Iraq War: the results are in

Anyone remember that great (and massively expensive) photo-op, "Mission Accomplished"?

Does it now, in retrospect, seem hopelessly premature and out of touch with reality?

I remember reading a quote form Donald Rumsfeld, long before he was thrown to the wolves, when he said "we're making our own reality on the ground in Iraq!."

Nuh-uh, Rummy. You were always living in a fantasy world.

So what has the US accomplished after three and a half years?

• All international support for The War Against Terror has been "frittered" away
  
• around 3000 US fatalities (if you believe the official figures)
  
• how many more disabled vets?
  
• at least half a million Iraqi fatalities
  
• ongoing sectarian civil war
  
• a puppet government unable to control the country
  
• the status of women set back by around a thousand years
  
• depleted uranium causing birth defects as never before (and it's never going away)
  
• infrastructure destroyed - no fresh water in many places, and even in Baghdad, electricity is only available for a few hours each day
  
• the Iraqi treasury looted
  
• the oil of Iraq, far from "being held in trust for the people of Iraq" (another lie from Tony Blur), has been given away to the oil companies
  
• thousands of Iraqi doctors have fled the country after threats of violence
  
• gasoline is almost unavailable to the people of Iraq except through the black market
  
• torture and abuse, bad enough in Saddam's day, is still rampant whether it's Americans or Iraqis doing it
  
• corrupt "reconstruction" programmes suck money out of Iraq and into the multinationals' coffers with little or no visible results
  
• unemployment at an all time high
  
• armed militias are necessary for the Iraqis' self-defence
  
• death squads roam the country, torturing and killing at will
  

On the upside, Saddam Hussein's had a pathetic show trial and Halliburton/KBR, Blackwater, and a bunch of other US companies have made lots and lots of money.

That's probably not even a remotely complete list. Even Henry Kissinger says the war is lost. Throwing more troops at the problem is like putting out fires with gasoline. Those few generals with the courage to speak honestly admit that a continued foreign presence on Iraqi soil does nothing but inflame the situation.

The best option left (which I've been saying ever since this misbegotten war started) is immediate withdrawal.

Anyone care to disagree?


[edit on 25-11-2006 by rich23]

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[edit on 25-11-2006 by DontTreadOnMe]

I'll not dissagree with you in the slightest on the points you raise, but I will take issue with your suggested recource.

Imediate withdrawl would be an irresponcible act worse that the desission to invade Iraq in the the first place.

If the US was to completely pull out now, Iraq would very quickly fall into a worse state of chaos than it is in currently. The toll in human suffering would rise dramaticly. It would become a breeding ground for anyone and everyone with a serious hate-on for the West to flock to and become true Terrorists. It would embolden various radical groups and nations to take more drastic actions in the face of an Impotent US threat.

No, pulling out isn't an answer.
Right or wrong, this is something that simply must be seen through until Iraq is atleast somewhat stablized. The US has a grave responcibility to humanity to see this through. If they can't, they need to pay MASSIVE reperations then step aside while the combined UN Peacekeeping forces go in to clean up their mess.

You cannot claim to be a humanitarian nation if you leave these people to suffer.

There is no way the US actually will pull out, no matter how it's sold to the US populace. With the largest embassy in the world, costing over a billion dollars and visible from space, plus perhaps as many as a dozen bases in the deep desert, there's no way the US will pull out.

However, the Iraqis won't be happy until every last US serviceman is off their soil.

You say that it would be even worse without the US there. While this is possible, I would argue that it's still the only thing the US can do. The US is not helping matters by being there. It might be that the only way now for Iraq to move forward is to leave their future entirely up to them.

It's so messed up... but this was, in a way, all too predictable from the outset.

Originally posted by BitRaiser
I'll not dissagree with you in the slightest on the points you raise, but I will take issue with your suggested recource.

Imediate withdrawl would be an irresponcible act worse that the desission to invade Iraq in the the first place.

If the US was to completely pull out now, Iraq would very quickly fall into a worse state of chaos than it is in currently.

You cannot claim to be a humanitarian nation if you leave these people to suffer.

Ok, the US is in Iraq right now. Can you really say that things would be worse than this?

Trouble in Tal Afar (and elsewhere)

TAL AFAR - A double suicide attack killed 22 people and wounded 45 at a market in a Shi'ite district in the northern city of Tal Afar, near the Syrian border, police said.

BAQUBA - Gunmen blew up an office of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's movement in the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad, after U.S. troops raided the building to arrest Sadr supporters inside, police said. They also reported sporadic clashes and said the situation was tense in the religiously mixed town which has been a frequent scene of sectarian violence.

