10 years since the lies 100,000+ dead Iraqis 4000 dead US/British troops

Be like Nutella · 18-03-2013 11:58PM #1

So it would be remiss of this forum not to take note of the 10 year anniversary of the single most important American foreign policy blunder of our generation. So fittingly just before midnight, here is a thread for discussing how we view the events which lead to the invasion of Iraq 10 years tonight.

I just want to offer my experience of watching the BBC Panorama program tonight 'The Spies Who Fooled the World' which detailed for 90 mins these events and the characters which played important roles in the drama which lead to the Iraq invasion.

From what I've read and watched on the subject, since I've come to understand that 'dishonesty' directly brought on the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it seems that just a few men are ultimately responsible for what happened and the way in which it happened.

One of those men is of course the so called 'source' Curveball or Rafid Ahmed Alwan. In the final few seconds of the program tonight and I highly recommend watching it by the way if you missed it - the interviewer posited to him and I paraphrase

'it was ultimately your lies which caused the invasion of Iraq?'

The camera switched to the guys face for the response... he simply said 'yes' and then..... he did something very unsettling to me personally

... he smiled

and the credits rolled.

How do people here, American or not, feel now about this anniversary and about who is ultimately responsible for dishonestly leading America and Britain to invade Iraq on March 20 2003 which has directly caused the deaths of 4000 troops and more than 100 thousand dead innocent Iraqis?

This is US politics - This is US foreign policy. A small number of executives are ultimately responsible for the dishonest dissemination of information on various levels which brought on the Iraq invasion.

What are the thoughts?

and this is not a free for all America bashing session.

tim3000 · 19-03-2013 02:18AM

An invasion is never due to the testimony of a single spy. While I do not agree with the invasion of Iraq I believe that the lens of history will bring into focus the true reason for the invasion of the country. At present I do not know the reason why America chose to invade though had they finished the job in '91 an invasion would have been unnecessary in '03. However I do not think that a single spy is the sole reason why America invaded Iraq, major military operations are the result of in depth analysis of intelligence gained by an organised intelligence gathering operation. That said I hope more replies will shed light on the rationale behind the invasion

asherbassad · 19-03-2013 02:54AM

tim3000 wrote: »

An invasion is never due to the testimony of a single spy. While I do not agree with the invasion of Iraq I believe that the lens of history will bring into focus the true reason for the invasion of the country. At present I do not know the reason why America chose to invade though had they finished the job in '91 an invasion would have been unnecessary in '03. However I do not think that a single spy is the sole reason why America invaded Iraq, major military operations are the result of in depth analysis of intelligence gained by an organised intelligence gathering operation. That said I hope more replies will shed light on the rationale behind the invasion

Who cares what you "think" tim? Who cares?
1.4 million Iraqis are dead. 1.4 MILLION. Iraq, one of the richest nations on earth has been destroyed. Despite 40 years of dictatorship, imposed I might add by the very scum who are responsible for the current miserable and ongoing suffering of Iraqi people, despite a genocidal war, instigated by the west between Iraq and Iran where 1 million people were butchered, despite the fact that there are now over 4 MILLION Iraqi refugees as a result of the 10 year carnage, despite the fact that vast tracts of this land are contaminated with radioactive waste from British and American munitions, despite the fact that the most progressive, educated, secular and advanced society with regards to technological advances, mathematics and medicine (not to mention the highest proportion of women with degrees) in the region now has fcuk all electricity or safe drinking water..despite all that....you "think" you know something about the place? You "think" the slaughter was worth it all....as if Saddam Hussein was somehow just whisked away and the Iraqi people were left to build a new society. What you "think" is bullsh!t.

