[wvns] Radiation, Rape, & Runaway Soldiers

Muslim Peacemaker Teams Reports Depleted Uranium Epidemic
http://cliffiraq.blogspot.com/2007/12/muslim-peacemaker-teams-reports.html

Sami Rasouli, Dr. Najim Askouri and Dr. Assad Al-Janabi, members of
Muslim Peacemaker Teams (MPT) in Najaf, visited with Christian
Peacemaker Teams CPT) in Suleimaniya, Kurdish Iraq, on December 10 and
11. The visit was an opportunity to report the recent activities of
the respective peacemaker groups and learn to know new people. But the
primary activity was a forum on depleted uranium (DU) presented by
Drs. Assad and Najim.

Dr. Assad is the director of the Pathology Department at the 400-bed
public hospital in Najaf. Dr. Najim is a nuclear physicist, trained in
Britain, and one of the leading nuclear researchers in Iraq until his
departure in 1998. They have worked as an MPT team documenting
information about the health impact on Najaf of depleted uranium
weapons used during the 1991 and 2003 Gulf wars.

This was not an exhaustive study because of the limits of personnel,
resources and equipment. But it did rely on accumulated public data,
thorough research, and a major contribution of time and energy. The
focus was Najaf, a city of over one million people, and the rural
areas in the governate. The area is about 180 miles from where DU was
used in the First Gulf War.

Starting in 2004 when the political situation and devastation of the
health care infrastructure were at their worst, there were 251
reported cases of cancer. By 2006, when the numbers more accurately
reflected the real situation, that figure had risen to 688. Already in
2007, 801 cancer cases have been reported. Those figures portray an
incidence rate of 28.21 by 2006, even after screening out cases that
came into the Najaf Hospital from outside the governate, a number
which contrasts with the normal rate of 8-12 cases of cancer per
100,000 people.

Two observations are striking. One, there has been a dramatic increase
in the cancers that are related to radiation exposure, especially the
very rare soft tissue sarcoma and leukemia. Two, the age at which
cancer begins in an individual has been dropping rapidly, with
incidents of breast cancer at 16, colon cancer at 8, and liposarcoma
at 1.5 years. Dr. Assad noted that 6% of the cancers reported occurred
in the 11-20 age range and another 18% in ages 21-30.

There were three locations in Najaf that received special attention
from the researchers. Al-Anzar Square is an L-shaped street less than
50 meters long. There were 13 cases in that small area. The
individuals were not related, were of different ages and genders and
did not have a family history of cancer. Another, Al-Fathi, is a one
kilometer rural stretch along both sides of a river. There were 37
cases reported, all varied types of cancer.
The third was Hay Al-Muslameen, a very well-to-do sector of the city.
Twenty cases were documented there, mostly among teachers.

Dr. Najim began his report by noting that Coalition Forces, mostly
U.S., used 350 tons of DU weapons in about 45 days in 1991, primarily
in the stretch of Iraq northwest of Kuwait where Iraqi troops were on
their retreat. Then in 2003, during the Shock and Awe bombing of
Baghdad, the U.S. used another 150 tons of DU.

When DU hits a target it aerosolizes and oxidizes forming a uranium
oxide that is two parts UO3 and one part UO2. The first is water
soluble and filters down into the water aquifers and also becomes part
of the food chain as plants take up the UO3 dissolved in water. The
UO2 is insoluble and settles as dust on the surface of the earth and
is blown by the winds to other locations.

As aerosolized dust it can enter the lungs and there begins to cause
problems as it can cross cell walls and even impact the genetic
system. Dr. Najim shared that one of his grandsons was born with
congenital heart problems, Downs Syndrome, an underdeveloped liver and
leukemia. He assumes that the problems were related to exposure of the
child's parents to DU. He said, "Cancer is spreading from the conflict
area as a health epidemic and will only get worse." The cancer rate
has more than tripled over the last16 years in Najaf, similarly to
Kuwait, Basra and Saudi Arabia.

There are nine DU production sites in the U.S., though, at this point,
several (like National Lead in Colonie, NY, and Starmet in Concord,
MA) have closed because of environmental contamination. Also, there
are 14 testing sites for DU weapons in the U.S., though, again, some
(like Jefferson Proving Grounds in Indiana) have closed because the
military says they cannot be cleaned up.

Using a simple Geiger counter the research team discovered radiation
levels of 30 counts per minute in Najaf and 40 counts per minute in
the rural areas around Najaf. This compared to 10-15 counts per minute
in Suleimaniya and at the Tawaitha nuclear research reactor outside
Baghdad.

