Iraq Still Exists

I haven't forgotten that, regardless of who holds the gavel in the House of Representatives, there are still 140,000 troops in a confused war in Iraq that looks as despairing on November 11 as it did on November 6. The car bombings continue, and for the first time we have more legitimate numbers on casualties coming from an Iraqi official.

A stunning new death count emerged Thursday, as Iraq's health minister estimated at least 150,000 civilians have been killed in the war - about three times previously accepted estimates [...]

No official count has ever been available, and Health Minister Ali al-Shemari did not detail how he arrived at the new estimate of 150,000, which he provided to reporters during a visit to the Austrian capital.

But later Thursday, Hassan Salem, of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, said the 150,000 figure included civilians, police and the bodies of people who were abducted, later found dead and collected at morgues run by the Health Ministry. SCIRI is Iraq's largest Shiite political organization and holds the largest number of seats in parliament.

In October, the British medical journal The Lancet published a controversial study contending nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war - a far higher death toll than other estimates. The study, which was dismissed by President Bush and other U.S. officials as not credible, was based on interviews of households and not a body count.

Al-Shemari disputed that figure Thursday.

"Since three and a half years, since the change of the Saddam regime, some people say we have 600,000 are killed. This is an exaggerated number. I think 150 is OK," he said.

OK, that's an odd way of putting it.

As most people who work in war zones claim, many of the dead go unreported, a majority even. So an official count of 150,000 presages that there are many more who are unknown. But aside from the distressing number of dead, what disturbed me greatly about this article was the vow to kill even more:

Moderate Sunni Muslims, meanwhile, threatened to walk away from politics and pick up guns, while the Shiite-dominated government renewed pressure on the United States to unleash the Iraqi army and claimed it could crush violence in six months.

That would be a death sentence for the Sunnis. There's very little difference between the Iraqi Army and the Shiite militia who has infiltrated it. Essentially this would be an exercise in ethnic cleansing. And sadly enough, it's probably the idea with the most traction in the West:

American and Iraqi officials have set a date for giving Iraq’s forces responsibility for security across the country.
Under a plan to be presented to the UN Security Council next month, the Iraqi Government would assume authority from coalition troops by the end of next year.

Only hours after Donald Rumsfeld was replaced as US Defence Secretary, American, British and Iraqi officials spoke openly about accelerating the handover process.

The Iraqi Prime Minister is trying to leverage the Republican loss in the election as a pretext to get US troops out of the country and let them start ruling with an iron fist. And I'm not sure there's even a better plan.

Meanwhile Juan Cole reports that the police force, the only group who would possibly be in a position to stop the carnage, is substantially more meager than reported:

If 20% of Iraqi police recruits quit every year and 40% don't show up to work, that leaves only 40% at their precinct houses or on the streets. If they supposedly have 177,000 trained police, they actually only have 70,000 or so. As for that "trained" part, I wouldn't exactly take it to the bank.

Democrats need to be wary. There are no good options left in Iraq, and any fallout from a withdrawal or course correction is going to be blamed on them, unfairly. If I were in a leadership position I'd level with America. "We're going to do the best we can with a bad situation. The likeliness of success is frankly low."