Hope Amidst Sociocide: An Interview with Michael Otterman

Lee Bob Black interviews the author of Erasing Iraq.

By the time Michael Otterman’s book, Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage, came out in 2010, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis — some say over one million — had already escaped to neighboring Syria. Many wouldn’t be there for long. The next year, the Syrian civil war erupted. Since then, millions in the region, not just Iraqis and Syrians, have fled poverty, persecution, and war.

In 2010, I spoke with Otterman about his book, satellite imagery, embedding journalists in military units, Sweden invading the U.S., propaganda, and more. For me, one thing stuck out amid everything else we discussed that day. Speaking about supporters of the U.S. invasion of Iraq who claimed that the country was now better off, Otterman said: “When [Iraqi] refugees start to return, that will indicate things are better. Until that occurs, you can’t really claim Iraq is a better place.” I remember being hopeful. I gave it a few years. Frankly, I had thought that with the U.S. finishing its withdrawal, that Iraqi democracy would slowly but surely evolve from installed to embraced, and that eventually migrants and refugees would return home to Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, you name it. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

After my conversation with Otterman, who is also an academic and currently executive director of the Bernard & Sandra Otterman Foundation, a foundation supporting peace through education and public health, I lost track of our interview. Over the years, even though I’ve only thought of it fleetingly, I scolded myself for failing to submit it for publication. I felt as if I’d missed an opportunity to give a voice to the voiceless, that a migrant and refugee crisis was happening on the other side of the world and I had done nothing to help. Recently, I re-discovered the interview in a long-ignored digital folder on my computer. Here it is, finally; a stark reminder that optimism, ignorance, and inaction are a lethal mix.

“It’s difficult talking with a victim of torture or a refugee,” Otterman says in the interview. “Knowing that I’ll get their story out there gets me through the process.”

Lee Bob Black: With Erasing Iraq, did you intentionally set out to humanize the Iraq War?

Michael Otterman: That was the point. In 2002 and 2003, I’d watch the news coverage and hit record on the VCR whenever an outrageous commentator or new graphic was unleashed on CNN or Fox News. “Countdown to Iraq,” “Attack on Iraq,” all that kind of stuff. I watched the coverage in horror.

But there weren’t really any Iraqi people interviewed or discussed during any of this coverage on the march to war, during the invasion, or post-invasion — that stuck with me for a while. People in the U.S., in Australia — it’s the same problem — the Iraqi people weren’t humanized by the media, and that’s dangerous because when you’re talking about attacking a country and causing massive death, it only serves the interests that be that these people aren’t humanized, that they’re just some of mass of people over there you don’t have to worry about.

But when you engage with these narratives — I spent a lot of time reading Iraqi blogs, interacting with bloggers, and excerpting their work — you get a real sense of what’s going on in Iraq, what people think and feel. That’s what we wanted to put into this book; those narratives. I spent some time in Syria and Jordan speaking to Iraqi refugees. I put those in. Richard Hil, co-author, went to Sweden. Sweden has actually taken in more Iraqi refugees than the U.S. since 2003. We put them all in there for that express purpose. We wanted to humanize the conflict and make people think about what the real impact of war is. [Editor’s note: Paul Wilson is also a co-author of Erasing Iraq.]

Black: How does the U.S. government’s censorship of news organizations during wartime tie in with Iraqi and Afghan civilians, refugees, and internally displaced people?

Otterman: The Pentagon, going back to the Vietnam War, started a campaign to minimize what the press could learn about and report about whoever we’re fighting. In the case of Grenada [in 1983] and Panama [in 1989], they just didn’t allow journalists onto the battlefield. If they were caught, they lost their cameras and notebooks and were taken away from the battlefield. They did this to minimize the coverage of the impacts of the war.

During the first Gulf War [of 1990 and 1991], they used press pools for the first time. The Pentagon picks, say, a man from The New York Times, a woman from the LA Times, three, four, or five people, and puts them into a pool. They take them to the frontlines where they can photograph and talk to some soldiers, and then they take them to another part of the conflict, and then another part. So the Pentagon controls who gets into these pools, what they’re shown, and where they’re taken. And there’s minimal contact with civilians. And so that was an innovative way for the Pentagon to control the message during the first Gulf War.

