by top government officials a day earlier to call off the protest.

Some 3,000 demonstrators gathered near the Basra mosque, then marched a few hundred yards to Gov. Mohammed al-Waili's office, which was surrounded by Iraqi soldiers and police officers. The protest ended without incident a few hours later.

Residents have complained of inadequate electricity, garbage disposal and water supplies in Basra, situated 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.