,
Today, help on challenging how people in the U.S. are looking at "helping"
Iraq:
Larry Everest writes in Revolution More U.S. Killings and War Crimes in Iraq? HELL
NO! today:
When you hear the commander-in-chief of the U.S. empire talk about
freedom and giving people "the opportunity to forge their own future," here's
what that has meant for the people of Iraq:
- Iraqi deaths as a result of the war, directly and
indirectly (due to the destruction and disruption of the war, including to water
and power systems, to healthcare and food production): 655,000 according to a
2006 Lancet study; 1 million according to a 2008 Opinion Research
Business study; current estimate: 1.2 to 1.4 million.
- Iraqis injured: 4.2 million.
- Iraqis driven from their homes: 4.5 million.
- A U.S.-installed reactionary Shi'ite fundamentalist government which
launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing, indiscriminate bombardments,
and torture against Iraq's Sunnis.
- U.S-organized Shi'ite death squads linked to the Maliki
government responsible for murdering thousands of Sunnis and unleashing
widespread religious sectarianism and ethnic cleansing during the 2006-2008
civil war. Minorities were driven out of areas in which different ethnic and
national groups had previously lived side by side.
Ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern
holding up the iconic photograph of a six-year-old Iraqi girl who survived the
accidental killing of her parents by U.S. troops in 2004. (Photo credit: Stars and Stripes.)
Thanks to Iraq Veterans Against the War for changing a scheduled press
conference on the failures of the VA to care for veterans, to one which, last
Thursday, called on Obama not to strike Iraq.
Ray McGovern
referenced a Washington Post article with the headline “U.S. sees
risk in Iraq airstrikes:”
...I thought, “doesn’t that say it all.” The
Post apparently didn’t deem it newsworthy to publish a story headlined:
“Iraqis see risk in U.S. airstrikes.” Then, in an accompanying article,
authors Gregg Jaffe and Kevin Maurer observed nonchalantly that “Iraq
and the Iraqi people remain something of an abstraction,” a point that drove me
to distraction.
More from Ray in Iraqis Are Not ‘Abstractions’
Ross Caputi also spoke of his experience as a Marine in the 2nd battle of
Fallujah in 2004. Earlier on KPFK, Ross was asked about the
war:
There's an assumption of the legitimacy of the US occupation,
and the occupation as a source of stability in Iraq. But, I understand just the
opposite. I recognize that whatever experiences I suffered in Iraq was for
the purpose of illegally occupying a sovereign country, and installing an
oppressive government. I look at my mission as the source of instability in
Iraq. It's invevitable that this government would fall. It never had any
legitimacy or popular support. As much as it hurts to know my friends died for
nothing, it hurts worse to know how many innocent Iraqis we killed in the course
of this imperial misadventure. [The media] tend to ask the question from the
perspective of "Was it worth it for us?" and kind of ignore the question of
first, did we have a right to do this? And was it worth it for
Iraqis?"
Cindy Sheehan has been taking on the war criminals almost daily on her
blog and social media. See Intended Consequences: The Imperial Meat
Wagon Rolls On
My son and thousands of other US troops
were killed in the bloodiest part of the invasion and occupation starting in
2003, but millions of Iraqi have been slaughtered, injured, displaced, and made
desperately ill by depleted uranium and other toxins and poisons delivered by
the “freedom bringers” of the US military.
How is Harlem Like
Afghanistan?
Anand Gopal has
written a fascinating book after learning Pashto and living in
Afghanistan for 5 years. No Good Men Among the Living, through the
stories of 3 Afghans, tells the tale of how the US quickly defeated the Taliban
in 2001, and then so oppressed, alienated, and night-raided the population, that
they revived the Taliban, and created thousands of indidigenous operators
becoming enriched by US contracts.
Gopal, on Democracy Now! recently,
described night raids, “special” operations, targeted killings, paramilitary
forces, a “proxy war of Afghans being paid by the US to fight against the
Taliban.” If you ask somebody, “What you think about the United States?” in
Afghanistan, they will say, “Oh, these are the people who come and kick our
doors down in the middle of the night and take our loved ones
away.”
So the Special Operations forces, these are the ones who are
doing what are called counterterrorism operations, which means, for example,
night raids--going into people’s houses, taking people who are suspected to be
Taliban or al-Qaeda, sending them to Bagram. In previous years, they were
sending them to Guantánamo. It also means targeted killings, so there’s a list
of people, list of Afghans who are supposedly enemies of the United States, who
will be targeted through drone strikes or through conventional types of
attacks.
But Harlem, USA? When 400 New York police raided 3 housing
projects in Harlem at 5:30 am on June 4, residents described feeling as if
“terrorists” were breaking down their doors. 40 young men were arrested on
“gang” conspiracy charges, largely based on Facebook postings when they were
juveniles. A woman resident said:
I woke up,
opened my bedroom door and there was a gun in my face. Nobody knocked on my
door. My son was not in the apartment. They told me, ‘Shut the fuck up’ and put
my hands up, put handcuffs on me, smashed my face into a wall. They never told
me what they were there for... They wouldn't let my seven-year-old grandson come
out of the room, who was in there screaming. They told me they will ‘get to him
later.’ They tore my house up...
We'll report further on the
outrageous conduct of the raids, the threats of evictions within the larger move
to criminalize Black and Latino youth. What is the connection to the combat
training soldiers and Marines got to kick down doors in Afghanistan and Iraq,
and what they do in urban police departments now, as “insurgents” become “gang
bangers?”
The New York Times recently reported that War Gear Flows to Police
Departments:
During the Obama administration, according to
Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine
guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and
night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.
The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already
look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now deployed tens of
thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine jobs.
Neenah,
Wisconsin, which last had a murder 5 years ago, now has a “mine-resistant”
truck, and “In the Indianapolis suburbs, officers said they needed a
mine-resistant vehicle to protect against a possible attack by veterans
returning from war.”
The last vehicle
from Iraq returned to U.S. This vehicle arrived at the Port of Beaumont, Texas,
Sunday, May 6th, 2012.
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