BAGHDAD - Residents in Shula, a Shi'ite enclave in mainly Sunni west Baghdad, said at least two mortars hit the neighbourhood. There were no reports of any injuries.

ISKANDARIYA - A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed one policeman and wounded another in the town of Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, on Thursday, police said. In a separate incident gunmen attacked a police checkpoint, killing one civilian and wounding a policeman.

MOSUL - Three bodies with gunshot wounds were found in different parts of the northern city of Mosul on Thursday, the local hospital said.

TAL AFAR - Gunmen pulled a man off a bus in central Tal Afar on Thursday and shot him dead, police said.

How, exactly, are the US improving the situation here? This is only the tip of the iceberg.

If the US left now, things would no doubt take some time to cool down, but eventually, they would. It's a mess, there is no doubt... but the US is not helping in any way. It's that simple. All the US presence does is aggraveate the situation and reinforce the notion that the government are US puppets - which is an accurate assessment of the situation, IMO.

In world events like this the results aren't in untill about 20 years later.

If it takes a kids 4 years to get through college shouldn't a country get a little more time to pull itself together after 30 years of rotting.

Originally posted by rich23

However, the Iraqis won't be happy until every last US serviceman is off their soil.

Or do you mean the shiaa/sunni won't be happy untill every sunni/shiaa is off their soil.
Unless you have been there I wouldn't put words in there mouths.

Take a look pal they are off'ing eachother in record numbers, whereas this is the lowest casualty ratethe US has have ever suffered in something drawn out like this.

Seems to me like the US just gets in the way of bullets aimed by muslims at muslims.

If we left the sunnis would be massacared at htis point. You'll notice most if not nearly all of the attacks are on mosques and markets targeting civilians of the other sect, and not US bases.

I would agree that we should pull our troops out because we are not allowed to do what is necessary to keep the peace Most of the violence is occurring in Sadr city, which our troops are not allowed to go by the request of the Iraqi government so our troops cannot do the job they should be doing. So what is the point of them being there?

I certainly don’t want to leave things the way they are, but I don’t think we will be allowed to do what is necessary. This is by their choice not ours. I think if you asked the Iraqis, most would say that our troops are no longer welcome and we should leave. If we don’t follow their wishes then we are no longer seen as liberators but an occupying force.

I think the only solution is to divide up the country and separate the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites. When India gained its independence, this is exactly what they had to do in order to stop the violence that erupted there. Pakistan was created and the Hindus and Muslims packed up and moved into separate countries. I think it is probably the only solution at this point, but this is considered unacceptable by the administration.

Originally posted by rich23
Anyone remember that great (and massively expensive) photo-op, "Mission Accomplished"?

• All international support for The War Against Terror has been p###ed away
  
• around 3000 US fatalities (if you believe the official figures)
  
• how many more disabled vets?
  
• at least half a million Iraqi fatalities
  
• ongoing sectarian civil war
  
• a puppet government unable to control the country
  
• the status of women set back by around a thousand years
  
• depleted uranium causing birth defects as never before (and it's never going away)
  
• infrastructure destroyed - no fresh water in many places, and even in Baghdad, electricity is only available for a few hours each day
  
• the Iraqi treasury looted
  
• the oil of Iraq, far from "being held in trust for the people of Iraq" (another lie from Tony Blur), has been given away to the oil companies
  
• thousands of Iraqi doctors have fled the country after threats of violence
  
• gasoline is almost unavailable to the people of Iraq except through the black market
  
• torture and abuse, bad enough in Saddam's day, is still rampant whether it's Americans or Iraqis doing it
  
• corrupt "reconstruction" programmes suck money out of Iraq and into the multinationals' coffers with little or no visible results
  
• unemployment at an all time high
  
• armed militias are necessary for the Iraqis' self-defence
  
• death squads roam the country, torturing and killing at will
  

Anyone care to disagree?


[edit on 25-11-2006 by rich23]

Sure

The infrastructure had already been long wasted away.

The puppet government was voted for.

Death Squads romed the country and killed at before the war, just they were sunni
death squads and a free press didn't exist in iraq to report it.

Your death toll can not be confirmed.

armed militias have always existed in iraq. Its one of the reason the kurds in the north are properous and relatively terrorist free.

Status of women set back by 1000 years? by whom? how exactly?

The iraqi treasury was looted. by whom? Was it ever used for the people when saddam was in power?

Um oil is paid for not given away. Remember that oil for food program? With saddam the oil never benefitted "the people"

Thousands of Iraqis fled the country before the war too. Saddam liked to kill people and their families.

What is your perception of iraq before the war?

At least now the %80 majority is in power and there is a democratic process at work where they have to learn to work together.

Dispose of this pack of nonsense? No problem

Originally posted by American Madman
The infrastructure had already been long wasted away.

Ever since the first Gulf War, the US and UK had been bombing Iraqi infrastructure in breach of the rules of war. This includes fresh water facilities, and the sanctions in place were interpreted in such a way that replacement parts for fresh water plants were embargoed. The US is directly responsible for the attrition of Iraqi infrastructure.

The puppet government was voted for.

Most of the Iraqis now think that their country is run by puppets. Do you think they never connected the timing of Saddam's sentence to the mid-term elections?

At least one blogger did.

So we all knew the outcome upfront (Maliki was on television 24 hours before the verdict telling people not to ‘rejoice too much’). I think what surprises me right now is the utter stupidity of the current Iraqi government. The timing is ridiculous- immediately before the congressional elections? How very convenient for Bush. Iraq, today, is at its very worst since the invasion and the beginning occupation. April 2003 is looking like a honeymoon month today.

Death Squads romed the country and killed at before the war, just they were sunni death squads and a free press didn't exist in iraq to report it.

You think the press is free in Iraq? They're free to print the managed news that the US pays them to print, but they're not, for example, free to report demonstrations against Saddam's execution. Hardly objective. Three television channels were shut down when they tried to report what had actually happened after the verdict on Saddam was announced.

As for the death squads, it's funny how they never showed up until Negroponte, James Steele and Steven Casteel went to Iraq to organise them just like they did in El Salvador and Colombia: link

The Police Commandos are in large part the brainchild of another US counter-insurgency veteran, Steven Casteel, a former top DEA man who has been acting as the senior advisor in the Ministry of the Interior. Casteel was involved in the hunt for Colombia�s notorious coc aine baron Pablo Escobar, during which the DEA collaborated with a paramilitary organization known as Los Pepes, which later transformed itself into the AUC, an umbrella organization covering all of Colombia�s paramilitary death squads

Your death toll can not be confirmed.

Thanks in large part to the anarchy brought by the invasion. It's probably a conservative estimate. The study in The Lancet, conducted by people from, among other institutions, Johns Hopkins University, cited 655,000. The Lancet is a peer-reviewed journal using standard practices that in any other use are uncontroversial. But when it comes to counting people we killed, then of course it's wrong!

Lancet study methodology defended

armed militias have always existed in iraq. Its one of the reason the kurds in the north are properous and relatively terrorist free.

Rubbish. The kurds helped the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war, which is why Saddam was so vicious with them: the US encouraged them to revolt at the end of the Gulf War but then sat on their hands and watched Saddam slaughter them: then the no-fly zone, when enforced, at least stopped the use of chemical weapons delivered from the air. It's the no-fly zone that has allowed the Kurds to flourish.

And there have never been as many armed militias as there are now.

Status of women set back by 1000 years? by whom? how exactly?

Before the invasion Saddam, who was a secularist, not a fundamentalist, kept the lid on the excesses of the Shiite sect. I don't know if you ever saw the pictures of the Shias celebrating a ritual denied throughout Saddam's rule by going into the streets of some town in Iraq that Mohammed had visited and cutting themselves with very large, sharp knives, but the Shia can be a somewhat nutty bunch. Since Saddam's downfall, the Shias have been on the rise again as has fundamentalism.

Women are now no longer allowed jobs, they have to keep their heads covered and their mouths shut.

Read the blogger linked above. She used to hold down a job in IT. One of her blog entries describes her being taken by her brothers (instead of being able to dress in jeans and a t-shirt and driving herself like she used to, she now has to dress in a hijab and dare not leave the house alone) to her old work place. The fundamentalists had moved in. Her boss couldn't meet her eyes when he said there was no place for her there any more. Other entries describe the fact that her old clothes seem like they were from another world. Her days of dressing Western are behind her for the foreseeable future.

The iraqi treasury was looted. by whom? Was it ever used for the people when saddam was in power?

Immediately after taking Baghdad, Bush signed one of those handy little executive orders giving himself control of the billions in the OFF programme. All the money vanished, and the people who noticed were that well-known bunch of communists, the well-known British Charity Christian Aid. This went almost unreported in the mainstream media in the UK and US.

