As the new year unfolds, our war crimes complicit corporate media will tell us Bush is “drawing down” the number of troops in Iraq. In fact, the tempo and frequency of mass murder will increase, as the Straussian neocons have no desire to abandon their plan to decimate Muslim society. “Major U.S. news outlets are dodging the extent of the Pentagon’s bombardment from the air, an avoidance all the more egregious because any drawdown of U.S. troop levels in Iraq is very likely to be accompanied by a step-up of the air war,” writes Norman Solomon for the MediaChannel. “Caught between the desire to prevent a military defeat in Iraq and the need to shore up Republican prospects at home in the face of an unpopular war, President Bush is very likely to keep escalating the U.S. air war in Iraq while reducing U.S. troop levels there.” In short, the increased mantra to “bring the troops home” will result in an escalation of Iraqi death and suffering.
On December 10, Seymour Hersh wrote for the New Yorker:
A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.