For Afghanistan in 2001, the Pentagon bought satellite imagery from private companies that are used by companies like Google. The Pentagon literally bought up all the imagery up and over Afghanistan. The Guardian reported that the images from these satellites would have showed the effects of bombing.[i] The Pentagon didn’t need the images.

Black: Is it widely agreed that that was a blackout maneuver?

Otterman: Yeah.

Michael Otterman.

Black: Did the Pentagon ever say that it didn’t need that imagery?

Otterman: There’s no other conclusion you could draw. The Pentagon have their own spy satellites. Why would they purchase the imagery from the ones news networks were relying on? They wanted to take away any chance that images of destruction could come out. Once the true horror of war is revealed — all wars are death, destruction, dismemberment — the public will to wage the war decreases. That’s what’s behind this whole mindset, the idea that truth is an enemy, at least for Pentagon aims.

Black: What about Iraq?

Otterman: In 2003, it was military embedding. They allowed journalists to embed within invading U.S. troops. What you get there is incredibly compromised coverage. You get images of the frontlines, but they’re from literally the tanks of U.S. troops.

Studies have been done into what types of sourcing these embedded journalists take.[ii] It’s no surprise that they don’t speak to many civilians. Their sources are mostly the same people protecting them. If an embedded journalist had something to report, say some atrocity, it’s a real chilling effect, because they don’t want to piss off the soldiers they’re with.

The use of embedding was wide spread. For the U.S. invasion of Iraq, one hundred percent of USA Today’s coverage was embedded reporters.[iii] If you were relying on USA Today for what you thought about the war, it would be incredibly skewed towards the voice of U.S. soldiers and the U.S. mission. Those are just some of the ways the Pentagon controls the message.

There’s all these structural problems with the way things are set up right now. Certainly people that cover the White House and the Pentagon rely on having a good rapport with their sources. That has a chilling effect on the news they report because if they write some huge exposé, they’re probably not going to get the calls back that they get when they write flattering portraits of people.

Another thing you have after 9/11 is patriotism. Every news network would have a flag in a top corner of the screen. At the time, what sold, what got the best ad rates, was coverage that played to that, this being something that The Guardian in the UK didn’t have to contend with. But in the U.S., most media is part of giant global faceless corporations that have to report to the bottom line.

The coverage was skewed. In the build up to the war, Phil Donahue had a show on MSNBC.[iv] But people in the network thought he was too left. All he was doing was challenging, and having guests that challenged, some of the cases for the war, weapons of mass destruction, and so on. But he was sacked, his show cancelled.[v]

Black: In Erasing Iraq, you refer to many Iraqi bloggers, some of whom use aliases, such as Sunshine, Riverbend, Salam Pax, Dr. Mohammed, and Neuorotica. How did you find all of these Iraqi bloggers?[vi]

Otterman: It was easy. I mentioned earlier about all this compromised coverage, this very narrow range of debate in the news networks and papers. The reality was, the blogosphere was just getting started in a serious way in 2002, 2003, and 2004. So I just Googled Iraqi blogs. That’s all anyone had to do to get a different sense of the war, to get a different sense of what Iraqi people thought, this being the human perspective I’m talking about. This isn’t some top-secret thing. It’s out there. Everything Salam Pax wrote in 2002 and 2003 is still online.[vii] You can read it and interact with it. And that’s what I did. And I put it into the book.

Black: You just contacted some of these bloggers directly.

Otterman: Some, like Riverbend, who fled from Iraq in 2007, didn’t want to talk. She hasn’t made any public comments or statements, I think, for her own safety, because she was very critical of certain people and whatnot in her blog.[viii]

Other bloggers, like a dentist named Dr. Mohammed who I quote in Erasing Iraq, emailed me back right away. He made it out of Iraq. He made it to the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] and they resettled him to Houston, of all places, which is ironic because that’s the capital of American oil interest and the driving force, I’d argue, behind the U.S.-Iraq War. Even Alan Greenspan said that the war was all about oil.[ix] And Dr. Mohammed now lives in the Mecca of our oil culture.

Black: In Erasing Iraq, you discuss sociocide. Can you talk about that?

Otterman: Sociocide isn’t a word I invented. Johan Galtung, a famous peace theorist, used it decades ago. So did an academic named Keith Doubt who writes about it with reference to Bosnia.[x] Keith Doubt describes it as not just the killing of a people, but also the killing of a way of life. That phrase and what it meant stuck with me.

