Author: Mike Ewens

The current count of Americans killed in Iraq is 548. According to The Economist, the number would be much higher if the military was not outsourcing the more dangerous jobs:

What the figures suggest is that the number of attacks is going up even more sharply, though the number of potential American targets is going down as their force is reduced in size. Moreover, the American and British armies have hived off a lot of dangerous jobs (driving military vehicles, for instance) to contract workers, mostly Asian, whose deaths rarely get listed. The many British security companies in Iraq tend to hire people from Nepal or Fiji to guard bases. Another British-run company, Erinys International, now deploys 14,000 Iraqis to guard Iraq’s oil installations.[Emphasis added]

An internet search turned up nothing. If any readers have leads on this hidden component of the occupation, I would welcome some links.

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….here are some great stories from links stuck near the bottom of the front page of Antiwar.com:

Anti-US Tunes Big Hits in Iraq:

The story is a bit frightening. Some of the lyrics call for continued resistance:

“The men of Fallujah are men of hard tasks,” Mr. al-Jenabi sings in a dialect decipherable only to people in the Sunni Muslim heartland cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. “They paralyzed America with rocket-propelled grenades. May God protect them from [U.S.] airplanes.”

Despite the fact that, as Dan Senor, a spokesman for the coalition points out “any sort of public expression used in an institutionalized sense that would incite violence against the coalition or Iraqis,” the cassettes and CDs are selling well.

Iraq’s Dinar Gives Greenback a Run for Its Money:

The new “Bremer dinar” — recently made the official fiat currency of Iraq — has become quite popular, especially with respect to the U.S. dollar. The huge influx of U.S. dollars has had little effect on those demanding dinars:

Ahmad Salman Jaburi, the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Iraq, said last week that “this indicates that people are demanding the Iraqi currency, which is really flattering for us … This is now a currency that people want to hold.”

Cheney ‘Waged Guerrilla War’ on Blair Attempt to Get UN in on Iraq

A new biography of Tony Blair claims that

Mr Cheney’s opposition to UN involvement left Mr Blair uncertain whether Mr Bush would go down the UN route until he uttered the relevant words in his speech to the UN general assembly in September 2002. One Blair aide remarked: “[Mr Cheney] waged a guerrilla war against the process . . . He’s a visceral unilateralist”. Another agreed: “Cheney fought it all the way – at every twist and turn, even after Bush’s speech to the UN.”

Part of Patriot Act Ruled Unconstitutional

The AP reports:

“For the first time, a federal judge has declared unconstitutional a section of the USA P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act that bars giving expert advice or assistance to groups designated foreign terrorist organizations.”

CentCom reports:

Three 4th Infantry Division soldiers and two Iraqi Civil Defense Corps members were killed this morning at approximately 7:45 a.m. when their combat patrol was ambushed with an improvised explosive device north of Baghdad

In another incident, a US soldier died from a non-hostile gunshot wound.

These deaths bring the US death toll since March 20th to 502, and the total since the war “ended” to 363. Unfortunately, the Iraqi resistance movement has sure “brought it on”: 297 American soldiers have died since Bush’s infamous invitation for more violence (July 2nd). Major news outlets, in particular the Associated Press, report that today’s deaths bring the US total to 500. CNN reports the total as 501. The discrepancy in the count may stem from two recent incidents. First,a still unnamed US solider died of a heart-attack in Qatar, while on the 5th of January the DoD released the name of a Spc. Luke P. Frist who died in an Army hospital in the US from wounds received in an attack on his fuel truck in Iraq. Finally, lunaville.org — a website that meticulously reports and databases deaths in Iraq — shows the total as 502.

Whatever the total — 500, 501, 502 — too many young American men and women have died to wreak chaos in a distant land, increase the scope of the government’s power and ensure the reelection of a interventionist administration. Antiwar.com will continue to track this cost of war until all troops and American influence leave Iraq.

To do your part in spreading the word of this costly war, place a “casualty counter” on your web site.

UPDATE 3 am EST: A car bomb exploded outside the coalition headquarters in Baghdad, reportedly killing 18 Iraqis and 2 American contractors.

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