Tom Hull: Dahr Jamail: Beyond the Green Zone

Along with Nir Rosen and Patrick Cockburn, Jamail has been one of the few reporters who have covered the invasion and occupation of Iraq from outside the confines of the US "safety net" -- not just the Green Zone but the US propaganda mission that seeks to control how we view what has happened in Iraq. I picked this up from the library, and unfortunately didn't get very far into it -- too many other distractions, too little time. The following are a few quotes. With more time I'm sure I could have found more. Some day I will.

(pp. 37-38):

Some of the men we spoke with in the fuel line were aware of the fact that Halliburton subsidiary KBR had just been caught by the Pentagon for grossly overcharging them by importing gasoline into Iraq from Kuwait at $2.65 per gallon. Iraqi concerns were able to do the job for just under one dollar per gallon. Halliburton, which had Dick Cheney as its chairman and CEO from 1995 to 2000 before he relinquished his position in order to become vice president of the United States, was unabashedly looting the Pentagon. By this time, Cheney's old company, which he still had financial ties with, had obtained billions of dollars of contracts in Iraq. (No one knows exactly how much money has been contracted in total, but as of the time of this writing, Halliburton's overall contracts for LOGCAP and oil infrastructure rebuilding have totaled approximately $20 billion in Iraq. Total expenditures on U.S. corporations operations in Iraq on reconstruction and other services is about $50 billion. LOGCAP is a Logistics Civil Augmentation Program with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is Halliburton's largest government contract. Under this contract, Halliburton is responsible for providing supplies and services to the military on a global basis. Services include construction of military housing for troops, transporting food and supplies to bases, and serving food.

It's worth noting that it was Dick Cheney, as defense secretary in 1992, who spearheaded the movement to privatize most of the military's civil logistics activities. Under Cheney's direction, $9 million was paid by the Pentagon to KBR to conduct a study to determine whether private companies like KBR should handle all the military's civil logistics. KBR's classified study conveniently concluded that greater privatization of logistics was in the government's best interest. Shortly thereafter, on August 3, 1992, Secretary Cheney awarded the first comprehensive LOGCAP contract to KBR. The Washington Post reported, "The Pentagon chose [KBR] to carry out the study and subsequently selected the company to implement its own plan." Three years later Cheney became CEO of Halliburton.

(pp. 44-45):

I had met [translator] Harb [al-Mukhtar] a few days before this second trip to Ramadi. At that time, he had been finishing up his work with a depleted uranium (DU) study team from Japan. He'd taken them all over southern Iraq with their Geiger counters to measure what he said were extremely high levels of radiation in particular locations. DU munitions are used during combat because they are extremely effective. Made of radioactive heavy metals that can effortlessly cut through armor, they leave a radioactive dust upon impact that filters through the air, water, and ground, contaminating everything it touches.

Uranium is a heavy metal and a radioactive poison whose toxicity is not debatable, even according to the director of the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute, who stated in a report mandated by Congress, "No available technology can significantly change the inherent chemical and radiological toxicity of DU. These are intrinsic properties of uranium." In fact, even the primary U.S. Army training manual stated, "NOTE: (Depleted Uranium) Contamination will make food and water unsafe for consumptions." Nevertheless, hundreds of tons of DU munitions were used in the prior Gulf War, and the Pentagon admitted to using much more during this war. The effects on the Iraqi people had already been shown to be devastating.

(p. 60):

Things were already going poorly for the occupiers. According to the Department of Defense, by December 2003, U.S. soldiers reported to be sick, injured, or dead from the invasion/occupation numbered over ten thousand, a figure that kept rising, alarmingly, by the day. Resistance attacks on Americans were averaging over thirty per day, which amounted to an average over over 1.3 soldiers killed per day.

But, it was far worse for Iraqis. One of the doctors I interviewed at the Baghdad medical center informed me that the number of Iraqi children dying from malnutrition and disease had doubled sine the invasion, and natal mortality among women had tripled. Fear of kidnappings led to most children being kept at home. Women faced a constant threat of rape and abduction from criminal gangs on the rampage. Gunfire at all hours of the night and day had become familiar and commonplace in most areas of Baghdad.

It was gut-wrenching to witness the heavy toll that a dictatorial regime, multiple wars, sanctions, and now the occupation had taken on this ancient land. Environmentally, Iraq was a disaster area. Most people I knew, including myself, had the "Baghdad cough" from the impossibly high levels of pollution in the capital city. Many areas in southern Iraq were uninhabitable due to the presence of contaminated soil and water from the use of depleted uranium munitions by the U.S. military during the 1991 Gulf War. The scars of war were visible everywhere: on the buildings, the landscape, and the people.

posted 2008-04-22