I applied it to Iraq and I thought it fit perfectly. Millions have been killed. There’s the Iran-Iraq War in which the U.S. sort of supported both sides, but certainly supported Saddam Hussein with intelligence and chemical and biological weapons. There’s the Gulf War [August 1990 to February 1991]. Thousands killed outright. Millions killed during the sanctions period [from August 1990 to May 2003] that followed, due largely to the bankrupt Iraqi healthcare system.[xi] They couldn’t get the medicines, basic medical supplies, the parts to fix x-ray and MRI machines. The water treatment plants and everything else that were destroyed by the U.S. and allies during the first Gulf War were never properly rebuilt.

Black: The U.S. also destroyed power generation plants in Iraq during the Gulf War.[xii]

Otterman: Imagine a city like New York losing its power plants. Baghdad was an advanced city in the late 1980s. Then all of a sudden it lost most of its power. You can imagine what the impact would be.

Black: So how does that relate to sociocide?

Otterman: This is part of the larger picture. Millions dead during the sanctions period [from August 1990 to May 2003]. Thousands dead during the 2003 invasion. By some estimates, by The Lancet and others, about a million dead since 2003.[xiii] So a few million dead. Around five million displaced. And those are the hard numbers. Sociocide captures that.

The term also takes on the death of religious groups. There’s a group called the Mandaeans that believe in the sanctity of water and venerate John the Baptist. They’re complete pacifists. After the invasion, when fundamentalism spiked, Sunni and Shia fundamentalists targeted them. There used to be about 50,000 Mandaeans in Iraq. Today around 4,000 are left.[xiv] Many have been killed. But most have just moved elsewhere, Syria, Jordan, there’s a large community in Sydney, Australia. The sad thing is, they have strong rules against inter-marriage and it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to become a Mandaean. You have to be born a Mandaean. This homogeneous community survived in Iraq. But now that it’s split around the world, it’s only a matter of time, with inter-marriage and everything else, this religion will be lost.[xv]

Sociocide also takes on the death of culture. The Baghdad museum [i.e. the National Museum of Iraq] had one of the most broad collections of Mesopotamian art. It was completely sacked after the 2003 invasion while U.S. troops were a few blocks away. The only ministries that U.S. troops protected were the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Oil. It’s telling where they put their resources. The library [i.e. the Iraq National Library and Archive], which holds books, artifacts, and documents, was also sacked in 2003.[xvi] There’s an estimate that, across Iraq, at least a million books were destroyed. That speaks to the death of knowledge and culture.

Sociocide is the only term that puts this all together. It’s death and displacement of people, and death on a much deeper level as well.

Black: At a reading, I once heard you speak about how in the lead up to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, practically nobody wanted an occupation. Civilians didn’t, military leaders didn’t, politicians didn’t.

Otterman: Some people actually wanted an occupation. It was led by people that prosecuted the war, the neo-conservative element in the U.S. that sought to remake Iraq from the core. Liberalize the economy. Open it to international investment. Remove all tariffs.

George W. Bush would talk about — and this is part of the neo-conservative project — giving freedom to the world. Obviously that sounds good on paper. But you can’t spread anything good by using a gun.

Paul Bremer — the U.S. viceroy put in charge right after Saddam was ousted — put out these one hundred orders.[xvii] The first order was to disband the Iraqi military, which was such a poor, almost laughably, decision.[xviii] Hundreds of thousands of men suddenly unemployed at the stroke of a pen. And these guys are obviously familiar with military tactics. That was the start of the insurgency against the occupation.

We were able to take out Saddam. But we didn’t have the legitimacy to occupy the country in ways that certain people — [Paul] Wolfowitz, [Dick] Cheney, [George W.] Bush — saw fit.

Nobody I’ve talked to though, not even people that hated Saddam, wanted an occupation by a foreign power from half way across the world, telling them how to live, and everything that goes along with it.

Black: I wonder if this relates to how we morally judge people based on either their intentions or the consequences of their actions, or sometimes both.

Otterman: It points to larger questions: Who is a terrorist? Who is a freedom fighter? Who is an insurgent?

Say if Sweden didn’t like George W. Bush and came in and took him out and occupied our country. And we rose up against the Swedes that were patrolling the block — what would that make us? Terrorists, freedom fighters, insurgents? It’s always a matter of perspective. The occupier chooses the terms that makes them appear in the best light and the most moral, regardless of their actions, and especially the impacts of their actions.