He concluded his talk by asking, "Would it be just to ask for
equipment to continue the testing to locate contaminated sites, a
hospital to care for children born with a DU-impacted genetic system,
a center for study and decontamination of affected areas, and support
for a special environmental department at the local university?" He
assumed the U.S. would not respond to a total compensation request,
but did assume it was appropriate to make these requests for
compensation, to clean the environment and care for those exposed to
the DU.

It was a rather diverse audience in Suleimaniya that participated in
this DU forum. A local physician who had earlier in his career been
the director at the Najaf Public Hospital, students, a local political
leader, recently returned Kurds from other countries, and a local UN
worker were among those who had questions and responses for the
doctors. An important benefit of the forum was to provide a model that
any small group of people can duplicate in their own communities as a
way to spread awareness of the serious problems as DU blows into
neighborhoods across Iraq.

===

Women's Freedom lost
Mark Lattimer
Thursday December 13, 2007
The Guardian
www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2226600,00.html

After the invasion of Iraq, the US government claimed that women there
had 'new rights and new hopes'. In fact their lives have become
immeasurably worse, with rapes, burnings and murders now a daily
occurrence.

They lie in the Sulaimaniyah hospital morgue in Iraqi Kurdistan, set
out on white-tiled slabs. A few have been shot or strangled, some
beaten to death, but most have been burned. One girl, a lock of hair
falling across her half-closed eyes, could almost be on the point of
falling asleep. Burns have stretched the skin on another young woman's
face into a fixed look of surprise.

These women are not casualties of battle. In fact, the cause of death
is generally recorded as "accidental", although their bodies often lie
unclaimed by their families.

"It is getting worse, especially the burnings," says Khanim Rahim
Latif, the manager of Asuda, an Iraqi organisation based in Kurdistan
that works to combat violence against women. "Just here in
Sulaimaniyah, there were 400 cases of the burning of women last year."
Lack of electricity means that every house has a plentiful supply of
oil, and she accepts that some cases may be accidents. But the nature
and scale of the injuries suggest that most were deliberate, she says,
handing me the morgue photographs of one young woman after another.
Many of the bodies bear the unmistakable signs of having been
subjected to intense heat.

"In many cases the woman is accused of adultery, or of a relationship
before she is married, or the marriage is not sanctioned by the
family," Khanim says. Her husband, brother or another relative will
kill her to restore their "honour". "If he is poor the man might be
arrested; if he is important, he won't be. And in most cases, it is
hidden. The body might be dumped miles away and when it is found the
family says, 'We don't have a daughter.'" In other cases, disputes
over such murders are resolved between families or tribes by the
payment of a forfeit, or the gift of another woman. "The authorities
say such agreements are necessary for social stability, to prevent
revenge killings," says Khanim.

In March 2004 George Bush said that "the advance of freedom in the
Middle East has given new rights and new hopes to women ... the
systematic use of rape by Saddam's former regime to dishonour families
has ended". This may have given some people the impression that the
American and British invasion of Iraq had helped to improve the lives
of its women. But this is far from the case.

Even under Saddam, women in Iraq - including in semi-autonomous
Kurdistan - were widely recognised as among the most liberated in the
Middle East. They held important positions in business, education and
the public sector, and their rights were protected by a statutory
family law that was the envy of women's activists in neighbouring
countries. But since the 2003 invasion, advances that took 50 years to
establish are crumbling away. In much of the country, women can only
now move around with a male escort. Rape is committed habitually by
all the main armed groups, including those linked to the government.
Women are being murdered throughout Iraq in unprecedented numbers.

In October the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (Unami) expressed serious
concern over the rising incidence of so-called honour crimes in Iraqi
Kurdistan, confirming that 255 women had been killed in just the first
six months of 2007, three-quarters of them by burning. An earlier
Unami report cited 366 burns cases in Dohuk in 2006, up from 289 the
year before, although most were not fatal. In Irbil, the emergency
management centre had reported 576 burns cases since 2003, resulting
in 358 deaths.

When questioned, Iraqi doctors have told UN investigators that many of
these burnings are self-inflicted. "More than half of these women had
sustained between 70-100% burns which, according to doctors, suggested
that they were self-inflicted," the earlier Unami report said. A UN
human rights officer has relayed to me the words of one judicial
investigator in Irbil: "The woman is unhappy, or there is domestic
abuse, but the family doesn't listen. So she does it because she wants
to draw attention to herself."