Perhaps you should read this, and learn a bit of empathy at the same time. Written by an Iraqi, of all people, not some clown Middle East "expert" or some Pentagon gobsh!te:

"

Ten years on from the shock and awe of the 2003 Bush and Blair war – which followed 13 years of murderous sanctions, and 35 years of Saddamist dictatorship – my tormented land, once a cradle of civilisation, is staring into the abyss.
Wanton imperialist intervention and dictatorial rule have together been responsible for the deaths of more than a million people since 1991. And yet, according to both Tony Blair and the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, the "price is worth it". Blair, whom most Iraqis regard as a war criminal, is given VIP treatment by a culpable media. Iraqis listen in disbelief when he says: "I feel responsibility but no regret for removing Saddam Hussein." (As if Saddam and his henchmen were simply whisked away, leaving the people to build a democratic state). It enrages us to see Blair build a business empire, capitalising on his role in piling up more Iraqi skulls than even Saddam managed.
As an exile, I was painfully aware of Saddam's crimes, which for me started with the disappearance from Baghdad's medical college of my dearest school friend, Hazim. The Iraqi people are fully aware, too, that Saddam committed all his major crimes while an ally of western powers. On the eve of the 2003 invasion I wrote this for the Guardian:
"In Iraq, the US record speaks for itself: it backed Saddam's party, the Ba'ath, to capture power in 1963, murdering thousands of socialists, communists and democrats; it backed the Ba'ath party in 1968 when Saddam was installed as vice-president; it helped him and the Shah of Iran in 1975 to crush the Kurdish nationalist movement; it increased its support for Saddam in 1979…helping him launch his war of aggression against Iran in 1980; it backed him throughout the horrific eight years of war (1980 to 1988), in which a million Iranians and Iraqis were slaughtered, in the full knowledge that he was using chemical weapons and gassing Kurds and Marsh Arabs; it encouraged him in 1990 to invade Kuwait…; it backed him in 1991 when Bush [senior] suddenly stopped the war, exactly 24 hours after the start of the great March uprising that engulfed the south and Iraqi Kurdistan…"
But when it was no longer in their interests to back him, the US and UK drowned Iraq in blood.
…We haven't even counted the dead yet, let alone the injured, displaced and traumatised. Countless thousands are still missing. Of the more than 4 million refugees, at least a million are yet to go back to their homeland, and there still about a million internal refugees. On an almost daily basis, explosions and shootings continue to kill the innocent. … Lack of electricity, clean water and other essential services continues to hit millions of impoverished and unemployed people, in one of the richest countries on the planet. Women and children pay the highest price. Women's rights, and human rights in general, are daily suppressed.
And what of democracy, supposedly the point of it all? The US-led occupying authorities nurtured a "political process" and a constitution designed to sow sectarian and ethnic discord. Having failed to crush the resistance to direct occupation, they resorted to divide-and-rule to keep their foothold in Iraq. Using torture, sectarian death squads and billions of dollars, the occupation has succeeded in weakening the social fabric and elevating a corrupt ruling class that gets richer by the day, salivating at the prospect of acquiring a bigger share of Iraq's natural resources, which are mostly mortgaged to foreign oil companies and construction firms.
Warring sectarian and ethnic forces, either allied to or fearing US influence, dominate the dysfunctional and corrupt Iraqi state institutions, but the US embassy in Baghdad – the biggest in the world – still calls the shots. Iraq is not really a sovereign state, languishing under the punitive Chapter VII of the UN charter."

You might learn something if you read this report as well:

http://warisacrime.org/sites/afterdowningstreet.org/files/iraq.pdf

If you've got the time to express what you "think" about the mountains of corpses in Iraq then you should at least read it.

G Power · 19-03-2013 11:35AM

we desperately need the mother of all global revolutions

Be like Nutella · 19-03-2013 12:08PM

I'll meet ya on O'Connell street : )

Jonny7 · 19-03-2013 08:37PM

asherbassad wrote: »

Who cares what you "think" tim? Who cares?
1.4 million Iraqis are dead. 1.4 MILLION.

I don't know how you settled on this figure, the casualties vary depending on source.

The Iraq body count puts the figure between 110,000 and 120,000 up till 2012.

Wikileaks puts it at 109,000 up till 2009

The Lancet report put it at 600,000 in 2006 (this was highly disputed)

Associated press at 110,000 up till 2009

Iraq, one of the richest nations on earth has been destroyed.

Strange comment, not sure how far back in history you are stretching.

