Iraq...... the U.S. wrecked a country and people for nothing

[Sunni Man]

We wrecked Iraq. We caused the deaths of as many as a million people and displaced internally and externally, another 4.7 million. Today there are still more than a million Iraqis lost in their own country - internally displaced - mostly in Baghdad, according to unembedded journalist Dahr Jamail.

"Most of them have fled from sectarian cleansings," Jamail said when he was interviewed on Democracy Now! last year, on the 10-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. "They're living in horrible situations" - without government help, without hope for the future, surrounded by garbage, anticipating only more sectarian violence.

Our invasion wreaked havoc on the physical and social infrastructure of the country. And the weapons we used, including depleted uranium munitions and white phosphorous, shattered its health. In 2010, for instance, The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published an epidemiological study, "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009," which found that Fallujah - the city we "cleared of terrorists" with two bloody assaults in 2004 - is experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia and infant mortality than Hiroshima and Nagasaki did in 1945.

The country as a whole, according to Jamail, has seen an enormous jump in cancer rates since the U.S. began dismantling it. In 1991, before the first Gulf War, there were 40 registered cases of cancer per 100,000 Iraqis, he noted. By 2005, "we saw 1,600 Iraqis with cancer out of 100,000."

This is the context in which war talk and the "vital interests" of empire must be placed. Such a context is unacceptable to the corporate and political status quo, of course; so the media it controls have begun to perform cosmetic surgery on recent U.S. history, resurrecting the goodness and purity of our intentions and the simplistic evil of "the terrorists." All they need to be successful is complete denial of reality.

But the invasion of Iraq, Jamail said, "is a crime against peace, according to the Nuremberg Principles." And that makes it, and all future wars, a crime against our own, and the planet's, vital interests.

iViews.com - Cosmetic Surgery

 

[Truthmatters]

Bush did drop white phosphorous on falughia which is a war crime

 

[Sallow]

It's just amazing that no one in this country realizes on the right how devastating the Iraq war was to the Iraqi people or even cares..

 

[Indofred]

The war had winners - the American arms industry and extremist Muslim groups.
Everyone else lost.

As for the people of Iraq, they got rid of a dictator that targeted small groups of the population but gained lots of wannbe dictators that target anyone they can, with a lot of success.
Thousands dead in a war to remove Muslim extremists that didn't exist but has allowed real extremists to thrive.

The stupidity is beyond comprehension, unless you happen to be an American arms dealer, making money from the weapons systems you sell to Iraq in order to kill the terrorists.
Meet the Carlyle Group

 

[georgephillip]

Another thing many on the right are ignorant of is exactly how long the demise of Iraq has been on the planning board:

"Early on, it became evident that for the United States and England, the real purpose of the sanctions was not the elimination of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, but of Saddam Hussein himself, though that goal went far beyond anything authorized by the Security Council.

"The effect of the sanctions was magnified by the wide-scale destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure —power plants, sewage treatment facilities, telephone exchanges, irrigation systems—wrought by the American air and rocket attacks preceding the first Gulf War.

"That infrastructure has still to be completely rebuilt.

"Iraq’s contaminated waters became a biological killer as lethal as anything Saddam had attempted to produce.

"There were massive outbreaks of severe child and infant dysentery.

"Typhoid and cholera, which had been virtually eradicated in Iraq, also packed the hospital wards.

"Added to that was a disastrous shortage of food, which meant malnutrition for some, starvation and death for others..."

The American Legacy in Iraq » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

The same callous disregard for human rights goes on today in Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, and Iran; much of it stems from the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet

 

[Mr. H.]

I spoke with a couple of Iraqi ex-pats at a party recently.
They didn't hate Bush, but they hated what happened during his term.
They also conceded that it was a good thing the Saddam regime is history.
So it's a bittersweet thang.

 

[georgephillip]

The war had winners - the American arms industry and extremist Muslim groups.
Everyone else lost.

As for the people of Iraq, they got rid of a dictator that targeted small groups of the population but gained lots of wannbe dictators that target anyone they can, with a lot of success.
Thousands dead in a war to remove Muslim extremists that didn't exist but has allowed real extremists to thrive.

The stupidity is beyond comprehension, unless you happen to be an American arms dealer, making money from the weapons systems you sell to Iraq in order to kill the terrorists.
Meet the Carlyle Group

"But since the start of the "war on terrorism", the firm - unofficially valued at $13.5bn - has taken on an added significance. Carlyle has become the thread which indirectly links American military policy in Afghanistan to the personal financial fortunes of its celebrity employees, not least the current president's father. And, until earlier this month, Carlyle provided another curious link to the Afghan crisis: among the firm's multi-million-dollar investors were members of the family of Osama bin Laden."

Wouldn't it be cheaper to kill the rich?

Meet the Carlyle Group

 

[Kosh]

The far left are rooting for Iraq to be a failure they are rooting for the deaths of millions so they can be right in their doomsday predictions.

 

[Mojo2]

We wrecked Iraq. We caused the deaths of as many as a million people and displaced internally and externally, another 4.7 million. Today there are still more than a million Iraqis lost in their own country - internally displaced - mostly in Baghdad, according to unembedded journalist Dahr Jamail.

"Most of them have fled from sectarian cleansings," Jamail said when he was interviewed on Democracy Now! last year, on the 10-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. "They're living in horrible situations" - without government help, without hope for the future, surrounded by garbage, anticipating only more sectarian violence.

Our invasion wreaked havoc on the physical and social infrastructure of the country. And the weapons we used, including depleted uranium munitions and white phosphorous, shattered its health. In 2010, for instance, The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published an epidemiological study, "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009," which found that Fallujah - the city we "cleared of terrorists" with two bloody assaults in 2004 - is experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia and infant mortality than Hiroshima and Nagasaki did in 1945.

The country as a whole, according to Jamail, has seen an enormous jump in cancer rates since the U.S. began dismantling it. In 1991, before the first Gulf War, there were 40 registered cases of cancer per 100,000 Iraqis, he noted. By 2005, "we saw 1,600 Iraqis with cancer out of 100,000."

This is the context in which war talk and the "vital interests" of empire must be placed. Such a context is unacceptable to the corporate and political status quo, of course; so the media it controls have begun to perform cosmetic surgery on recent U.S. history, resurrecting the goodness and purity of our intentions and the simplistic evil of "the terrorists." All they need to be successful is complete denial of reality.

But the invasion of Iraq, Jamail said, "is a crime against peace, according to the Nuremberg Principles." And that makes it, and all future wars, a crime against our own, and the planet's, vital interests.

iViews.com - Cosmetic Surgery

You know the President had very good reasons for invading.

You just disagree with his reasons.

There's no going back.

Not to diminish the chaos, destruction, the violence and the heartache brought on by the invasion but stop bitching about it and move on.

 

[Mojo2]

Another thing many on the right are ignorant of is exactly how long the demise of Iraq has been on the planning board:

"Early on, it became evident that for the United States and England, the real purpose of the sanctions was not the elimination of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, but of Saddam Hussein himself, though that goal went far beyond anything authorized by the Security Council.

"The effect of the sanctions was magnified by the wide-scale destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure —power plants, sewage treatment facilities, telephone exchanges, irrigation systems—wrought by the American air and rocket attacks preceding the first Gulf War.

"That infrastructure has still to be completely rebuilt.

"Iraq’s contaminated waters became a biological killer as lethal as anything Saddam had attempted to produce.

"There were massive outbreaks of severe child and infant dysentery.

"Typhoid and cholera, which had been virtually eradicated in Iraq, also packed the hospital wards.

"Added to that was a disastrous shortage of food, which meant malnutrition for some, starvation and death for others..."

The American Legacy in Iraq » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

The same callous disregard for human rights goes on today in Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, and Iran; much of it stems from the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOQAUiIbedQ]OBAMAVID!!! - YouTube[/ame]

 

[georgephillip]

"The Iraq Inquiry, also referred to as the Chilcot Inquiry after its chairman, Sir John Chilcot,[1][2] is a British public inquiry into the nation's role in the Iraq War. The inquiry was announced on 15 June 2009 by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, with an initial announcement that proceedings would take place in private, a decision which was subsequently reversed after receiving criticism in the media and the House of Commons..."