Iraq's missing billions
Iraq's missing billions - a Christian Aid journalist's view

Saddam used the oil money for education and health care. I'm not denying that Saddam was a monster: but the fact that you don't want to face is that good things also happened under his regime.

This article shows how Iraqi health care has deteriorated since the invasion.

A recent UNICEF report shows that, "before 1990 and the imposition of sanctions, Iraq had one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East". Now UNICEF reports, "at least 200 children are dying every day. They are dying from malnutrition, a lack of clean water and a lack of medical equipment and drugs to cure easily treatable diseases".

Um oil is paid for not given away. Remember that oil for food program? With saddam the oil never benefitted "the people"

What I remember about the oil for food programme is that the US tried to hype up a scandal involving perhaps one or two hundred thousand dollars allegedly embezzled by one of Kofi Annan's relatives while simultaneously keeping schtumm about the five billion or so that they had just emptied out of the account, which completely disappeared.

As for the oil being "paid for", the puppet government have agreed to PSAs (production sharing agreements) that allow the oil companies to keep the bulk of the money : Crude Designs: The Rip-off of Iraq's Oil Wealth

COSTING IRAQ BILLIONS

Economic projections published here for the first time show that the model of oil development that is being proposed will cost Iraq hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue, while providing foreign companies with enormous profits.

Our key findings are:

# At an oil price of $40 per barrel, Iraq stands to lose between $74 billion and $194 billion over the lifetime of the proposed contracts (2), from only the first 12 oilfields to be developed. These estimates, based on conservative assumptions, represent between two and seven times the current Iraqi government budget.

# Under the likely terms of the contracts, oil company rates of return from investing in Iraq would range from 42% to 162%, far in excess of usual industry minimum target of around 12% return on investment.

Thousands of Iraqis fled the country before the war too. Saddam liked to kill people and their families.

Oh, that makes everything that's happened since all right then. [/sarcasm]

Had the purpose of the invasion really been to get rid of Saddam, I might have supported it.

What was clear from the outset was that the US was going to make damn sure that their corporations (like Halliburton, Monsanto, KBR, Bechtel, Raytheon, and of course the Carlyle Group (to name only a few) profited enormously from the invasion and asset-stripping of Iraq.

This thread provides links that show that Jay Garner was sacked by Rumsfeld because he was transferring power to the Iraqis too quickly, and they wouldn't have rolled over for Monsanto and the oil companies who wanted to asset-strip the country.

Had the purpose of invading genuinely been to restore democracy and had Tony Blur's mendacious promise that "the oil of Iraq will be held in trust for the people of Iraq" actually been kept, it would have been easy to win hearts and minds. But the Iraqis aren't stupid, and they knew full well that they were being conned, which is why the resistance (or insurgency, as you would call it in order to avoid confronting the reality of what it is) is so determined and so widespread.

The Sunni-Shia divide, like the fundamentalist repression of women, is something that Saddam didn't encourage. He was a secularist who encouraged a secular society. Read the girl's blog to find out that people intermarried and it originally wasn't that big of a deal. However, after a few US/UK black ops, setting off car bombs and bombing mosques, Sunni and Shia started fighting each other rather than the invaders. Which was the whole idea.

Just thought I'd link to this article, which contains interviews with several ordinary Iraqis.

For those who don't know, the newspapers of which this site is the online version are owned by Rupert Murdoch. This article is extraordinary, especially when you consider that it leads with someone who says things are now worse than under Saddam:

'In Saddam's time I never saw a friend killed in front of my eyes. I never saw neighbours driven out of their homes just for their sect. And I never saw entire families being slaughtered and killed'

Saad was a conscript in Saddam’s army when US tanks rolled into Baghdad in April 2003. He deserted, went home and celebrated with his family. “We were dancing. I felt like I was reborn,” he said. He dreamt of getting a job at the airport that might let him travel.

He took a job as a street cleaner, but anyone working for the government is viewed as a collaborator. This is likely to continue as long as the occupation forces remain. His friends and colleagues were killed, sometimes right in front of him, and he was badly injured in an explosion.

The report also contains corroboration of my assertion that women's lives have been put back to a mediaeval state:

Anas stopped wearing jeans after hearing of women being killed or beaten for wearing Western clothes. Then she had to give up driving. Soon she could no longer go shopping or to the hairdresser. She stopped wearing make-up in public. She had to start wearing a veil and then an abbayah when she went out. Eventually she felt unable to leave the house at all.

When Shias start looking back on Saddam's time as "the good old days", you know something's seriously wrong.