The claim that some of these injuries are self-inflicted is something
you hear from different quarters in Iraq. The human rights minister in
the Kurdistan regional government, Yousif Aziz, says: "[Burnings take]
place daily. Some are killed, some burn themselves." Activists,
however, say that if the wounds are self-inflicted, it is because the
women have been forced to do it.

The Iraqi penal code prescribes leniency for those who commit such
crimes for "honourable motives", enabling some of the men involved to
get off with no more than a fine. The Kurdish authorities, Aziz says,
have removed these provisions for leniency from the code - but the
killings continue to mount. "The politicians say the situation of
women is all right with the new constitution in Iraq and new laws in
Kurdistan," says Khanim, "but it is deteriorating."

Khanim's organisation sees cases from across Iraq, including from
Baghdad and as far away as Basra. She tells me of a man from Kirkuk
who accused his sister of adultery. "When we asked him why he wanted
to kill his sister, he said, 'Because it is now a democracy in Iraq'.
He thought that democracy meant he could do whatever he wanted." But
the man's stupidity hid an important point: under the new system of
government developing in Iraq, family disputes are increasingly
settled not in state courts but by local tribal or religious
authorities. "Not that any religion allows such abuse - it is the
culture," says Khanim. "And we see cases from all the communities,
including the Christians. It is even worse outside Kurdistan."

An Iraqi staff member at the UN mission agrees. "As there is no state
authority in Iraq, everyone turns to the local sheikh. Every year
since 2003 honour killings have increased." In just one month last
year, 130 unclaimed women's bodies were counted in the Baghdad morgue,
a representative from the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq has
told the BBC. Another women's activist tells me why she refuses all
media interviews: "The work has to be secret. In Kurdistan it is
possible, but in Baghdad we couldn't open a shelter for women, we
would just be attacked."

In a nondescript building on a busy road in the north I visit one of
the few secret shelters in Iraq for women fleeing violence. A
broom-cupboard door is unlocked to reveal a hidden staircase, leading
to a two-room apartment where the morning sunshine and the hum of
traffic filter through high-set windows. A pile of thin mattresses
show that up to 20 women can stay here at any one time. The most
recent arrivals are a woman and her two children from the local area.
The woman, Zaynab, says she wants to divorce her abusive husband, a
drunk, but he has refused. She had gone to live with her mother but he
had come to threaten her. "I love my children. My family wanted me to
marry again but I don't want to marry anyone, I want to be with my
children." She stretches her arm out towards the room next door where
her curly-haired daughter, eight, and son, seven, are playing.

Nur is here because she helped someone on impulse. Near her home in
Diyala she heard the screams of a man locked in a compound and helped
him escape. It turned out he was being tortured by a militia group.
Later, the militia found out she had helped the man. "My father is
dead, I have no brothers, just my mother and my little sister. They
can't protect me." She fled north to Kirkuk, where she heard about the
shelter.

Solaf, the young manager of the shelter, is used to receiving threats
herself. (Her name, like those of Nur and Zaynab, has been changed for
this article.) With nowhere else for the women to go, she tries to
negotiate with their families to see if they can be reconciled,
sometimes threatening to take them to court. "Women now know more
about human rights, but the men and the culture don't allow it.
Sometimes the family marries off the daughter from a young age - from
12 years old. But even if she stays out shopping too long, they say
she is a bad woman."

I ask about the burnings. "Sometimes the family burns their daughter
or wife, because no one can tell. They say in the hospital it was an
accident. Some kill themselves." Solaf can see that I still find it
hard to accept that someone, even under duress, would commit suicide
by burning herself alive. "You have to realise," she says, "that the
family just locks the girl into a room until she does it. They may
leave her a knife, but it is hard to kill yourself with a knife. In
one way, it is easier with fire."

At the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad, the women MPs file into the
chamber beside their male counterparts, smiling, arguing, some in
white or coloured headscarves, a few in the full-length abaya or the
Iranian-style chador, a handful with heads uncovered. Under the new
constitution a quarter of the 275 seats are reserved for women, making
the level of female representation among the highest in the world.
But, as one MP reminds me: "Even getting here is dangerous. People
watch you come in." In 2005, one female MP, Lamia Abed Khadouri, was
gunned down and killed on her doorstep.

