Time magazine published allegations on Monday that U.S. Marines killed civilians in Haditha after one of their comrades was killed by a roadside bomb. It published detailed accounts by people in the town, west of Baghdad.

A criminal inquiry into those deaths was launched last week. Time said the main question facing the probe was whether the "Marines killing of 15 non-combatants was an act of legitimate self-defense or negligent homicide."

Haditha, 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Baghdad, is in Anbar province, an area that has seen much activity by Sunni Arab insurgents whose campaign to topple the Iraqi government has killed thousands of U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians.

On November 20, U.S. Marines spokesman Captain Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that, on the previous day, a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gunbattle, U.S. and Iraqi troops had killed eight insurgents, he added.

U.S. military officials have since confirmed to Reuters that that version of the events of November 19 was wrong and that the 15 civilians were not killed by the blast but were shot dead.

TRUCK PILED WITH CORPSES

Time magazine said this week the video of the corpses it provided to the military in January had prompted the revision.

Accusations that American soldiers often kill innocent people have fueled anger at the occupation among Iraqis over the past three years.

The video given to Reuters shows bodies piled in the back of a white pickup truck outside the morgue. Among them was a girl who appeared to be about three years old.

One man wept and leaned against a wall as he identified a relative and other residents inspected bodies in the morgue. One man's face had been torn apart by bullets, while a blackened corpse was missing legs and forearms.

The video also showed houses with bullet holes in the walls, pieces of human flesh, pools of blood and clothes and pots scattered across floors.

In one home, a young boy wept as he sat beside a corpse and said: "My father. My father."

Some residents blamed U.S.
President George W. Bush, former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and President Jalal Talabani. "Is this the democracy Allawi, Talabani and Bush are talking about?" one resident asked.

Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani, head of Hammurabi, said U.S. Marines had killed 15 people in Haditha after the roadside bomb attack. The group's Haditha branch said it got the video from a local man.

Mashhadani said he had brought the case to the attention of the
United Nations office in Baghdad. "These violations of human rights happen every day in Iraq," he told Reuters.

On Tuesday, residents of Haditha had similar accounts to those on the video.

"This room had a family of eight inside, children and their father and mother," one man said of his relatives who were killed in their home. Another resident confirmed his account, saying one of the children was three years old.

"They are all gone," he said.

In 1991, there were in Iraq 1,800 health care centers. A decade and a half later, that number is almost half and almost a third of these require major rehabilitation. This is paralleled by the country's fall in the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index from 96 to 127, one of the most dramatic declines in human welfare in recent history.

According to Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food, the rate of malnutrition among Iraqi children has almost doubled since Saddam Hussein's ouster in April 2003. Today, at 7.7 percent, Iraq's child acute malnutrition rate is roughly equal to that of Burundi, an African nation ravaged by more than a decade of war. It is far higher than the rates in Ugand and Haiti, countries also devastated by unrelenting violence.

The population health problems are dramatically different than those facing young Iraqis a generation ago, when obesity was one of the main nutrition-related public health concerns. High rates of malnutrition started in the 1990s as a result of the U.N.-imposed sanctions to punish the Saddam Hussein regime for invading Kuwait in 1990.

Lack of dependable electricity and shortages of potable water throughout the country have led to the deterioration of the population's health, resulting in outbreaks of typhoid fever, particularly in southern Iraq. The collapse of the water and sewage systems is probably the cause of outbreaks of hepatitis particularly lethal to pregnant women. According to the Iraq Living Conditions Survey of 22,000 households, a joint effort of the Iraq government and UNDP (United Nations Development Programme,) some 47% of urban households and only 3% of rural households have a sewage connection.

Presently, thousands of children born after the war have none of their required vaccinations, and routine immunization services in major areas of the country are all but disrupted. In addition, the destruction of the refrigeration sytems needed to store vaccines have rendered vaccine supplies virtually useless.

