Pentagon Concludes US Defeated in Key Iraqi Province
Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer, however, seemed unwilling to perform to the White House’s specifications. He told reporters, “I have seen that report and I do concur with that assessment,”
He said that US forces in the province were capable of “stifling” the Iraqi resistance, but not defeating it.
Zilmer, who acknowledged that those the US is fighting are overwhelmingly Iraqis and not so-called “foreign fighters,” added that even pouring more American troops into the region would only “provide a temporary solution,” and could not substitute for political and economic progress, which Washington has proven woefully unable to engender.
The furor generated by the Marine intelligence report came on the heels of another damning—though unclassified—document issued September 11 by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the US Congress.
The GAO report, which is based largely upon studies by other agencies, many of them previously unpublicized, points to a steady increase in armed acts of resistance against the US occupation. It found, “Total attacks reported from January 2006 through July 2006 were about 57 percent higher than the total reported during the same period in 2005.”
A graph accompanying the document indicated that the number of attacks has risen from about 100 in May 2003 to 4,500 in July 2006.
The report also pointed to the economic debacle created by the US war and occupation in Iraq. It cited last month’s figures showing that Iraq was producing only 2.17 million barrels of oil per day, well below the pre-war level of 2.6 million barrels.
During the same period, it found electricity availability averaged only “5.9
hours per day in Baghdad and 10.7 hours nationwide”—conditions that make normal economic life literally impossible.
The result has been a catastrophic decline in living standards for the masses of Iraqi working people. The inflation rate is expected to double this year, reaching a punishing 70 percent. Fuel and electricity prices, meanwhile, have risen by 270 percent in just the last year.
This is a map of Iraq. ( Photo at right)
Map shows Anbar Province, the largest of Iraq's 18 provinces. Fallujah is marked by the red dot.(Photo #2 at right)