"If security in Iraq can be provided - and it's a big if - then we
have great hope," says a Baghdad economics professor who herself
survived an assassination attempt last year (and also asked not to be
named). "Three years has been a short time for women to be
mainstreamed in the political establishment, but women have had the
courage to expose themselves as activists. They have a chance to prove
themselves outside of the home, to establish NGOs, to work in
parliament and in the private sector." But asked if she believes that
security will improve in the long term, her optimism disappears. "No.
It is not in the interest of the different groups that make up the
government for the security situation to get better. The domination of
the religious parties, which is a negative for women, is helped by the
insecurity. The ground is emptied for them."

While the new constitution has empowered women in parliament, she
fears that what it has to say about the family may have had the
opposite effect in the home. A committee reviewing the constitution is
due to present its final amendments to parliament by the end of the
year, and an alliance of women's organisations has been lobbying for
the removal of article 41, under which the old statutory family law
will be replaced with a new system where marriage, divorce, custody
and inheritance will be determined according to the different
religions and sects in Iraq.

Campaigners argue that this would strengthen the control of religious
institutions and give "constitutional legitimacy to sectarianism".
Most of all they fear an explosion in violence against women as
traditional tribal codes take hold.

But only two of the committee's 27 members are women, and many of the
women MPs represent the more conservative religious parties. Some are
escorted everywhere by their husbands. A cabinet minister in Baghdad
tells me: "The Islamisation had already started under Saddam, but now
it is much more pronounced. My young son came to me laughing and
showed me what he had in his schoolbook. It was a verse from the Koran
saying that when a man has a son in his family he will be happy but
when a girl is born he will be sad. They had made them learn that."

Many meetings for MPs are now held outside the country. One evening
earlier this year I joined a group of women MPs in Amman who were
attending a UN gathering on women's rights. During a traditional
Jordanian meal of mansaf - lamb cooked in goat yoghurt - one of them,
Samira al-Musawi, a member of Iraq's ruling Shia alliance and chair of
the women's committee in the Iraqi parliament, said: "We are making
progress, because now we are a democracy and we can discuss these
issues together." Her faced framed in black, she dismissed the
concerns over article 41 and said that "only one or two" members of
her committee wanted it changed. Reaching forward for some green salad
known locally as zjerzil, she suddenly pulled back. "It is haram -
forbidden," explained her companion, and then in an undertone: "It
increases sexual desire." I broke off a small corner of the leaf. It
was a kind of rocket.

At another table, an Arab Sunni MP in a white headscarf disagreed
pointedly over article 41. "We want the old law back, we and the
Kurds, but the Shia prevent it. You want to know what the situation of
women is? How many widows are there now?" But her bitterest comments
were reserved for Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki. Earlier that
week three members of the interior ministry's public order forces had
been accused of raping a Sunni woman, who was admitted to a hospital
in the government's fortified green zone compound. Two days later,
Al-Maliki publicly rejected the woman's account and instructed that
the policemen should be honoured. "They may have done it, or they may
not, but how could he just say she was lying before any proper
investigation had been done? He has turned them into heroes."

The coordinator of a women's organisation in Baghdad, who asked not to
be named, says some groups target women - through kidnapping or sexual
assault - "to make a family weak". "A girl was raped and returned to
her family but she committed suicide rather than face the shame.
Saddam was a dictator but at least then we had the freedom to go out.
Then there was only one criminal - Saddam - but now they are
everywhere, you do not know who your persecutor is."

Claims of rape being used as a weapon of war to humiliate and terrify
communities are now frequently made against all the main parties in
the conflict, and not just Iraqi forces. Since 2003 US forces have
denied numerous allegations that soldiers have raped and abused female
detainees or held them as bargaining chips in the hunt for family
members wanted as insurgents. But the Pentagon's Taguba report into
abuse at Abu Ghraib prison confirmed that US military police had
photographed and videotaped naked women prisoners and referred to a
guard "having sex with a female detainee". Earlier this year, four US
soldiers were found guilty of the rape and murder of 14-year-old Abeer
Qasim Hamza and three members of her family in Mahmoudiya, south of
Baghdad, in an attack the US military had at first blamed on Sunni
insurgents. Abeer's body had been set on fire, her killers believing
that their guilt could be burned away.

Rapes carried out against Shia or Christian women have been justified
by insurgent groups as revenge for what was done to women in Abu
Ghraib. But the extent to which the abuse of women has become both the
vehicle and the justification for sectarian hatred in Iraq was
demonstrated most chillingly in the April killing of Du'a Khalil
Aswad. A 17-year-old from Nineveh, Du'a was stoned in front of
hundreds of men, some of whom videoed what happened on their mobile
phones.