Despite 40 years of dictatorship, imposed I might add by the very scum who are responsible for the current miserable and ongoing suffering of Iraqi people, despite a genocidal war, instigated by the west between Iraq and Iran where 1 million people were butchered, despite the fact that there are now over 4 MILLION Iraqi refugees as a result of the 10 year carnage, despite the fact that vast tracts of this land are contaminated with radioactive waste from British and American munitions, despite the fact that the most progressive, educated, secular and advanced society with regards to technological advances, mathematics and medicine (not to mention the highest proportion of women with degrees) in the region now has fcuk all electricity or safe drinking water..despite all that....you "think" you know something about the place? You "think" the slaughter was worth it all....as if Saddam Hussein was somehow just whisked away and the Iraqi people were left to build a new society. What you "think" is bullsh!t.

Iraq under Saddam attacked Iran with an army prepared for such a purpose, armed mainly with the latest Soviet equipment.

tim3000 · 19-03-2013 09:32PM

asherbassad wrote: »

Who cares what you "think" tim? Who cares?
1.4 million Iraqis are dead. 1.4 MILLION. Iraq, one of the richest nations on earth has been destroyed. Despite 40 years of dictatorship, imposed I might add by the very scum who are responsible for the current miserable and ongoing suffering of Iraqi people, despite a genocidal war, instigated by the west between Iraq and Iran where 1 million people were butchered, despite the fact that there are now over 4 MILLION Iraqi refugees as a result of the 10 year carnage, despite the fact that vast tracts of this land are contaminated with radioactive waste from British and American munitions, despite the fact that the most progressive, educated, secular and advanced society with regards to technological advances, mathematics and medicine (not to mention the highest proportion of women with degrees) in the region now has fcuk all electricity or safe drinking water..despite all that....you "think" you know something about the place? You "think" the slaughter was worth it all....as if Saddam Hussein was somehow just whisked away and the Iraqi people were left to build a new society. What you "think" is bullsh!t.

Perhaps you should read this, and learn a bit of empathy at the same time. Written by an Iraqi, of all people, not some clown Middle East "expert" or some Pentagon gobsh!te:

"
Ten years on from the shock and awe of the 2003 Bush and Blair war – which followed 13 years of murderous sanctions, and 35 years of Saddamist dictatorship – my tormented land, once a cradle of civilisation, is staring into the abyss.
Wanton imperialist intervention and dictatorial rule have together been responsible for the deaths of more than a million people since 1991. And yet, according to both Tony Blair and the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, the "price is worth it". Blair, whom most Iraqis regard as a war criminal, is given VIP treatment by a culpable media. Iraqis listen in disbelief when he says: "I feel responsibility but no regret for removing Saddam Hussein." (As if Saddam and his henchmen were simply whisked away, leaving the people to build a democratic state). It enrages us to see Blair build a business empire, capitalising on his role in piling up more Iraqi skulls than even Saddam managed.
As an exile, I was painfully aware of Saddam's crimes, which for me started with the disappearance from Baghdad's medical college of my dearest school friend, Hazim. The Iraqi people are fully aware, too, that Saddam committed all his major crimes while an ally of western powers. On the eve of the 2003 invasion I wrote this for the Guardian:
"In Iraq, the US record speaks for itself: it backed Saddam's party, the Ba'ath, to capture power in 1963, murdering thousands of socialists, communists and democrats; it backed the Ba'ath party in 1968 when Saddam was installed as vice-president; it helped him and the Shah of Iran in 1975 to crush the Kurdish nationalist movement; it increased its support for Saddam in 1979…helping him launch his war of aggression against Iran in 1980; it backed him throughout the horrific eight years of war (1980 to 1988), in which a million Iranians and Iraqis were slaughtered, in the full knowledge that he was using chemical weapons and gassing Kurds and Marsh Arabs; it encouraged him in 1990 to invade Kuwait…; it backed him in 1991 when Bush [senior] suddenly stopped the war, exactly 24 hours after the start of the great March uprising that engulfed the south and Iraqi Kurdistan…"
But when it was no longer in their interests to back him, the US and UK drowned Iraq in blood.
…We haven't even counted the dead yet, let alone the injured, displaced and traumatised. Countless thousands are still missing. Of the more than 4 million refugees, at least a million are yet to go back to their homeland, and there still about a million internal refugees. On an almost daily basis, explosions and shootings continue to kill the innocent. … Lack of electricity, clean water and other essential services continues to hit millions of impoverished and unemployed people, in one of the richest countries on the planet. Women and children pay the highest price. Women's rights, and human rights in general, are daily suppressed.
And what of democracy, supposedly the point of it all? The US-led occupying authorities nurtured a "political process" and a constitution designed to sow sectarian and ethnic discord. Having failed to crush the resistance to direct occupation, they resorted to divide-and-rule to keep their foothold in Iraq. Using torture, sectarian death squads and billions of dollars, the occupation has succeeded in weakening the social fabric and elevating a corrupt ruling class that gets richer by the day, salivating at the prospect of acquiring a bigger share of Iraq's natural resources, which are mostly mortgaged to foreign oil companies and construction firms.
Warring sectarian and ethnic forces, either allied to or fearing US influence, dominate the dysfunctional and corrupt Iraqi state institutions, but the US embassy in Baghdad – the biggest in the world – still calls the shots. Iraq is not really a sovereign state, languishing under the punitive Chapter VII of the UN charter."