Even antibiotics of minimal cost are in short supply, increasing the population's risk of dying from common infections. Hospitals are overcrowded and many hospitals go dark at night for lack of lighting fixtures. The Iraqi Minister of Health claims that 100 percent of the hospitals in Iraq need rehabilitation. As a result of all these public health failures, Iraq is the country that has least progressed in reducing child mortality since the 1990s.
There are increasing number of orphans, many of whom have become homeless and have had to resort to prostitution to survive. Although the Iraqi Ministry of Labor has created programs to eliminate this problem, its efforts have not been successful.

War has affected the psychilogical well-being of adults and children alike, many of whom present serious symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. It is estimated that less than one hundred psychiatrists remain in Iraq (approximately one for every 300,000 Iraqis) and none of them specializes in child psychiatry.

That children continue to suffer the terrible consequences of the war indicates that new ways have to be found to protect them better. An independent international medical commission should investigate children's health status, and suggest measures for its improvement. Iraqi children should urgently be provided with basic nutrition, immunization and psychological care to alleviate the tremendous damage brought by a war that has taken a brutal toll on their health and quality of life.

Dr. César Chelala, an international public health consultant, is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights.

The US military would neither confirm not deny the incident but the US army in Iraq has been strongly criticised over the past week for killing Iraqi civilians and falsely claiming that they were insurgents or caught in cross fire.

The shooting took place in a neighbourhood dominated by the Mehdi Army militia of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and some of those who died may have belonged to his movement. Salam al-Maliki, an official of the Sadr bloc, said that a hospital to which the wounded had been taken was later surrounded by US troops.

Hazin al-Araji, an aide to Mr Sadr, claimed: "The American forces went into the Mustafa mosque at prayers and killed more than 20 worshippers. They tied them up and shot them."

The killings may mark another step in the deteriorating relations between the US and Iraq's Shia community, 60 per cent of the population. Shia leaders fear that the US is trying to rob them of the fruits of their success in the election on 15 December when the Shia coalition won 130 out of 275 seats. Another US military move likely to be resented was a raid yesterday on a building of the Interior Ministry, controlled by Shias, in the mistaken belief that it was a torture centre. It turned out to contain 17 Sudanese legally detained for breach of residency laws who had not been mistreated.

The US is desperately seeking to pressure Iraqi politicians into forming a national unity government to reverse the country's slide into sectarian civil war. The US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, asked the Iraqi leadership to "overcome the strife that threatens to rip apart Iraq" . Forty, bodies, some beheaded, were found yesterday in Baghdad and Baquba. The prolonged failure to form a government underlines the deep fissures dividing the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish communities and make it unlikely that national unity government would be effective. Even before last night's events the Shia coalition resented the campaign by President Jalal Talabani, supported by the US and UK, to get rid of Mr Jaafari as Prime Minister. The US and UK want Sunni politicians, as well as Iyad Allawi, to be members of a new administration.

"The US and UK were shocked that the Shia coalition did so well," said a participant in the negotiations to form a government. "Since then they hoped it would split. But the Shia parties have stuck behind Jaafari ... Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the Hawza [Shia religious hierarchy] are for Shia unity and the Iranians want the coalition to stay together."

The present government, formed following the election on 30 January last year, is a Shia-Kurdish alliance. One Kurdish observer said: "For the Kurds it would be suicidal to side with the Sunni and Iyad Allawi because they would alienate 60 per cent of the population."

60 Minute's anchor, Lara Logan, interviewed Colonel H.R. McMaster for the piece; quizzing him on the situation before and after the American siege.

When they first arrived at Tal Afar, Colonel McMaster said, "Life was horrible in the city. They (the terrorists) fired mortars indiscriminately into playgrounds, into school yards, across the marketplace to kill innocent civilians….They would leave headless bodies in the street. They kidnapped a young child on one occasion, killed the child, put a booby trap inside of his body and waited for the father to come claim the body to kill the parent".

None of what McMaster says can be verified nor is it consistent with reports that appeared on the Internet during the siege.