Black: In Erasing Iraq, you attack the rhetoric of politicians and military commanders, and you humanize Iraqi refugees. That said, do you ever feel that your efforts aren’t having an impact? What motivates you to keep writing?

Otterman: We learn about these atrocities, but how do we deal with them? For me, writing is cathartic. By exposing injustice, I can sleep better at night. It’s difficult talking with a victim of torture or a refugee. Knowing that I’ll get their story out there gets me through the process.

But in a real impacts sense, what am I hoping to achieve? You have to be realistic. In 2003, we had the biggest war protest since Vietnam. Millions of people took to the streets against the war. The media asked George W. Bush, “What do you think about this rage against the war?” He responded, “This actually inspires me to spread democracy. This is the freedom I want to give to people of the Middle East.” As disturbing as that sounds — it was certainly disheartening to me — that was his reaction. It pushed him forward. What can I say? There’s limits, obviously. But with Erasing Iraq, by humanizing the other, in this case the Iraqi people, I’m just trying to broaden people’s perceptions.

Black: In the first few years after the Iraq War started, the U.S. only let a relatively small number of Iraqi refugees into the country. Why do you think the U.S. took so long to open its borders to Iraqi refugees?[xix]

Otterman: Some NGOs predicated the suffering of millions of displaced people. But the U.S. was slow to respond to it. Then it grew out of hand in 2007 during the civil war and the surge.[xx] There were huge levels of displacement, and it couldn’t be ignored anymore. So at the end of the George. W. Bush administration, programs were put in place to broaden the numbers.[xxi] And then they were expanded under Obama. They’re still not where they should be.

Black: Travelling to the Middle East for research, did anything surprise you about people’s views on the U.S.?

Otterman: I’ve met refugees in Syria and Jordan who have lived decades through war and deprivation. What’s important to these people? A safe place to raise a family. A job. When you ask refugees where they’d like to be resettled, it’s usually Canada, the U.S., Australia, the UK — countries that waged war against Iraq. That surprised me. It speaks to how much they want a normal life.

Damascus has the largest population of Iraqi refugees in the world. Across Syria there’s about a million Iraqi refugees.[xxii] The Syrian government is Baathist, and they sympathize with the plight of Iraqis. They let them in, allow them to work. I went to one Damascus neighborhood called Zaida Zeinah.[xxiii] Walking the streets, everything’s Iraqi — food, clothing, music. In Baghdad, restaurants would be blown up, and proprietors would reopen the same thing in Syria with the same recipes.

It’s an important point to make that they’re not refugees in the stereotypical sense of living in a tent on a soccer field, which is something you see in other conflicts. These refugees are mostly middle-class or lower-middle-class people. Professionals, school teachers, doctors. People with means to pack their stuff, hire a car, and get out the country. The poorest Iraqis couldn’t even do that.

Certain politicians and media say that Iraq is getting better, mission accomplished, all that. If things are so great, why are there still a million Iraqi refugees? Iraq’s still unsafe. Every day we hear about bombings. Basic services — sewage, water, power — still aren’t restored. Iraqis don’t want to return to this broken country. I put this to people that supported the invasion, and to people that think things are better. Things aren’t better. When the refugees start to return, that will indicate things are better. Until that occurs, you can’t really claim Iraq is a better place.

Black: I’m regularly shocked by how our government and military do these things to people. We all know that the first casualty of war is the truth. Many of us don’t believe much of what comes out of the U.S. State Department or the UK Home Office. But I was particularly paralyzed when I learned about the Pentagon’s “military analyst program,” which you write about in Erasing Iraq.

Otterman: That program fits in with the Pentagon’s effort not just to suppress Iraqi voices, but also to put forward a narrative that they believe is right concerning civilian casualties, Guantánamo Bay, the surge, a whole array of things. One of the ways it did this was the “military analysts program,” which the New York Times uncovered.[xxiv] It was, in the purest sense of the words, a propaganda system. About 70 former U.S. generals were recruited to approach news networks as unaffiliated, unbiased former military men who had some experience and wanted to share it with the world. But the Pentagon would give them talking points. What to say. What not to say. What to emphasize. What to deemphasize. On TV, it wouldn’t say something like, “Still affiliated with the Pentagon.” It would say something like, “Independent, former general.” Those that recited the talking points the clearest got deeper access to Pentagon officials, people like [then Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld and others, thereby raising the pay they could get from the news organizations, raising their popularity, getting better slots.

Quite tellingly, while the New York Times totally exposed the program, none of these news networks reported on the Times coverage. So for readers of the Times and blogs that had picked it up, we knew about it. But the people that rely on the networks that used these analysts — CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and to an extent NPR — none of these outlets reported this huge front-page revelation that was in the Times. This again shows the structural problems in the quote unquote free mainstream media.

Lee Bob Black is a writer and editor.

Michael Otterman is the author of American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Graib and Beyond (2007) and the co-author, along with Richard Hil and Paul Wilson, of Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage (2010). He is currently executive director of the Bernard & Sandra Otterman Foundation, a foundation supporting peace through education and public health.

Endnotes:

[i] Duncan Campbell, “U.S. Buys Up All Satellite War Images,” The Guardian, October 17, 2001, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/17/physicalsciences.afghanistan (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20141108235151/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/17/physicalsciences.afghanistan).

[ii] Kylie Tuosto, “The ‘Grunt Truth’ of Embedded Journalism: The New Media/Military Relationship,” Stanford Journal of International Relations, Fall/Winter 2008, https://web.stanford.edu/group/sjir/pdf/journalism_real_final_v2.pdf (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20150907131623/https://web.stanford.edu/group/sjir/pdf/journalism_real_final_v2.pdf).

[iii] “Embedded Reporting Influences War Coverage, Study Shows,” August 14, 2006, Penn State News, http://news.psu.edu/story/202025/2006/08/14/embedded-reporting-influences-war-coverage-study-shows (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20150907125304/http://news.psu.edu/story/202025/2006/08/14/embedded-reporting-influences-war-coverage-study-shows and https://archive.is/xelNf). (Previously this page was at http://www.psu.edu/ur/2006/embedreporting.html.)

Extracts:

“A Penn State study shows that the use of embedded reporters by major newspapers did affect the number and the type of stories published, resulting in more articles about the U.S. soldiers’ personal lives and fewer articles about the impact of the war on Iraqi civilians.”

“[Andrew M.] Lindner analyzed 742 print news articles by 156 journalists from the major combat period from the beginning of the Iraqi war (March 19, 2003) until the “Mission Accomplished” speech by President George W. Bush (May 1, 2003). He presented his findings Aug. 11 at the annual conference of the American Sociological Association.”

“The study examined reports from 67 news sources including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Reuters, and the Associated Press. The researcher studied articles written by only those reporters based in Iraq and not by reporters based in surrounding regions.”

“For USA Today, 100 percent of its articles during that period came from embedded reporters, the study shows.”

[iv] Phil Donahue’s MSNBC show was called simply “Donahue.”

[v] Article 1:

Bill Carter, “MSNBC Cancels Phil Donahue,” February 26, 2003, New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2003/02/26/business/media/26PHIL.html (and archived at www.webcitation.org/64T5Pxx2S).

Article 2:

“MSNBC Axes Phil Donahue,” CBS News and Associate Press, February 25, 2003, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/msnbc-axes-phil-donahue/ (and archived at https://archive.is/QSHtw and http://web.archive.org/web/20141109012324/http://www.cbsnews.com/news/msnbc-axes-phil-donahue).

[vi] Select Iraqi blogs and bloggers that appear in Erasing Iraq:

(A) Salam Pax; pp. 38, 40 of Erasing Iraq.

2003 and 2004 blog, Salam Pax’s Where is Raed? www.dear_raed.blogspot.com (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.dear_raed.blogspot.com).

2002 to 2009 blog, Salam Pax: the Baghdad Blogger, www.salampax.wordpress.com (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.salampax.wordpress.com).

(B) Faiza al-Araji; pp. 44 to 49.

(C) Riverbend’s Baghdad Burning blog; pp. 49, 75.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com).

(D) Sunshine; pp. 166, 209.

(E) Dr. Mohammed’s Last of Iraqis blog; p. 73.

http://last-of-iraqis.blogspot.com (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://last-of-iraqis.blogspot.com).

(F) Neuorotica (aka Neurotic Iraqi Wife); p. 172.

http://neurotic-iraqi-wife.blogspot.com (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://neurotic-iraqi-wife.blogspot.com).

