Platinum Anniversary

As some readers know, for many years I maintained the Today in Iraq blog, during the U.S. occupation. The invasion of Iraq was an illegal war of aggression, and U.S. troops and mercenaries committed innumerable war crimes. The result was an indescribable catastrophe for Iraqis, with a conservative death toll estimate of 800,000 and most likely far higher, at least as many people injured, and entire cities destroyed. (Notably Fallujah and Mosul.) The consequences for the U.S. were not as dire, but $8 trillion wasted and immense damage to the nation ' s international standing, along with 4,400 military dead and 32,000 wounded. (Mercenaries who were killed were often labeled by the corporate media as " civilian reconstruction workers, " btw.)Alissa Rubin in the NYT gives an in-depth update on Iraq today. The country does have an independent press, and it has elections of a sort, but the result is not anything resembling democracy. The country is run by corruption and theft.  Most people live in poverty and squalor, despite the country ' s oil wealth it is economically backward, and there is no safety or security.We ' re still arguing about why the U.S., along with Britain, invaded in the first place. Bush, Cheney, Powell and Blair ginned up a campaign of blatant lies to make it happen, that the corporate media swallowed without even chewing. A leading theory is that the real target was Iran. With the U.S. already occupying Afghanistan, by occupying Iraq we ' d have the...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs