Everybody's talking about the combat troops in Iraq: all of the Democratic presidential candidates, except for Chris Dodd, are qualifying their opinion that the United States should withdraw from Iraq with the adjective "combat" and, in the last week, we've seen reports out of the White House that the combat force is to be increased] even as there are reports that a significant decrease is being planned.
So, what's going on? As BarbinMD noted yesterday in highlighting the NY Times story, these announcements about combat forces have become a media staple--something that's sure to get attention. Which, I would argue is exactly the point. The combat troops (including their now well-publicized deaths) are a diversion, designed to distract the press from things the White House definitely doesn't want to see covered.
While it's often admitted, albeit in passing, that the purpose of the combat troops is to provide "force protection," exactly which forces are being protected is never specified. Surely, they're not just protecting themselves as they wander among people who don't want them there.
What's also not admitted is what the other hundred thousand non-combat troops are actually up to on the bases (secure in the sense that they are off-limits to un-authorized visits, but not the mortars that are lobbed at them on a daily basis). Since they're obviously not equipped to protect themselves from insurgent attacks, it seems fair to conclude that the mission of the combat troops is to interdict and intercept the Iraqi's efforts to make life on the bases unpleasant.
The Balad Air Base's activities are actually fairly well tracked.

3/16/2007 - BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq (AFNEWS) -- With 5,000 air operations per week within a five-nautical-mile radius from surface level to 3,000 feet, the airfield here is the busiest in the Department of Defense.
In fact, the runways at Balad Air Base are part of the world's busiest combat operation.
At this pace, the 22 Airmen assigned as air traffic controllers in the Balad tower have their eyes on 18,000 to 20,000 air operations per month and 72,000 to 75,000 during the Air Expeditionary Force 5-6 rotation alone. At the end of the year, it's likely air traffic controllers here will have tracked more than 290,000 operations.

Five thousand operations a week means that there are over seven hundred take offs and landings in a day, while only seven hundred a month are cargo flights. So, just as there are only 22 troops assigned to air traffic control, only one in thirty flights is to bring in supplies. What are the rest up to?
What they're up to is the air war, the other part of the Iraq story that the White House doesn't want reported. Just as they're content to have the public focus on the oil in the ground, rather than the real estate they've requisitioned for the bases from which the "region" can be monitored with radar installations and satellite download facilities, the White House prefers that the focus be on car bombs and improvised explosive devices rather than the tons of munitions "delivered" by the Air Force on a daily basis.
Nick Turse has done a very credible job gathering information for an outline of the extent of the continuing air assault on Iraq. While Sy Hersh has been writing for some time about the likelihood that any withdrawn combat troops would be replaced with more action by the air force, the extent to which the air war has been continual since "shock and awe" has gotten almost no coverage. One consequence, no doubt intended, is that the American people find it impossible to believe that it's troops have caused over half a million deaths, as the British Lancet study has claimed. I mean, how could our boys and girls be responsible for such carnage when most of those who come home intact report that they've had almost no contact with Iraqis at all?
The answer is that they aren't. It's the guys up in the air, just like their antecedents in Viet Nam (John McCain's buddies), who are doing the dirty deed.

Air War, Iraq: 2006
While cluster bombs remain a point of contention, Air Force officials do acknowledge that U.S. military and coalition aircraft dropped at least 111,000 pounds of other types of bombs on targets in Iraq in 2006. This figure -- 177 bombs in all -- does not include guided missiles or unguided rockets fired, or cannon rounds expended; nor, according to a CENTAF spokesman, does it take into account the munitions used by some Marine Corps and other coalition fixed-wing aircraft or any Army or Marine Corps helicopter gunships; nor does it include munitions used by the armed helicopters of the many private security contractors flying their own missions in Iraq.
In statistics provided to me, CENTAF reported a total of 10,519 "close air support missions" in Iraq in 2006, during which its aircraft dropped those 177 bombs and fired 52 "Hellfire/Maverick missiles." The Guided Bomb Unit-12, a laser-guided bomb with a 500-pound general purpose warhead -- 95 of which were reportedly dropped in 2006 -- was the most frequently used bomb in Iraq last year, according to CENTAF. In addition, 67 satellite-guided, 500-pound GBU-38s and 15 2,000-pound GBU-31/32 munitions were also dropped on Iraqi targets in 2006, according to official U.S. figures. There is no independent way, however, to confirm the accuracy of this official count.

Now, it's possible that, like the cluster bombs which frequently don't explode until much later, cannon rounds aren't effective either. However,

Cannon Rounds
The number of cannon rounds -- essentially large caliber "bullets"-- fired by CENTAF aircraft is also a closely guarded secret. The official reason given is that "special forces often use aircraft such as the AC-130" gunships, which fire cannon rounds, and "their missions and operations are classified, so therefore these figures are not released." However, an idea of the number of cannon rounds expended by CENTAF aircraft can be gleaned from a description of a single operation on January 28, 2007 when U.S. F-16s and A-10 Thunderbolts not only "dropped more than 3.5 tons of precision munitions," but also fired "1,200 rounds of 20mm and 1,100 rounds of 30mm cannon fire" in a five square mile area near the southern city of Najaf.

Closely guarded secrets! Surely not from the people on the ground. Only the people who are paying for the carnage are not allowed to know.

While the destructive capacity of helicopter gunships has been well-documented and we have indications of the levels of ammunition available to the military, the actual scale of use is hard to pin down. Flight hours are, however, another indication. According to James Glantz of the New York Times, Army helicopters logged 240,000 flight hours in Iraq in 2005, 334,000 in 2006, and projections for 2007 suggest that the figure will reach 400,000. (And these numbers don't even include Marine Corps squadrons, heliborne missions by private security contractors, or those of the nascent Iraqi Air Force.)
Top Secret Information
While military press information officers continue to stonewall on the number of cannon rounds fired by helicopters ("We cannot comment on your inquiry due to operational security"), earlier this year Col. Robert A. Fitzgerald, the Marine Corps' head of aviation plans and policy, was quoted in National Defense Magazine on the subject. He claimed that, in 2006, "Marine rotary-wing aircraft flew more than 60,000 combat flight hours, and fixed-wing platforms completed 31,000. They dropped 80 tons of bombs and fired 80 missiles, 3,532 rockets and more than 2 million rounds of smaller ammunition." (When asked if Col. Fitzgerald's admission endangered "operational security," a military spokesman responded, "I cannot comment on the policies or release authority of a Marine colonel.")

What a stupendous accomplishment in the age of global electronic communications to have kept the murder of half a million people a secret! Of course, if the entire human population were wiped out, no one would know it, would they? The more people you kill, the fewer there are to object.
Which raises the question how many Iraqis will have to be removed before the remainder will give the U.S. corporations what they want. Ten percent is obviously not enough. Can we hit twenty-five in the next eighteen months?