[vii] Salam Pax’s blog in 2003 and 2004, Salam Pax’s Where is Raed? www.dear_raed.blogspot.com (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.dear_raed.blogspot.com).

Salam Pax’s blog from 2002 to 2009, Salam Pax: the Baghdad Blogger, www.salampax.wordpress.com (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.salampax.wordpress.com).

[viii] At the time of Lee Bob Black and Mike Otterman’s interview, July 30, 2010, the last blog entry by Riverbend on Baghdad Burning (http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com) was posted on October 22, 2007. However, since then she has posted one entry, which was on April 09, 2013.

Steven Rockford posted a highlight reel of some of Riverbend’s blog posts in an article for Salon, “Riverbend — the girl blogger of Baghdad,” February 04, 2010. The original post is no longer viewable on Salon, however it’s archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20141109020802/http://open.salon.com/blog/steven_rockford/2010/02/03/what_happened_to_riverbend_the_girl_blogger_of_baghdad.

[ix] Sources:

(A) Alan Greenspan wrote in his memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (2007), “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

(B) Graham Paterson, “Alan Greenspan Claims Iraq War was Really for Oil,” September 16, 2007, The Sunday Times (UK), www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2461214.ece (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2461214.ece).

(C) Peter Beaumont and Joanna Walters, “Greenspan Admits Iraq was About Oil, as Deaths Put at 1.2m,” September 15, 2007, The Observer (UK), www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/sep/16/iraq.iraqtimeline (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/sep/16/iraq.iraqtimeline).

[x] Keith Doubt writes about sociocide in his book, Understanding Evil: Lessons from Bosnia (2006).

[xi] The sanctions period ended in May 2003 with the passing of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483.

[xii] Needless Deaths in the Gulf War: Civilian Casualties During the Air Campaign and Violations of the Laws of War, “Chapter 4: Objects Attacked: The Need for Full Disclosure and Accountability,” Human Rights Watch (HRW), 1991, http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm).

Extract:

“The targeting and destruction of Iraq’s electricity-generating plants, including four of the country’s five hydro-electric facilities, was little-discussed and never questioned during the war [i.e. the Gulf War of 1991]. To Middle East Watch’s knowledge, Pentagon and [George H.W.] Bush Administration officials never publicly offered a justification during the war for attacking and crippling most of Iraq’s electrical power system — destruction which continues to have devastating consequences for the civilian population.

After the war, in its July 1991 report, the Pentagon states that attacks on “electricity production facilities that power military and military-related industrial systems” were related to the goal of isolating and incapacitating the Iraqi regime. The report’s only mention of the impact of these attacks on the civilian population is as follows: “It was recognized at the outset that this campaign would cause some unavoidable hardships for the Iraqi populace. It was impossible, for example, to destroy the electrical power supply for Iraqi command and control facilities or chemical weapons factories, yet leave untouched that portion of the electricity supplied to the general populace.”

Still, the [July 1991 Pentagon] report asserts that the bombing campaign was intended to “leave most of the basic economic infrastructure of the country intact” and does not reveal beyond the above brief statement any weighing of the military advantage of these attacks against the cost to the Iraqi civilian population of the near-total crippling of the country’s electrical power system.”

[xiii] Article 1:

Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, and Gilbert Burnham, “Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey,” The Lancet, October 29, 2004. An abstract is at www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(04)17441-2/abstract (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(04)17441-2/abstract).

Article 2:

Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, and Les Roberts, “Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey,” The Lancet, October 11, 2006. An abstract is at www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(06)69491-9/abstract (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(06)69491-9/abstract).

[xiv] Nathaniel Deutsch, “Save the Gnostics,” New York Times, October 6, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/opinion/06deutsch.html (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/opinion/06deutsch.html).

Extract from Nathaniel Deutsch’s article:

“When American forces invaded in 2003, there were probably 60,000 Mandeans in Iraq; today [2007], fewer than 5,000 remain.”

[xv] Article 1:

Angus Crawford, “Iraq’s Mandaeans ‘Face Extinction’,” BBC News, 4 March 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6412453.stm (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6412453.stm).

Article 2:

Chris Newmarker, “Survival of Ancient Faith Threatened by Fighting in Iraq,” Associated Press, February 10, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020901687_pf.html

(and archived at https://archive.is/Sj5pt and http://www.webcitation.org/6bJkMn1iw).