Climbing steadily past olive groves north of Mosul, the road into
Du'a's home town of Bashiqa is dominated by the conical shrines of the
Yezidi sect, an ancient religion that predates both Islam and
Christianity. Their veneration of a fallen angel in the form of a blue
peacock has led to the common slur in Iraq that the Yezidis are
devil-worshippers and the community suffers entrenched discrimination.

After Du'a's death, the international media widely repeated a claim
made on a number of Islamic extremist websites that she had been
killed because she converted to Islam, but local reports do not
concur. Some people tell me she had run away with her Muslim boyfriend
and they had been stopped at a checkpoint outside Mosul; others say
she had been seen by her father and uncle just talking with the boy in
public and, fearing her family's reaction, they had sought protection
at the police station. Either way, the police handed Du'a into the
custody of a local Yezidi sheikh. One woman tells me that after she
was stoned in the town square, Du'a's body was tied behind a car and
dragged through the streets.

But the killers' taste for publicity quickly backfired. As the videos
circulated around mobile phones in the region, and were even posted on
the internet, Islamic extremists called for Yezidis to be killed in
revenge. Meanwhile Du'a's body was exhumed and sent to the
Medico-Legal Institute in Mosul so that tests could be performed to
see whether she had died a virgin.

Just after 3pm on April 22 a bus carrying workers from a textile
factory in Mosul back to Bashiqa was stopped at a fake checkpoint.
Gunmen ordered the Muslims and Christians off the bus and drove it to
the east of the city. They then dragged out the Yezidis. They were
lined up, there was a shout of "Allah, curse your devil" and then they
were shot. Other Yezidis living in the city started fleeing to the
countryside, as an extremist Sunni group claimed responsibility. In
all 24 Yezidi men were killed.

Three days later, I was printing out the first local reports of the
massacre at a ramshackle business centre in Irbil when the manager
approached me. "What do you know about it?" he said, anger breaking
his habitual deference, as he dropped my print-outs on the desk. I
asked him what he thought about the case. "Look what has happened now
because of her," he said, jabbing his finger at the headlines. "She
was a very bad girl".

===

US Army reports rising desertion rates
By Naomi Spencer
27 November 2007
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/nov2007/army-n27.shtml

After a decline in desertion rates following an initial exodus before
the preemptive strikes on Afghanistan and Iraq, the military is
recording a rise in the number of soldiers who abandon their posts.
The Associated Press reported November 16 that desertions this year
stand 80 percent higher than in 2003, when the US invaded Iraq.

According to the US Army, 4,698 soldiers—about 9 in every
1,000—deserted in the fiscal year ending September 2007. Over the same
period, the Department of Defense reported 1,163 total US deaths and
8,190 wounded. Overall, desertion is the largest cause of personnel
attrition—over fatalities and injuries—serious enough to result in
military discharge.

A deserter is an active duty service member away from his or her unit
without permission for more than 30 days. The Army reports that more
than three quarters of its deserters are soldiers in their first term
of enlistment.

Roy Wallace, director of plans and resources with the Army, told the
Associated Press that soldiers generally exit the military in one of
four ways: They are determined unable to meet fitness requirements;
they are found to be "unable to adapt to the military"; they violate
the so-called "don't ask, don't tell" policy prohibiting someone who
is gay from revealing their orientation; or they simply go absent
without leave and do not report for duty.

For the Army, the desertion rate for 2007 is 42 percent higher than
that of the previous year, when 3,301 deserted. In 2005, 2,011 Army
soldiers deserted, representing the lowest annual rate of the war
period. In 2001 and 2002, the number of desertions was similar to the
most recent figures for the Army (4,597 and 4,483, respectively)
before they began to decline.

Historically, the military has not actively pursued deserters. Troops
who leave their posts are denied veterans benefits and their names are
permanently added to a national database of fugitives. If they are
picked up by civilian law enforcement, they are handed over to
military police for court martial.

However, Army prosecutions of desertions and other unauthorized
absences have greatly increased over the past four years in an attempt
to deter other would-be deserters, according to Army lawyers in
interviews with the New York Times earlier this year. In a report
published April 9, the Times noted that from 2002 through 2006, the
average annual rate of Army prosecutions for desertion was triple the
preceding five-year period, and prosecutions of similar absences have
doubled. This increase in disciplinary action is an unmistakable
acknowledgment by the chain of command that the rise in desertions
represents not a fluke but a sign of things to come.