"Masked gunman led by Al Qaida roamed the streets of Tal Afar at will, publicly executing and kidnapping people," the Colonel said. "They had kidnapping and murder classes that were attended by people on the best techniques."

"Murder classes"? Does any of this seem even remotely believable?


Colonel McMaster continued, "The enemy showed the people who they really are. These are mass murderers. These are people who don't respect human life."

Time Magazine's Michael Ware accompanied McMaster during the invasion and gives a graphic account of the fighting:

"Tal Afar was so dangerous that the soldiers had to run for cover the moment their boots hit the ground. You couldn't even sit inside your tank without being shot."

"The troops I was with were what you would loosely call the 'tip of the spear'. They were men who were selected to do the worst of the worst. They were to drive the stake into the dark heart of the Al Qaida stronghold".

Ware recounts how the Marines surrounded Al Qaida fighters in the Sarai district of the city and were so close "you could throw a stone and hit them". He added, "When we woke the next morning-poof---they were gone…Where an entire al Qaida society had existed, the troops found one body."

Poof… total baloney.

The real story of Tal Afar is vastly different than Ware's account and does not reflect his high-regard for American troops battling a civilian population.

The siege of Tal Afar began on September 2, 2005. It was the largest military offensive since the assault on Falluja a year earlier. In 2004 the US military attempted to take over the city but was rebuffed by heavy fighting. After that, the guerilla movement inside the city intensified anticipating a future attack. If there were foreign fighters, their numbers were small.

Approximately, 5,000 American and Iraqi troops sealed off the city, enclosing it behind a massive wall of sand with intermittent military checkpoints. The city's people were forced to evacuate leaving them to fend for themselves. The Red Cross was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the exodus and was unable to provide shelter, water, or food for many of those who fled. Regrettably, thousands of people chose to stay and withstand the withering assault rather than expose themselves to the Shiite death squads that were operating in conjunction with American forces.

The city was then relentlessly pounded for more than a week by Abrams tanks, F-16s, helicopter gun-ships, and heavy artillery. At least four mosques were bombed and the Sarai area was hammered persistently with 500 and 1000 lb bombs. The Iraqi newspaper Azzaman reported, "Eyewitnesses spoke of 'scores of casualties due to indiscriminate bombing".

The pattern of assault on Tal Afar has been repeated throughout the Sunni triangle. Presently, Samarra is undergoing the same style of attack; a wall of sand has formed around the city, water and power have been cut off, and more than half of the people have fled. The siege of Falluja has become the model for "pacification" throughout the Sunni heartland although the level of destruction has decreased significantly. The application of overwhelming force is still at the very heart of the military strategy for victory in Iraq.

The siege was executed according to the normal protocols of massive round-ups and detentions, snipers deployed to the tops of buildings, and widespread bombing wherever resistance appeared.

The incessant battering of the city continued despite appeals from human rights groups, member states in the UN, and religious leaders from the Sunni community.

The widely-respected Council of Nineveh issued a statement from the Brussels Tribunal that was ignored by the western media but is worth reiterating:

"The truth of what is happening in Tal Afar of the extreme use of force and the use of internationally forbidden weapons of poison gases, cluster, microwave, and napalm bombs, we demand that autopsies be carried out on the corpses of our sons who fell in the barbaric aggression to verify the inhuman practices carried out by the American forces and the (Iraqi) militias that participated in the massacre of Tal Afar."

The use of banned weapons in Tal Afar was later corroborated by the Red Cross although it never appeared in the western media. They reported that "170 people had been made sick from "inhaling gases" and "curious poisons".

Clearly, 60 Minutes did not feel that the use of napalm or other "chemical weapons" fit with their reverential tale of American bravery and liberation.

The idea that Tal Afar was an Al Qaida stronghold is patently absurd. The attack was part of a broader "scorched-earth" policy directed at pacifying Sunni cities. The allegations that there were hundreds of terrorists cannot be substantiated; suggesting it's merely a public relations scam. Amazingly, "NOT ONE FOREIGN FIGHTER WAS CAPTURED in the siege despite claims that the city was a haven for foreign terrorists." (Linda Heard)


Jonathan Finer of the Washington Post clarified what really took place in Tal Afar:

"Tal Afar was 70% Sunni Turkmen and 30% Shiite Turkmen. The Sunni Turkmen had thrown in with Saddam, and more recently to radical Islam. The Shiite Turkmen lived in fear of their lives.

