Eating Iraq: Corruption Rules and Cholera Rises While Insurgents Surf the Surge

Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque

December 4, 2007In a remarkably short amount of time, the "conventional wisdom" of America's media-political class has embraced the idea that George W. Bush's escalation of the Iraq war in 2007 has been a "success." This highly dubious notion -- based on nothing but the fact that the horrific murder rate spawned by Bush's act of aggression has momentarily abated to previous levels of savagery that were once considered catastrophic -- now serves as the basic assumption of the "debate" about the Iraq war, especially among the punditry and out on the campaign trail.

But on the ground in Iraq, where some good reporting still filters through the white noise machine of the corporate media, the picture is much different. Iraq is being eaten alive by the corruption of collaborators with the American occupation, by the relentless spead of disease and extreme privation -- and of course, by continuing violence, including the increased use of civilian-slaughtering airstrikes by the "surging" American forces, and by "ethnic cleansing" and other brutal operations by terrorists and sectarian militias now in the pay of the Bush Administration.

That continuing violence can clearly be seen in the latest report from IraqBodyCount.org, which estimates that at least 1,100 Iraqi civilians were killed by war-related violence in November, including at least 75 civilians killed directly by U.S. forces. This is what the great and the good in America now call "success." (And remember, IBC's estimates routinely err on the side of caution; they are to be regarded more as baseline figures, not totals.)

What's more, as the Guardian reports, the relative lowering of the death rate seems largely the result of a decision by the main opponents of the American occupation -- the Sunni militias and the Shiite army of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- to wait out the escalation, which even the most enthusiastic surge advocates admit cannot be sustained militarily for much longer. Another factor is of course the Bush Administration's move to buy off some of Sunni groups that have killed multitudes of American troops, giving the supposedly former insurgents money, guns, uniforms – and territory to rule with an iron rod.

The corruption seething throughout the Iraqi government – a mirror image of the rot in the house of Iraq's masters in Washington – was well captured in a New York Times story over the weekend. As the paper reports:

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