You might learn something if you read this report as well:

http://warisacrime.org/sites/afterdowningstreet.org/files/iraq.pdf

If you've got the time to express what you "think" about the mountains of corpses in Iraq then you should at least read it.

I care what I think for one, (but I don't care for yours) and I'll ask you to re-read my comment and see that it was merely conjecture as to the real reason behind the attack. I even said that I'm hoping that other posters might shed some light on the subject for me. It is a conflict that I know very little about and I was expressing my opinion that the USA would never have undertaken a major military invasion on the basis of s single testimony.

Also if I want your opinion on anything Ill ask for it.

Jonny7 · 19-03-2013 11:39PM

tim3000 wrote: »

An invasion is never due to the testimony of a single spy. While I do not agree with the invasion of Iraq I believe that the lens of history will bring into focus the true reason for the invasion of the country. At present I do not know the reason why America chose to invade though had they finished the job in '91 an invasion would have been unnecessary in '03. However I do not think that a single spy is the sole reason why America invaded Iraq, major military operations are the result of in depth analysis of intelligence gained by an organised intelligence gathering operation. That said I hope more replies will shed light on the rationale behind the invasion

A single spy was not the reason.

The main reasons for war were the intent of the US administration at the time, coupled with Blair's flattering support.

The "given reasons" for the war were hotly debated, and to be honest were not broadly accepted in many countries outside of the US.

The UN opposed it, scores of diplomats opposed, some of the largest anti-war marches ever recorded took place, the French, Germans, etc openly opposed it, the list goes on and on..

Yet, at the end of the day, it was pretty obvious that Bush and Blair were determined to unilaterally push ahead (with a very shakey "coalition" of the indebted) - and such has been their legacy.

It would have been much easier to depose Saddam in 1991 because the average Iraqi in the street could understand that their country had invaded Kuwait, that it was wrong, and that the world was against them..

However in 2003 - it was pre-emptive. It was literally the reverse.

It was rushed.

It wasn't sanctioned by the UN. The Iraqi's, as much as they loathed Saddam, could see it was deeply unpopular across the world - yet it went ahead.

From then on, it was a trainwreck of bad planning and atrocious implementation.

It also spurned a greater resentment of the US/West - and radicalised a generation of young men.

There are few positives to say about it - perhaps in a Machiavellian way the Iraqis have a potential future with democracy that they would have had little or no opportunity of before (Saddam was much more adept than Assad at crushing uprisings)

We hear about so many US veterans coming back to PTSD - that is a drop in the ocean of the suffering the Iraqi people have been through as a result of the war - unfortunately it will take many generations to iron out.

I am a harsh critic of that war, but generally wikipedia is a good place to start to get a decent objective overview.

Be like Nutella · 20-03-2013 02:48AM

from an article in the Strib around the time of all this

"... the neocons themselves and their supporters say that the United States has an unprecedented historical opportunity to reshape the world in ways that will make our country safer and the rest of the world freer. The neocons, who sometimes call themselves neo- Reaganites, say the key concept is not perpetual war but "moral clarity backed by military strength."

