February 07, 2007
Bombs over Baghdad, the US air war.
The Asia Times also has a nice
overview of the American air war in Iraq by the experienced Nick Turse. He talks about the fact that the Pentagon is extremely secretive about the amount of bombs, ammunition and other munitions that are being used in the air war, and about the air war and its casualities itself. But bombing is nearly constant, with over 10,000 air "missions" in 2006 alone. But they're not releasing the real figures, especially on things like the amount of cannon fire, the amounts of ammunition and other such information. There are lots of details in this lengthy report, as there often are in Asia Times articles.
A secret air war is being waged in Iraq - often in and around that country's population centers - about which we can find out little. The US military keeps information on the munitions expended in its air efforts under tight wraps, refusing to offer details on the scale of use and so minimizing the importance of air power in Iraq. But expert opinion holds that the forms of aerial assault being employed in that country, though hardly covered in the US media, may account for most of the Iraqi civilian deaths attributed to the US-led coalition since the 2003 invasion.
While some aspects of the air war remain a total mystery, US Air Force (USAF) officials do acknowledge that US military and coalition aircraft dropped at least 50,000 kilograms of bombs on targets in Iraq in 2006. This figure, 177 bombs in all, does not include guided missiles and unguided rockets fired, or cannon rounds expended; nor, according to a US Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF) spokesman, does it take into account the munitions used by some Marine Corps and other coalition aircraft or any of the US Army's helicopter gunships. Moreover, it does not include munitions used by the armed helicopters of the many private security contractors flying their own missions in Iraq.
In statistics provided to Tomdispatch, CENTAF reported a total of 10,519 "close-air-support missions" in Iraq in 2006, during which its aircraft dropped 177 bombs and fired 52 "Hellfire/Maverick missiles". These air strikes presumably included numerous highly publicized missions ranging from the January 2006 air strike outside the town of Baiji that reportedly "killed a family of 12", including at least three women and three young children, to the December attack on an insurgent safe house in the Garma area, near Fallujah, that reportedly killed "two women and a child" in addition to five guerrillas.
Some of these figures don't make sense. 10,519 air missions and only 177 bombs dropped and only 52 missiles fired? That has to be a lie. That would account for less than 500 missions. Then what were the other 10,000 flights for? Just strafing and providing air support? That's hard to believe, especially in the light of many reports from the Iraqis and the rest of the international community that the bombing is constant.
The vicious American air wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has received virtually no new coverage within the US, yet it is quite major and has killed many, many thousands of civilians. And they have increased bombing of Baghdad recently as part of the so-called "surge" which is really just an excuse for Americans to kill more people.
10,000 missions, by the way, works out to about 27 a day, just over one an hour, 24 hours a day. And that's been abuot the rate since the war started, 4 years now. And that's on top of the extensive and illegal bombing during the Clinton-Gore administration as they laid the groundwork for the invasion, which the Democrats and Republicans were planning even then.
This is a major part of the war that the American media aren't reporting at all, and something every American needs to know about. These years of heartless and illegal bombing will come back to haunt America, big-big-time.