Pointing to the far higher Vietnam-era desertion rates, which rose as
high as 5 percent, the military has insisted the current rise in
desertion rates has nothing to do either with the so-called war on
terror or with mass antiwar sentiments.

According to the Army, lower rates in 2003-2005 were the result of
successful efforts to identify soldiers likely to desert during basic
training, before they were assigned to their posts.

The current higher desertion rates, the Army insists, are too small an
increase to attribute to any factors other than personal or familial
stress. As Army planning director Wallace put it for the Associated
Press, "We're asking a lot of soldiers these days. They're humans.
They have all sorts of issues back home and other places like that.
So, I'm sure it has to do with the stress of being a soldier."

What the military will not acknowledge is the obvious connection
between "issues back home" and military culture and the war itself.
Above all, the open-ended and brutal nature of colonial-style
occupation has taken a psychological toll on the soldiers charged with
carrying it out on the ground, as well as on their families and
friends in the United States. Consequently, morale among active duty
troops is low and stress is very high.

The military has encouraged a dehumanizing attitude in its ranks
toward the Iraqi population, which is understandably hostile to the
occupying force. A survey conducted a year ago by the Pentagon of
soldiers stationed in Iraq found that more than a third thought
torture of captured Iraqis was acceptable. The survey also found that
destruction of civilian property, assault and abuse of civilians by
troops were utterly routine.

The same survey, conducted by the military's Mental Health Advisory
Team, found that 40 percent of Iraq-deployed soldiers were concerned
about uncertain redeployment dates and extended tours. Lengthened
tours of duty exacerbate exhaustion and stress, as well as domestic
difficulties. Last year, a quarter of soldiers reported marital
problems, and 20 percent were in the process of divorce.

When soldiers return home, there is no guarantee they will not be
redeployed even when diagnosed with post-traumatic stress or other
psychiatric disorders. Nearly 40 percent of Army and half of National
Guard personnel who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have
been diagnosed with some form of mental illness.

Senior brass readily admit that the military is stretched to the
breaking point, even as preparations are drawn up for an expansion of
the war into Iran. Yet how to resolve the numbers crisis poses a major
policy problem for the current administration and the Democrats, who
recognize that a re-institution of the draft would have a devastating
effect on public acquiescence of the war.

The great majority of deserters during the Vietnam-era had been
conscripted; by comparison, the "all-volunteer" composition of the
current military—drawn almost entirely from the poorest layers of the
working class and secured with enticements of signing bonuses and
college tuition—has undoubtedly acted as a suppressant upon desertion
rates.

Since 2003, the Army has greatly relaxed recruitment and enlistment
standards in order to wage the two wars and increase numbers for
future occupations. Over the past few years, the proportion of Army
recruits without high school diplomas has risen from fewer than 10
percent to 24 percent. About 20 percent of current recruits would not
have been accepted before the Iraq invasion, including a higher
percentage of recruits issued "moral waivers" for criminal records.
The Army has also increased monetary inducements for officers,
including bonuses of up to $35,000 to retain sergeants and other
mid-level commanders.

Coinciding with the troop surge early this year, the Bush
administration called for an additional 65,000 Army troops and 27,000
Marines over the next five years, putting pressure on the military to
find volunteers. An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office in
April suggested the addition would cost $65 billion, not including the
expense of extra training facilities and likely hospital care.

Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's senior
military assistant, Peter Chiarelli, asserted that the military must
be better structured for open-ended occupation. According to a piece
by Art Pine in the National Journal November 12, Chiarelli wrote,
"Like it or not, until further notice the US government has decided
that the military largely owns the job of nation-building.... We need
to accept this reality instead of resisting it."

The National Journal cited Andrew Bacevich, a military analyst at
Boston University, who advocated the institution of a "small-scale
draft, supplementing the current all-volunteer force with a small
cadre of conscripts. One possibility," the Journal specified, "making
military service an option in a broader program in which young people
would be required to do a stint in some kind of 'national service.' "

This proposal has been high on the Democratic Party platform since the
2006 congressional elections. Bacevich told the Journal, "A draft
would involve a broader spectrum of Americans with the military and
would serve as a constraint for policy makers.... But there's a need
to begin debating the issue because the heavy lifting for future Iraqs
is going to be done by the Army."

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