Hawks and Doves

Tom Engelhardt of the Nation provides a list of some pretty sobering numbers:

Percentage of dollars annually appropriated by the U.S. government and spent on Iraq-related activities: More than 10%, or one dollar out of every 10, according to the CBO’s Sunshine.

Estimated monthly cost of the Iraq (and Afghan) Wars: $12 billion–$10 billion for Iraq–a third higher than in 2006, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.

Estimated total cost of the Iraq War, if Robert Sunshine’s “optimistic scenario”–30,000 U.S. troops left in Iraq by 2010–plays out: Over $1 trillion. (If his less optimistic scenario proves accurate–75,000 troops in 2010–closer to $1.5 trillion.)

Number of Iraqis estimated to have fled their country: Between 2 million and 2.5 million. An estimated 750,000 to Jordan; 1.5 million to Syria; 200,000 to Egypt and Lebanon–with another 40,000-50,000 fleeing each month, 2,000 a day, according to UN figures. Officials at the central travel office in Baghdad are deluged by up to 3,000 passport applications a week. In addition, though it’s anyone’s guess, more than two million Iraqis may now be internal refugees, uprooted from their homes largely by sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing. Approximately 70% of these are women and children, according to UNICEF.

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Estimated number of bullets fired by U.S. troops for every insurgent killed in Iraq (or Afghanistan): 250,000, according to John Pike, director of the Washington military-research group GlobalSecurity.org. This comes out to 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition yearly. With U.S. munitions factories unable to meet the demand, 313 million rounds of such munitions were purchased from Israel last year for $10 million more than if produced domestically.

Percentage of amputations performed on U.S. war-wounded in Iraq: An estimated 6%. The average in earlier U.S. conflicts, where the equivalents of IEDs and car bombings did not play such a role, was 3%.

Estimated replacement limbs needed yearly for Iraqis in northern Iraq alone: 3,000, according to the Red Crescent Society and the director general for health services in Mosul. (Unlike American soldiers, Iraqis who have lost limbs have access only to limited numbers of outdated prostheses.)

Cost of a coffin in Baghdad: $50-75. Cost of a coffin in Saddam Hussein’s time, $5-10.

Number of Iraqi civilians who died in July 2007: 1,652, according to figures compiled by the Iraqi Health, Defense, and Interior Ministries; 2,024, according to the tally of the Associated Press; 1,539 according to the Washington Post. All but the Post claim this as a “spike” in casualties. All such figures are, for a variety of reasons, surely significant undercounts.

Approximate number of American civilians who would have died in July if a similar level of killings were underway in the United States: 18,000, according to Middle East scholar Juan Cole.

Estimated number of Iraqi deaths from the invasion of 2003 through June 2007, if the Lancet study’s median figure of 655,000 deaths was accurate and similar death rates held true for the year since it was published: Just over one million, according to Just Foreign Policy. (The Lancet study has been the single, on-the-ground, scientific report on Iraqi casualties in these years.)

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Number of unidentified bodies, assumedly murdered by death squads, found on the streets of Baghdad in June 2007: 453, a rise of 41% over January 2007, the month before surge operations began, according to unofficial Iraqi Health Ministry statistics taken from morgue counts.

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Number of American military deaths in the surge months, February-July 2007: 572, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualties website. This represents 189 more American deaths than in the same set of months in 2004, 215 more than in 2005, 237 more than in 2006.

Average daytime summer temperature in Baghdad: 110-120 degrees, though 130 degrees is not uncommon. It rarely drops below 100 degrees even at night.

Number of megawatts of electricity produced daily in Iraq: Less than 4,000 megawatts, below pre-invasion levels in a country where daily demand is now in the 8,500 to 9,500 range.

Hours of electricity normally delivered to Baghdadis by the national electricity grid: 1-2 hours a day. The only recourse, according to French reporter Anne Nivat, who lived in “red zone” Baghdad for two weeks recently, is electricity produced by small local generators, which consume up to 20 gallons of gasoline a day.

Number of nationwide blackouts in just two days in July 2007: 4. The Shiite Holy city of Karbala was without any power for at least 3 consecutive days in July, during which its water mains “went dry.” (”‘We no longer need television documentaries about the Stone Age. We are actually living in it. We are in constant danger because of the filthy water and rotten food we are having,’ said Hazim Obeid, who sells clothing at a stall in the Karbala market.”)

Cost of a bottle of purified water during the present water shortages: $1.60 for a 10-liter bottle, a rise of 33%. (Many Iraqis can’t afford to buy bottled water in a country where, according to a recent Oxfam summary study of the Iraqi humanitarian crisis, 43% of Iraqis live in “absolute poverty,” earning less than a dollar a day.)

Percentage of water engineers who have left Iraq: 40%, according to Oxfam’s report. Similar percentages of middle-class professionals–doctors, teachers, lawyers–have evidently fled as well. According to Oxfam, some universities and hospitals in Baghdad have lost up to 80% of their staffs.

Number of Iraqis who have access to clean drinking water: 1 in 3, according to UN figures. (In 2007, waterborne diseases, including diarrhea, “the most prolific killer of children under 5,” are up in some areas by 70% over the previous year.)

Of the 3.5 million cubic meters of water Baghdad’s six million people are estimated to need, amount actually delivered: 2.1 million cubic meters. Number of high-tension lines running into Baghdad that are in operation: 2 of 17, thanks to insurgent sabotage, according to an Electricity Ministry spokesman. These are contributing to the worst electricity shortages since the invasion summer of 2003. The country’s power grid is reportedly nearing collapse.

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Amount of money missing due to governmental corruption, as uncovered in investigations by Iraq’s top anti-corruption investigator, Judge Rahdi al Rahdi: $11 billion.

Number of U.S. dollars invested in “standing up” (training) the Iraqi military and police: $19.2 billion. This works out to $55,000 per Iraqi recruit, according to a bipartisan U.S. Congressional investigation.

Amount the Pentagon has requested for continued training and equipping of Iraqi security forces: $2 billion.

Percentage of equipment the Pentagon has issued to Iraqi security forces since 2003 that cannot be accounted for: 30%. That includes at least “110,000 AK-47 rifles, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor and 115,000 helmets,” according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). According to the Washington Post, “One senior Pentagon official acknowledged that some of the weapons probably are being used against U.S. forces.”

Number of U.S. steel-shipping containers in Iraq and Afghanistan now considered “lost”: 54,390 or one-third of them, according to the GAO.

Estimated cost of training Iraqi (and Afghan) security forces over the next decade, if present course continues: At least 50 billion dollars, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Iraq. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.