Extract from Chris Newmarker’s article:

“Among the casualties of the Iraq war is a little-known religious faith called Mandaeanism that has survived roughly two millennia and whose adherents believe that John the Baptist was their great teacher. While there were more than 60,000 Mandaeans in Iraq in the early 1990s, only about 5,000 to 7,000 remain. Many have fled amid targeted killings, rapes, forced conversions and property confiscation by Islamic extremists, according to a report released last week by the New Jersey-based Mandaean Society of America.”

[xvi] Zain Al-Naqshbandi, “Report on the Central Awqaf Library” and “Report on the Central Library of Baghdad University / Al-Waziriya,” June 2004, Middle East Librarians Association (MELA), Committee on Iraqi Libraries, http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/zan.html (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20050116091531/http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/zan.html and https://archive.is/wBRmS).

[xvii] Lewis Paul Bremer III served as the U.S. Administrator to Iraq from May 11, 2003 to June 28, 2004.

[xviii] Lewis Paul Bremer III signed the Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 2 on May 23, 2003. The order disbanded the Iraqi military, security, and intelligence infrastructure.

[xix] Between 2003 and 2009, more than 30,000 Iraqi refugees were admitted into the U.S.

For more on this, refer to an article by Alexander G. Higgins, “UN: Most Iraqi refugees in program go to U.S.,” Associated Press, October 16, 2009. USA Today published the AP article at http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2009-10-16-iraq-refugees_N.htm; it’s archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20150905134712/http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2009-10-16-iraq-refugees_N.htm and https://archive.is/N9jFE.

[xx] Michael Duffy, “The Surge at Year One,” Time magazine, January 31, 2008, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1708843,00.html (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20110211083759/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1708843,00.html and www.webcitation.org/64T5KCR0J).

[xxi] Tim Reid, “U.S. in Iraq for ‘another 50 years’,” The Australian, June 02, 2007, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/us-in-iraq-for-another-50-years/story-e6frg6so-1111113663557 (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20110811161403/http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/us-in-iraq-for-another-50-years/story-e6frg6so-1111113663557).

Extract: “The [George W.] Bush administration yesterday [June 01, 2007] said it was finally ready to admit up to 7,000 Iraqi refugees into the U.S., after months of delays and growing condemnation on Capitol Hill over the refusal to grant asylum to some of the 2.2 million Iraqis who have fled the war.”

[xxii] “Suffering in Silence: Iraqi Refugees in Syria,” May 12, 2008, Amnesty International.

(A) Summary page at https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/MDE14/010/2008/en/ (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20150905142056/https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/MDE14/010/2008/en/ and https://archive.is/7qGvQ).

(B) The full 2008 report in PDF is archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20080709034422/http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE14/010/2008/en/7f39d610-2042-11dd-a784-8b9c94c1f93f/mde140102008eng.pdf.

Extract 1:

“Syria hosts more Iraqi refugees than any other state in the world, with hundreds of thousands now living in the country.”

Extract 2:

“There has been no official census carried out on the number of Iraqi refugees. The Syrian government has said that 1.6 million Iraqis live in Syria, while UNHCR said there are between 1.2 and 1.4 million. The Iraqi Embassy in Damascus estimates the total number to be between 800,000 and 1 million.”

[xxiii] The neighborhood of Zaida Zeinah, in Damascus, Syria, is discussed on page 78 of Erasing Iraq.

[xxiv] More on the Pentagon’s “military analysts program”:

Article 1:

David Barstow, “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” New York Times, April 20, 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html and www.webcitation.org/63aL8T2Uh).

Extract from David Barstow’s article:

“Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley. In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.”

Article 2:

“Pentagon Suspends Retired Military Analyst Program,” Reuters, April 28, 2008, www.reuters.com/article/2008/04/28/idUSN28303679 (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20141109164134*/http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/04/28/idUSN28303679).

Extract from the 2008 Reuters article:

“The Pentagon has suspended a program that fed information about the Iraq war to retired military officers who appeared on U.S. television networks as independent analysts, the Defense Department said on Monday. The program, uncovered last week in a New York Times investigation, was criticized by Democrats for providing private briefings, trips and access to classified intelligence to influence analysts’ comments about Iraq and portray the situation as positive even as violence rose in the war zone.”