The UK Cameron government is blocking publication of their official report on the Iraq war until at least 2014.

Some of the most damning evidence will probably never see the light of day

"In 2012, the government vetoed the release of the documents to the Inquiry detailing minutes of Cabinet meetings in the days leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"Concurrently, the British Foreign Office successfully appealed against a judge's ruling which had ordered disclosure of extracting a conversation between George W. Bush and Tony Blair days before the invasion.

"The government stated that revealing a phone call conversation between Bush and Blair days before the invasion would later present a "significant danger" to British-American relations.[7]

"The million word report of the Inquiry was due to be released to the public by 2014,[8] but difficult negotiations were continuing with the U.S. over the publication of documents relating to the US.[9]"

Iraq Inquiry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Kosh]

Bush did drop white phosphorous on falughia which is a war crime

Nothing like far left propaganda to make your day.

During military combat operations in Fallujah, Iraq, white phosphorus munitions were used by United States military forces as an incendiary weapon and as an obscurant. The United States denied allegations that white phosphorus was used as a weapon against civilians, stating that it was only used to target insurgents.

Not to mention this was used in Obama's illegal war in Libya by NATO.

 

[georgephillip]

Bush did drop white phosphorous on falughia which is a war crime

Nothing like far left propaganda to make your day.

During military combat operations in Fallujah, Iraq, white phosphorus munitions were used by United States military forces as an incendiary weapon and as an obscurant. The United States denied allegations that white phosphorus was used as a weapon against civilians, stating that it was only used to target insurgents.

Not to mention this was used in Obama's illegal war in Libya by NATO.

The United States launched an illegal War of Aggression against Iraq; why would you accept its denial of specific war crimes in Fallujah?

"On November 9, 2005 the Italian state-run broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana S.p.A. aired a documentary titled 'Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre', alleging that the United States' used white phosphorus as a weapon in Fallujah causing insurgents and civilians to be killed or injured by chemical burns.

"The filmmakers further claimed that the United States used incendiary MK-77 bombs in violation of Protocol III of the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

"According to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, quoted in the documentary, white phosphorus is permitted for use as an illumination device and as a weapon with regard to heat energy, but not permitted as an offensive weapon with regard to its toxic chemical properties.[6][7]

"The documentary also included footage which purported to be of white phosphorus being fired from helicopters over Fallujah. It also quoted journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who had been in Fallujah, as a testimony.

White phosphorus use in Iraq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[editec]

We wrecked Iraq. We caused the deaths of as many as a million people and displaced internally and externally, another 4.7 million. Today there are still more than a million Iraqis lost in their own country - internally displaced - mostly in Baghdad, according to unembedded journalist Dahr Jamail.

"Most of them have fled from sectarian cleansings," Jamail said when he was interviewed on Democracy Now! last year, on the 10-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. "They're living in horrible situations" - without government help, without hope for the future, surrounded by garbage, anticipating only more sectarian violence.

Our invasion wreaked havoc on the physical and social infrastructure of the country. And the weapons we used, including depleted uranium munitions and white phosphorous, shattered its health. In 2010, for instance, The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published an epidemiological study, "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009," which found that Fallujah - the city we "cleared of terrorists" with two bloody assaults in 2004 - is experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia and infant mortality than Hiroshima and Nagasaki did in 1945.

The country as a whole, according to Jamail, has seen an enormous jump in cancer rates since the U.S. began dismantling it. In 1991, before the first Gulf War, there were 40 registered cases of cancer per 100,000 Iraqis, he noted. By 2005, "we saw 1,600 Iraqis with cancer out of 100,000."

This is the context in which war talk and the "vital interests" of empire must be placed. Such a context is unacceptable to the corporate and political status quo, of course; so the media it controls have begun to perform cosmetic surgery on recent U.S. history, resurrecting the goodness and purity of our intentions and the simplistic evil of "the terrorists." All they need to be successful is complete denial of reality.