So Kurds and Shiite are beating up on Sunni Turkmen allies of Sunnis Arabs. …It's mainly about punishing the Sunni Turkmen for allying with the Sunni Arab guerrillas."

As Finer points out, the real motive behind the siege was to root out sympathizers of the Iraqi resistance. That means that the US military was simply promoting greater sectarian violence to suppress the opposition. This is a vastly different explanation than the official version of a pitched battle with Al Qaida.

So, who should we believe; Jonathan Finer or 60 Minutes?

We already know that the Pentagon is committed to the policies of deception and misinformation. Their unwavering support for the planting of stories in the Iraqi press further demonstrates their belief that lies are vital to their overall strategy. We must assume that the 60 Minutes fits into this paradigm of psy-ops (psychological operations) directed at the American public to shore up support for the war.

The fact that 60 Minutes would stake its reputation on such a pathetic example of state propaganda illustrates the desperation that's spreading like wildfire through the political establishment to their colleagues in the corporate media.

The American people have already turned the corner on Bush's bloody war. It will take more than a few fairy tales from 60 Minutes to win them back.

A criminal investigation was opened and evidence was reviewed before the decision by Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon, the commanding general of the 25th Infantry Division, to approve the discharge of Sgt. Jeffrey D. Waruch, 28, officials said.

"In this case, a review of the investigation determined that no further evidence was likely to be found that would result in the case going to trial," Schofield Barracks said in a statement.

The investigation found that Waruch, who was with the 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, did not act in a negligent or unlawful manner in the Feb. 18, 2004 shootings and that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute, the Army said.

The news is troubling for Edward Richmond Sr., the father of another Schofield Barracks soldier.

The Louisiana man's son, Edward Richmond Jr., is serving a three-year sentence in the military stockade at Fort Sill, Okla., for shooting an Iraqi cowherd 10 days after the girl's death.

A criminal investigation of the shooting that Richmond was involved in started immediately after the incident, according to the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News. Army criminal investigators did not begin a formal investigation of the earlier incident until more than a year after the shootings.

Edward Richmond Sr. said this week that he doesn't know why criminal proceedings were initiated at different times.

"I wish I could look (the battalion commander) dead in the eyes and be standing face to face, and I'd ask him that myself," Richmond Sr. said. "That's a question I've had the whole time."

He suggested, however, that his son was cast, in part, as a scapegoat "because the villagers were mad as hell because the second incident happened." Richmond Sr. noted that the mother and two daughters shot were family of the tribal elders in the village.

In that case, as the three ran from a roadside bomb attack on a U.S. convoy, 13-year-old Intisar Saleh was shot in the head from a distance of about 200 feet. Her mother was hit and lost a leg, and Intisar's 15-year-old sister was shot in the leg.

Waruch said in a statement that he shot the three Iraqis after they ignored repeated warnings in English and Arabic to stop, suspicious movements were made, and one appeared to have "something long" that he believed could have been a weapon.

A review conducted by Maj. Samuel Schubert found that two in the group of fleeing civilians were surrendering, and that Waruch fired at one of the females because the civilians made "sudden movements."

Schubert said in his report: "Under these facts, the soldier's certainty that he was about to be fired upon was not reasonable," and there was no weapon. He added, "The soldier did not observe hostile intent.

"The engagement was not in" accordance with rules of engagement, Schubert noted, underlining the word "not."

Schubert also said it was "important to note" that the soldiers were new to the theater and were reacting to one of their first combat situations.

The Dayton Daily News reported that the family of the slain Iraqi girl agreed on Jan. 24 to meet with military criminal investigators. Waruch was discharged three days later.

