inside the glass house

Going to war with the arms and legs you have
NEW YORK - Long before the US launched a military attack on Iraq in March last year, the Bush administration was forewarned about the disastrous consequences of such an invasion.

But despite the ominous warnings from the international community and massive demonstrations by anti-war activists both in the US and Europe, the White House decided to go to war in what turned out to be a fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction.

The predictions against the war are now coming true: hundreds and thousands of civilians killed, an increasing death toll of US soldiers numbering more than 1,200, a violent insurgency against the military occupation, the destruction of an entire country by incessant bombing and the threat of a dismantled Iraq breaking-up into three separate nation states of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

Worse still, the US is stuck in a Vietnam-style military quagmire unable to extricate itself, with its ill-equipped soldiers fighting a losing guerrilla war in an urban jungle.

At a town hall-style meeting in a US military camp in neighbouring Kuwait last week, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld came in for some sharp questioning by US soldiers who were complaining about the lack of armoured vehicles to protect themselves from roadside bombings and suicide attacks -- the weapons of choice by Iraqi insurgents fighting a military occupation of their country.

The soldiers, who challenged him, were about to be sent on active military duty to Iraq. Rumsfeld, who was taken by surprise, responded with his usual brand of arrogance: "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time," he said.

With nearly 10,000 US soldiers maimed for life and returning home with torn off arms and legs, Rumsfeld's answer has triggered an avalanche of protests, including from his own right wing conservatives who are supportive of the war on Iraq. The defence secretary, who also told his soldiers that no armour in the world could save them from roadside bombings, finished his meeting and got into an armoured vehicle himself that ferried him safely to the airport.

A biting cartoon in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette showed Rumsfeld in the safety of an armoured car gazing at a U.S. soldier on crutches with one arm and one leg missing.

In a sarcastic variation of his comment on the shortage of armoured vehicles, the cartoon mouths Rumsfeld as telling the physically-handicapped soldier: "You go to war with the arms and legs you have. They're not the arms and legs you might want or wish to have at a later time."

Although the death rate of US soldiers is still relatively low compared with Vietnam, the increasing number of injured and maimed soldiers is causing concern.

"These soldiers are coming back to their communities, and people are seeing just how high the price is that these young people are paying," says Dr. Richard Holt, a retired US army surgeon who now works at the University of Texas Health Centre.

The Pentagon, which is carrying on its own covert media propaganda war to lie about the battlefront in Iraq, has been reluctant to release detailed information about the conditions of the 9,765 soldiers injured, as of last week.

According to a report in the Boston Globe, "US troops injured in Iraq have required limb amputations at twice the rate of past wars, and as many as 20 percent have suffered head and neck injuries that may require a lifetime of care."

Meanwhile, after long refusing to risk the lives and limbs of its own workers in Iraq, the UN has reversed its stance and is planning to expand its international staff in the violence-ridden country in time for upcoming elections in late January.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who withdrew most of the 650 UN international staff from Iraq following a terrorist attack on the U.N. compound in Baghdad which killed about 22 people in August last year, has apparently caved into US pressure. The number of staffers, including a UN protection force of mostly Fijians, will be increased, from the current 59 to about 200.

But the move to send more UN staff into Iraq has been opposed by the Staff Union. "We were not consulted on this," a spokesman for the Staff Union said last week. "We still stand by the letter we sent to the Secretary-General last month," he added. In that letter, both the union and another employee body, the Federation of International Civil Servants, appealed to Annan's "good judgment to ensure that no further staff members be sent to Iraq, and that those already deployed be instructed to leave as soon as possible."

In October, Annan told reporters that he would not send staff to Iraq unless there was "genuine improvement in the security environment or solid arrangements for the protection of the staff."

But why the sudden change of mind when the security situation in Iraq, far from improving, has continued to deteriorate? The answer may lie in recent calls for Annan's resignation by neo-conservatives in the Bush administration.

Over the last few weeks, right-wing politicians and newspapers have demanded Annan resign over widespread charges of fraud and mismanagement of Iraq's now-defunct, UN-supervised "oil-for-food" programme.

Last week US Ambassador John Danforth made a public statement that despite a right-wing conspiracy in his own administration, the White House does not support the move to remove Annan ensuring his stay in office till December 2006. And so, it is now pay back time.

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