Off the Meter

Last November, a security consultant told David Corn that a six-mile cab ride from Central Baghdad to Baghdad International Airport cost $6,000. Now it's up to $35,000. Read what New York Times Iraq correspondent Dexter Filkins recently told NBC Meet the Press host Tim Russert:

"RUSSERT: There is a road, a highway from the airport to downtown Baghdad that's called the Road of Death by many. I understand there's a taxi service on that road to take someone from downtown to the airport.

FILKINS: That's a real mystery. It's a really bad neighborhood that it goes through, and you know, people come in from both sides...I think in the dead of night, people come out and plant bombs and they stage attacks."

The "Road of Death" is where a suicide car bomb recently killed American aid worker Marla Ruzicka. It's also a powerful symbol of just how far off course the US occupation has gone. After months of fanciful pronouncements, General Richard Myers finally admitted that the insurgency's "capacity stays about the same. And where they are right now is where they were almost a year ago." Militants are launching between 50 and 60 attacks per day, up from a post-election lull of 40. At least 127 people, including 11 American soldiers, have died since Thursday in more than twenty-five attacks across Iraq. Excluding the vicious weekend violence, Iraq has lost 300 security forces in the past six weeks.

"Weeks will differ, and months will differ a little bit," Myers said, "But if you look at the scope of this, over time since May of 2003, that's the conclusion you draw." The conclusion is that two years after the fall of Baghdad, 140,000 coalition troops still can't defend a six-mile stretch of highway, much less crack Iraq's guerilla resistance.

As a result, money that should be going toward rebuilding water, sewage and power plants, and putting Iraqis back to work, has been diverted to meet spiraling security costs. For the third time in nine months, the Bush Administration has redrafted its project to rebuild Iraq. "On any given construction project, as much as 35 percent of the money goes to protecting the workers who are working on it," Filkins told Russert. "So the problem has been the violence, and it's basically overwhelmed every attempt or most of the attempts to rebuild the country."

Perhaps the agreement to form a cabinet and hand over power to new Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari will eventually provide an impetus for positive change. But naming Ahmad Chalabi deputy prime minister (and temporary overseer of Iraq's oil revenues) and his nephew Ali Abdel-Amir Allawi finance minister isn't likely to solve the country's problems. For now, we'll know that progress has been made when a ride to the airport drops below $35,000.

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