Although Waruch was allowed to leave the Army, if additional evidence comes to light, he can be tried by the Department of Justice under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, the Army said.

On Feb. 28, 2004, Waruch was the only other soldier present when then 20-year-old Pfc. Edward Richmond Jr. shot Iraqi cowherd Muhamad Husain Kadir in the back of the head as Waruch handcuffed the man. Richmond Jr. has said he shot the Iraqi when the man lunged at Waruch.

Photographs showed the dead man with his hands flex-cuffed behind his back.

Waruch had told Richmond to "put the gun on his head and shoot him" if he moved, according to an appeal filed in the case. Richmond's father said his son did what he was supposed to do as a soldier.

In August 2004 Richmond Jr. was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. A clemency hearing is scheduled for April 6.

There was no way to tell how many civilians were hurt, or how many were innocent: In most cases, the contractors drove away. No contractors have been prosecuted for a mistaken shooting in Iraq.

"What you've done is privatize the fog of war," said Peter W. Singer, an expert on military contracting with the Brookings Institution in Washington.

There are thought to be about 20,000 non-Iraqi civilian contractors supporting a range of U.S. efforts, including about 6,000 security contractors. According to Department of Labor statistics, more than 400 U.S. civilians have died there.

One of the biggest security contractors is Blackwater Security Consulting of Moyock, N.C. The News & Observer began reporting on the industry after four Blackwater men were killed and mutilated in Fallujah in 2004. At least 22 Blackwater contractors have died in Iraq, most in ambushes.

The activities of security contractors have been difficult to quantify, though they are a major force on the ever-changing battlefield. Until now, only a few of their "serious incident reports" to U.S. authorities had been released. The nearly 800 pages that The N&O received this week are the first extensive sampling of contractors' accounts of Iraq's chaos.

The documents include stories of a contractor team shooting at a car in the morning and another in the evening, U.S. forces firing at contractors and contractors shooting at one other.

The government released reports only for nine months ending last April. They detail more than 80 attacks against security contractors that resulted in 48 contractor injuries and 14 deaths. The Pentagon removed the names of the contractors and companies, citing security concerns.

Contractors use standard rules of escalating force for dealing with threats on Iraq's jammed roads:

A gunner in the rearmost vehicle gestures for cars behind him to stop and stay back. If one moves closer, he waves it back again, then points a flashlight. If it keeps coming, warning shots are fired over the top of the suspect vehicle, then into the engine. If that doesn't work, he can shoot to kill.

Here's the narrative from a typical shooting report:

"1 warning shot fired in a safe direction at a black OPEL that refused to adhere to the [private security detail] signals [big torch and hand signals] to stay back. After 1st warning shot car accelerate. When he accelerate we made another 2 warning shots, no reaction from driver we had to open fire directly in to that car using AK[-47 assault rifle] and PKM [machine gun]. The car was stop after we made 23 shots from PKM and 9 shots from AK. Driver ... survived."

Because the reports are voluntary, experts say they probably represent only a fraction of such incidents, and cases in which contractors broke laws or rules are unlikely to be reported.

"If you've got 60 cases where contractors shot into cars, there are probably 600," said James Yeager, a Camden, Tenn., arms trainer whose team shot at cars half a dozen times during his 11 months as a security contractor.

But Doug Brooks, head of the International Peace Operations Association industry group, said he thinks attacks are underreported by perhaps 50 percent.

Whatever the number of shootings, it's likely fewer than similar shootings by U.S. troops. Stars and Stripes reported last week that a military study of an eight-week period late this winter indicated that soldiers killed about 30 Iraqis who drove too close to checkpoints or military convoys.

Hundreds of soldiers in Iraq have been prosecuted under military justice for offenses ranging from drinking to murder. No contractors have been prosecuted for any crimes, Singer and Brooks said.

The advent of civilian security contractors and insurgents who look like civilians has made it hard for anyone on the battlefield to figure out who's who.

The reports paint a picture of such threats as ambushes, suicide car bombers maneuvering to get close, roadside bombs and the possibility of being shot by U.S. troops.