What happened in my opinion and from what I think I know at this stage is:

A relatively small group of guys in Washington known to us vaguely as The Neocons which included Richard Pearle, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and about 10 other main characters simply 'wanted ' to 'do it' for very deep ideological reasons which included such things as believing in a very proactively 'US-Managed' world. Some of these guys were pawns in a group, a cabal which were all singing off the same hymn sheet... but some of them like Paul Wolfowitz were the hymn-writers.

Paul Woflowitz is essentially the guy who was waiting in the background for any way at all in which he could architect a case for picking a fight with the old rival Saddam Hussein. When 9/11 happened and the world shined its pig ignorant spotlight upon the middle east a very strange thing happened - people started connecting the words 'Saddam Hussein' with the words 'the September 11th attacks'. Not just the words but the idea of 9/11 and terrorists and attacking the US homeland and Saddam Hussein and Iraq became linked magically. One had absolutely nothing to do with the other but the 'ideas' were linked, very purposefully by certain people... and then by elements of the media which culminated in a firestorm of poor journalism and zombie-patriotic nonsense. This path would lead certain individuals, with similar ideologies about American power, to eventually 'see' that a mixed bag of cherry-picked' crappy 3rd hand Intel product would actually be USED and high-roaded straight to the top, without, importantly, sufficient quality analysis. This 'WMD intel sh1t pile' would be sugar coated and dipped in chocolate and force-fed to the world, the media, you, me, everyone. It was the success of 'pushing' this retarded so called 'intelligence' about Uranium here or there or chemical weapons labs here or there or even on trucks and all kinds of complete willful lies such as the infamous '45 min launch' claim, which would bring the war. The average person didn't understand jack-sh1t about what they were hearing and so were simply brow-beaten by a media tornado the likes of which the world never witnessed before into believing that Saddam Hussein was somehow connected to 9/11 or terrorists, which was the same thing in our retarded zombified heads at the time, and that Saddam Hussein (as much of an evil a$$hole he clearly was) was actually a DIRECT THREAT to well... the whole world it seemed.

This was the major success of this relatively small group of guys with Dick Cheney in command. No it wasn't some fantasy conspiracy connected to feckin freemasonry or some crap like that so keep your anti-CT hat on your head - it was a genuine group-effort to go get Saddam - and if the world didn't agree with them then they would dishonestly 'lead' the world by the nose into that war (because we're all too stupid to understand the great ideals of these so called neocon men?). In the end the Cheney neocon team had Powell's UN speech, with the UNredacted part about the 'mobile bioweapons trucks'.... and Blaire had his infamous 'Dossier' - and the worlds media sucked it up and spat it all over us until we were on a travelator to war (war in the wrong word really - 'Invasion' is more appropriate and more instructive).

This was all about momentum and singing from a common hymn sheet written by Paul Wolfowitz, conducted by Dick Cheney and sang by George Bush Junior and Donald Rumsfeld along with the 'Fox news et al' Choir and watched in virtual silence by every so called journalist AND by US, the readers,watchers... almost catatonically as the aircraft carriers bounced from wave to wave towards the gulf full of well meaning conned 20 year old poor soldiers who would all be duped into massacring thousands of civilians while dieing themselves in their tens and twenties every week for years and years.

Paul Wolfowitz and the cabal which
agreed with him or listened to him or supported him within Washington such as Donald Rumsfeld, for years, are ultimately responsible for the con which brought the Invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and which has directly caused over 100 thousand civilian deaths and 4000 military deaths. It's all about Paul.

'Curveball' (from Germany to George Tennet minus the clear warnings of the likelihood of his fabrications) and the Italian source (and journalist which mistakenly disseminated the info from that source) were absolutely vital in 'the con' that was waged. Without those two individuals it wouldn't have happened. Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld 100% knew, with absolute certainty, that the Intel which was being used to argue for Invasion was, at the very least incredibly untrustworthy, sub-quality and insufficient BUT they 'did it' anyway. That is called 'sin-eating' i.e. doing something which sacrifices the moral righteousness for which you are supposedly fighting for by breaking that very same moral code, so that we don't have to -= or so the ends will eventually justify the means. That - is Machiavellian, that is integral to Neocon ideology, that is Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney down to a T.