But the invasion of Iraq, Jamail said, "is a crime against peace, according to the Nuremberg Principles." And that makes it, and all future wars, a crime against our own, and the planet's, vital interests.

iViews.com - Cosmetic Surgery

It was a human rights nightmare when we got there and it still is.

You just cannot admit that any Moslem ever does anything wrong, can you?

 

[Kosh]

The United States launched an illegal War of Aggression against Iraq

This is the quote that always get people into trouble, especially those in the far left, don't be a far left tool.

The war in Iraq was not illegal, it has never been proven as such. Although the wars in Bosnia and Libya (as well as many other of Obama's wars) are illegal.

It would seem that the far left wants to erase the OIL FOR FOOD SCANDEL and pretend it never happened. It clearly shows why so many were actually against going into Iraq.

The documentary

That too often gets people into trouble.

Like the Al Gore film or a certain Michael Moore film.

Documentaries are meant to document, not cast blame or have a political ideal message in them.

So far the anti-crowd is batting zero for two.

 

[georgephillip]

It's just amazing that no one in this country realizes on the right how devastating the Iraq war was to the Iraqi people or even cares..

It's also amazing how many Americans are ignorant of or indifferent to exactly when the US began its assault of Iraq.

From NYT March 2003:

"On the brink of war, both supporters and critics of United States policy on Iraq agree on the origins, at least, of the haunted relations that have brought us to this pass: America's dealings with Saddam Hussein, justifiable or not, began some two decades ago with its shadowy, expedient support of his regime in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980's.

"Both sides are mistaken. Washington's policy traces an even longer, more shrouded and fateful history. Forty years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency, under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein..."

"As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958."

A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making - NYTimes.com

 

[U2Edge]

It's just amazing that no one in this country realizes on the right how devastating the Iraq war was to the Iraqi people or even cares..

It's also amazing how many Americans are ignorant of or indifferent to exactly when the US began its assault of Iraq.

From NYT March 2003:

"On the brink of war, both supporters and critics of United States policy on Iraq agree on the origins, at least, of the haunted relations that have brought us to this pass: America's dealings with Saddam Hussein, justifiable or not, began some two decades ago with its shadowy, expedient support of his regime in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980's.

"Both sides are mistaken. Washington's policy traces an even longer, more shrouded and fateful history. Forty years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency, under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein..."

"As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958."

A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making - NYTimes.com

Its amazing the lengths to which some people will go to DEFEND SADDAM and attack the United States, as well as make irrelevant links between certain events.

By the way, a 26 year old SADDAM did not come to power in Iraq in 1963. Arif did and Saddam and his Bath brothers were imprisoned.

SADDAM's time was the summer of 1968, long after CIA involvement in overthrowing Qasim back in 1963.

In any event, that history is irrelevant to the necessity of removing SADDAM from power in 2003.

 

[georgephillip]

It's just amazing that no one in this country realizes on the right how devastating the Iraq war was to the Iraqi people or even cares..

It's also amazing how many Americans are ignorant of or indifferent to exactly when the US began its assault of Iraq.

From NYT March 2003:

"On the brink of war, both supporters and critics of United States policy on Iraq agree on the origins, at least, of the haunted relations that have brought us to this pass: America's dealings with Saddam Hussein, justifiable or not, began some two decades ago with its shadowy, expedient support of his regime in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980's.

"Both sides are mistaken. Washington's policy traces an even longer, more shrouded and fateful history. Forty years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency, under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein..."

"As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958."

A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making - NYTimes.com

Its amazing the lengths to which some people will go to DEFEND SADDAM and attack the United States, as well as make irrelevant links between certain events.

By the way, a 26 year old SADDAM did not come to power in Iraq in 1963. Arif did and Saddam and his Bath brothers were imprisoned.

SADDAM's time was the summer of 1968, long after CIA involvement in overthrowing Qasim back in 1963.

In any event, that history is irrelevant to the necessity of removing SADDAM from power in 2003.

There was no necessity of removing Saddam from power in 2003 anymore than there was to help his Ba'ath Party assume power in 1963.