About half the reports involve security contractors. The rest detail incidents involving construction contractors working on projects such as power, water and sewer plants and schools. These list more than 60 kidnappings and 25 murders of Iraqi workers by insurgents trying to stop reconstruction projects.

The difference between living and dying -- for contractors, their clients, insurgents and innocent civilians -- can hinge on decisions that security contractors make in seconds.

"On one side, you've got insurgents who are melting into the civilian population, so you don't know you're being attacked until the actual point of the attack," said Singer, the Brookings expert. "The flip side is, the contractors are often not very well marked, and for the local civilian driving along, sometimes it's very clear they're coming into a contractor convoy; other times it's not."

None of the reports released indicate the rules of escalating force were broken. "You're not going to see those reports," said Yeager, the former contractor. "No one is going to file them."

Yeager said all shootings that he knew of were justified. "The Iraqis knew exactly what cars not to drive up to," he said. "If a guy breaks away from the pack and keeps coming, he knows what's going to happen, and he's either going to try to detonate a bomb, or rake us with gunfire."

Brooks said contracting industry groups are commissioning a radio and newspaper advertising campaign to reinforce to Iraqis what they should do when they see a civilian convoy. The U.S. military is planning a similar campaign, Stars and Stripes reported.

The view of voters will be strengthened as they realize that even U.S. troops are saying no to the commander in chief. These polls come on the heels of poll by Le Moyne College and Zogby of veterans showing 72 percent favor withdrawal from Iraq within a year. Thus, voters who want to support the troops may realize the best way to do so is to bring them home.

The disconnect between the views of American voters about the occupation and with the President and the leaders of both parties is becoming more evident. Bush minimized the concerns of Congress describing them as election year jitters, saying: "There is a certain unease when you go into an election year." But, unease may be greatly understating the risk to candidates.

Democrats need to realize that not only does three-quarters of their base strongly oppose the war – but their base is ready to pledge not to vote for pro-war candidates! The Iraq war could be the issue that robs Democrats of their chance to regain majority status in either House. The Democrat base may stay home or vote independent because of the leaderships failure to call for an end to the war. Party leaders like Senators Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, Joe Lieberman and Representatives Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer who have held the party back from opposing the war are potentially sending the Democrats over a political cliff by alienating their base which includes the large, emerging peace vote.

But, it is not all bad news for Democrats. If the Democrats clearly oppose the war by supporting Rep. Murtha's call for redeployment, the VotersForPeace poll shows this will lead them to majority party status. By taking a stand against the war Democrats will attract Independent and Republican voters who are fed up with the failed quagmire.

A near majority of Republican registered voters are also getting tired of the war and a significant percentage, 25.7% would consider signing the VotersForePeace pledge – and 5.5% strongly agree with the pledge. If the Republicans lose these voters to the Democrats they will find themselves in an electoral loss of historic proportions. Support for the war is made more risky for the Republicans because the fastest growing group of voters, Independents, strongly oppose the war and support the pledge. Thus, anti-Iraq war voters could cost Republicans their majority party status.

Republican incumbents need to side with the people and put some distance between themselves and the President's ongoing occupation of Iraq. They need some clear votes showing that they do not agree with the President's 'stay the course' strategy.

The Iraq occupation may be the best news to the growing independent political movement. Independent voters are already the fastest growing group of voters. And, the failure of either Party to strongly oppose the war provides an opportunity for alternatives to the Democrats and Republicans as anti-war voters look for an anti-war alternative. This new anti-war voting bloc is emerging at a time of unprecedented unpopularity for the two parties – polls showing both parties with higher negative ratings then positive ratings for the first time in polling history.

The ongoing Iraq occupation – with President Bush's promise to stay the course and mostly silence from the Congress – is increasing the likelihood of an angry electorate that says it is time for change and votes out the incumbents.

"Forty people have died and 20 were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the midst of candidates waiting at a recruitment centre for Iraq defence forces," the official said.

Earlier, an official with the Nineveh governorate of which Mosul is the capital had also confirmed that the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber.

The US military said there were no American casualties.

The latest attack is one of the bloodiest in the last four months after the November suicide bombing on a police recruitment centre in Ramadi which left 70 dead.

"It's the kind of thing that incites terrorism," Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said of long-term or permanent U.S. bases in countries such as Iraq.

Paul, a critic of the war, is co-sponsoring a bipartisan bill that would make it official policy not to maintain such bases in Iraq. He noted that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden cited U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia as grounds for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The debate in Congress comes as concerns grow over how long the U.S. intends to keep forces in Iraq, a worry amplified when President Bush earlier this week said that a complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq would not occur during his term.

Long-term U.S. bases in Iraq would also be problematic in the Middle East, where they could lend credence to charges that the U.S. motive for the invasion was to seize land and oil. And they could also feed debate about the appropriate U.S. relationship with Iraq after Baghdad's new government fully assumes control.

State Department and Pentagon officials have insisted that the bases being constructed in Iraq will eventually be handed over to the Iraqi government.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Baghdad, said on Iraqi television last week that the U.S. had "no goal of establishing permanent bases in Iraq."

And Pentagon spokesman Army Lt. Col. Barry Venable said, "We're building permanent bases in Iraq for Iraqis."

But the seemingly definitive administration statements mask a semantic distinction: Although officials say they are not building permanent U.S. bases, they decline to say whether they will seek a deal with the new Iraqi government to allow long-term troop deployments.

Asked at a congressional hearing last week whether he could "make an unequivocal commitment" that the U.S. officials would not seek to establish permanent bases in Iraq, Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander in charge of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, replied, "The policy on long-term presence in Iraq hasn't been formulated." Venable, the Pentagon spokesman, said it was "premature and speculative" to discuss long-term base agreements before the permanent Iraqi government had been put in place.

All told, the United States has set up 110 forward operating bases in Iraq, and the Pentagon says about 34 of them already have been turned over to the Iraqi government, part of an ongoing effort to gradually strengthen Iraqi security forces.

Bush is under political pressure to reduce the number of U.S. troops before midterm congressional elections, and the Pentagon is expected to decide soon whether the next major deployment will reflect a significant reduction in forces.

But despite the potential force reductions and the base handovers, the spending has continued.

Dov Zakheim, who oversaw the Pentagon's emergency spending requests as the department's budget chief until 2004, said critics might be reading too much into the costly emergency spending, needed to protect U.S. forces from insurgent attacks and provide better conditions for deployed troops.

The spending "doesn't necessarily connote permanence," Zakheim said. "God knows it's a tough enough environment anyway."

The bulk of the Pentagon's emergency spending for military construction over the last three years in Iraq has focused on three or four large-scale air and logistics bases that dot the center of the country.

The administration is seeking $348 million for base construction as part of its 2006 emergency war funding bill. The Senate has not yet acted on the request.

By far the most funding has gone to a mammoth facility north of Baghdad in Balad, which includes an air base and a logistics center. The U.S. Central Command said it intended to use the base as the military's primary hub in the region as it gradually hands off Baghdad airport to civilian authorities.

BALAD AIR BASE, IRAQ - The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that's now the home of as many as 120 U.S. helicopters, a ''heli-park'' as good as any back in the States.

At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq's western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads.

At a third hub down south, Tallil, they're planning a new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry airmen and soldiers for chow.

Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy is sure of it as he looks around Balad.

''I think we'll be here forever,'' the 19-year-old airman from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base.

The Iraqi people suspect the same. Strong majorities tell pollsters they'd like to see a timetable for U.S. troops to leave, but believe Washington plans to keep military bases in their country.

The question of America's future in Iraq looms larger as the U.S. military enters the fourth year of its war here, waged first to oust President Saddam Hussein, and now to crush an Iraqi insurgency.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari, interim prime minister, has said he opposes permanent foreign bases. A wide range of American opinion is against them as well.