The idea that there are 'Noble lies' which all leaders must weave, myths which they must propagate to maintain social cohesion dates back to Plato at least, and it is always the 'smartest guys at the bar' who end up pulling strings and convincing us all to do this or that until we walk headlong into war and have to reflect 10 years later at the folly of our ways. Will we ever learn?

Maybe when all the pain of all the deaths of all the 100+ thousand people subsides, history will record a major lesson from this Iraq episode - that WMD's are never as dangerous as Smart men with strong beliefs. They are the true WMD's and they were in the meeting rooms of Washington all along right under everyone's noses growing in influence and getting more ideologically bold day by day.

These are most of them - thems which brought us the Iraq War and I personally think it is important to know these names and recognize what they did, how they influenced opinion, how they influenced political support for the Invasion of Iraq and how they used a bunch of lies to convince enough of the world to go to war while the American population watched on, and like gamblers in a Vegas Super Casino, they hadn't a chance as soon as they tuned in to Fox or read the papers they were on board and swept towards war as were their sons and brothers.

Bush SOtU speech 2002

"I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."
Post-9/11 call for regime change in Iraq

On September 20, 2001 (PNAC The Infamous Think Tank sent a letter to Bush psuhing for Regime change in Iraq - 9 feckin days after the attacks - what in bloody hell connected Saddam to the fukin 9/11 attacks? Does anyone even know about this letter?

Here's a quote:

"...even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.."

http://www.newamericancentury.org/Bushletter.htm

INCREDIBLE, people wouldn't believe this sh1t if there wasn't evidence, I wouldn't.

This is a list of the Real WMDs. And before somebody wastes typing energy I am well aware that the term 'Neocon' may have lost meaning due to excessive and inconsistent use since 2001. For this list however it is an accurate contemporary descriptive term.

Neocons brought the US to war in 2003, end of story. They did so with willful dishonesty and there should be more blame apportioned to their role in the Iraq war drum lies of 2002/2003. Mothers of dead soldiers should know about these guys. The media should shine a brighter spotlight on these guys and hammer home what really happened and who was to blame. It wasn't congress, it wasn't the US public, It wasn't the UK parliament and it wasn't the analysts in the CIA.

Dick Cheney

Paul Wolfowitz

Richard Perle

Condoleezza Rice

Donald Rumsfeld[

Scooter Libby

Elliot Abrams

John R. Bolton

R. James Woolsey, Jr.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dov_Zakheim

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Kagan

Eliot A. Cohen

Feith Wurmser

Neocon Think Tanks/reports/info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

Clean Break: 1996 Report from Richard Perle and IASPS to Israeli Prime Minister urging Iraq war.

IASPS: Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies
"A Jerusalem-based think tank with an office in Washington, D.C."
Explained importance of Iraq war for Israel.

Standard: The Weekly Standard
Main neoconservative magazine.
Editor: William Kristol, co-founder of PNAC,
son of Irving Kristol, the neconservative's "godfather."

Chalabi: Ahmed Chalabi
The Iraqi who conned the neocons and the CIA with fabricated evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
_______________________________________________________

Paul Wolfowitz, Asst. Sec.of Defense till June 2005

Wolfowitz--the intellectual godfather of the war--is its heart and soul. (12/29/2003, Time)
Has worked for it since G.H.W. Bush left Saddam in power.
A student of neocon gurus Strauss and Wohlstetter.
Early associate of Perle.
1989-93, DOD under Cheney and over Libby.
1997, PNAC (Signer of "Principles") with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Abrams, Bolton, Libby.

Manic Moran · 20-03-2013 09:05PM

Be like Nutella wrote: »

So it would be remiss of this forum not to take note of the 10 year anniversary of the single most important American foreign policy blunder of our generation. So fittingly just before midnight, here is a thread for discussing how we view the events which lead to the invasion of Iraq 10 years tonight.

At the time, I don't think I gave them much consideration at all, actually. I don't recall being particularly swayed by the AQ or WMD lines, but on the other hand, I didn't see any particular downsides to the concept of removing Saddam anyway, even if the motivations for doing so were less than stellar.