Such bases would be a ''stupid'' provocation, said Gen. Anthony Zinni, former U.S. Mideast commander and a critic of the U.S. invasion.

But events, in explosive situations like Iraq's, can turn ''no'' into ''maybe'' and even ''yes.''

The Shiite Muslims, ascendant in Baghdad, might decide they need long-term U.S. protection against insurgent Sunni Muslims. Washington might take the political risks to gain a strategic edge -- in its confrontation with next-door Iran, for example.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and other U.S. officials disavow any desire for permanent bases. But long-term access, as at other U.S. bases abroad, is different from ''permanent,'' and the official U.S. position is carefully worded.

Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman on international security, told the Associated Press it would be inappropriate to discuss future basing until a new Iraqi government is in place, expected in coming weeks.

Less formally, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when asked about ''permanent duty stations'' by a Marine during an Iraq visit in December, said it was ''an interesting question.'' He said it would have to be raised by the incoming Baghdad government, if ''they have an interest in our assisting them for some period over time.''

In Washington, Iraq scholar Phebe Marr finds the language intriguing. ''If they aren't planning for bases, they ought to say so,'' she said. ''I would expect to hear, 'No bases.' ''

Right now what is heard is the pouring of concrete.

In 2005-06, Washington has authorized or proposed almost $1 billion for U.S. military construction in Iraq, as American forces consolidate at Balad (known as Anaconda) and a handful of other installations, big bases under the old regime.

They have already pulled out of 34 of the 110 bases they were holding last March, said Maj. Lee English of the U.S. command's Base Working Group, which is planning the consolidation.

'The coalition forces are moving outside the cities while continuing to provide security support to the Iraqi security forces,'' English said.

Lower profile for troops

The move away from cities, perhaps eventually accompanied by U.S. force reductions, will lower the profile of U.S. troops, frequent targets of roadside bombs on city streets. Officers at Al-Asad Air Base, 10 desert miles from the nearest town, say it hasn't been hit by insurgent fire since October.

Al-Asad will become even more isolated. The proposed 2006 supplemental budget for Iraq operations would provide $7.4 million to extend the no-man's-land and build security fencing around the base, which at 19 square miles is so large that many assigned there take the bus to get around the base, or buy bicycles at a PX jammed with customers.

At Tallil, besides the new $14 million dining facility, Ali Air Base is to get, for $22 million, a double perimeter fence with high-tech gate controls, guard towers and a moat -- in military parlance, a ''vehicle entrapment ditch with berm.''

At Balad, the former Iraqi air force academy 40 miles north of Baghdad, the two 12,000-foot runways have become the logistics hub for all U.S. military operations in Iraq, and major upgrades began last year.

Army engineers say 31,000 truckloads of sand and gravel fed nine concrete-mixing plants on Balad, as contractors laid a $16 million ramp to park the Air Force's huge C-5 cargo planes; an $18 million ramp for workhorse C-130 transports; and the vast, $28 million main helicopter ramp.

Turkish builders are pouring tons more concrete for a fourth ramp beside the runways, for medical-evacuation and other aircraft on alert. And $25 million was approved for other ''pavement projects,'' from a special road for munitions trucks to a compound for special forces.

The burden of paying for reconstruction poses an extraordinary challenge for a country that needs tens of billions of dollars for repairing its infrastructure at the same time it's struggling to pay its bills.
Iraq's deputy finance minister, Kamal Field al-Basri, said it was "reasonable" for the United States to sharply cut back its reconstruction efforts after spending about $21 billion.

"We should be very much dependent on ourselves," al-Basri said. Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, called the U.S. reconstruction effort "a dismal failure. It hasn't met any of its goals. It's left a legacy of half-built projects, built to U.S. standards, which Iraq doesn't have the capability to maintain."
Al-Basri said Iraq needs to increase its capacity to produce oil, which generates 93 percent of government's revenues.
The total rebuilding cost is now $70 billion to $100 billion -- up from a $60 billion World Bank estimate in 2003, Speckhard said.