My personal interest only really piqued when I was sent there, which is natural enough, I guess. For all the talk about Iraq having been one of the most modern and developed middle-Eastern nations prior to the unpleasantness of 1991 or so, I sure as hell would not have wanted to be in one of the less modern and less developed nations. Granted, they were better off than Afghanistan, but that's hardly Middle-East. I was lucky enough to spend a while at opposite ends of the spectrum, most of my time was in an undeveloped agrarian region, but I also spent some weeks bouncing around a developed city.

My first introduction to Saddam's "Baghdad First" policy came within an hour of crossing the border in March 2004. About the far side of Basra, Highway 1, the main artery to the country's only port city, turned from an immaculate motorway to a dirt trail. I'm not exaggerating, I don't mean 'two lane blacktop', I mean 'desert that has been graded, but nothing else done to it.' Took us four-five hours to get back to the blacktop, which was about 30 miles South of Baghdad. Obviously the government wasn't all that concerned about people wanting to go to/from the outlying areas.

The region I spent most of my time in was a bit unusual, perhaps. Some 30 miles North of Baghdad, right next to Al Dujail. This resulted in an odd mix as, though ostensibly a Shiite part of the world, the population had been a little reduced by massacre and forcibly resettled with Sunni replacements as a reprisal against an assassination attempt in the 1980s. Fairly fertile farmland, and masterfully irrigated, though the people were often living in a strange dichotomy of poverty and modern convenience. Most families had access to a motor vehicle of some sort, for example, but there was no source of clean water or sewage system. I feel I took my life in my hands sometimes when I was invited to share their meals! (I never did come down with anything, thankfully. I broke a few rules in eating local food, but really, could I say 'no' and not offend them?). Electricity was supplied by communally owned generators. These weren't instances of depravity caused by ten years of sanctions, there was no indication that any such services were ever available to them at any stage in the past.

As a general rule, the people seemed to be about what you'd find anywhere. Most of them didn't really care who was going to run the country, as long as they could get a good price for their vegetables in the local market and their kids grew up safe and well educated. Some odd priorities, though... When we asked one town council what they'd like us to build in their town (which had no clinic or school), they said 'football stadium'. Yeah, we told them to try again. As a general rule, our priority of reconstruction was healthcare: Water and medical access. My platoon medic was probably the greatest asset we had, we'd have people walk up to us carrying their kids for things as simple as burns (The kid whose heart was outside his ribcage was beyond my medic's abilities, we had to send that one up the chain. Never did find out what happened him).

I became known to the locals as "Mulazem Tee-el", which, unless my interpreter was lying to me, translated as "Lieutenant Flagpole."
I was a tad taller than most of the locals. I must have cut an impressive figure, one family matriarch tried to fob her daughter off on me. (When I explained 'sorry, I'm married', that didn't stop her. 'Have another wife!'. Upon explaining that Wife #1 would leave me and I'd go to jail, the mother was horrified. How could a country as advanced as the US be so barbaric as to deny a man a second wife? Good question...)

After the first week when we showed up and the insurgents realised they wanted to shoot at easier targets than tanks, combat in my neck of the woods was limited, almost down to a case of satisfying honor. They'd empty a magazine at us, we'd shoot back, nobody would hit anything, and we were all good for the next couple of weeks. With only one exception, most of the serious opposition commuted to our AO. (You don't crap in your own back yard), that one exception was dealt with after three consecutive appointments (I don't think we killed them, we just scared them enough that they left us alone after that).

The Iraqi forces at the time were... unreliable. Some were actually quite good, most of the ones in my area, not so much. After a few months, we had to go on joint patrols, bring a couple of Iraqi lads along with us to show how it was done. Nicer idea in theory than in practice, it took a while before proper emphasis was placed on doing this right. I do recall one day in June or July 2004 when we got a radio call as we were out on patrol: "The CPA has handed over control of the country to an Iraqi interim government. The occupation is over, you are now honoured guests of the Iraqi government." As I looked back over my two tanks, two Hummers, and the various soldiers and civilians interacting, I couldn't see much difference between then and the half hour ago!

Anyway, after a... well, I won't say 'pleasant', but really not bad at all 9 months or so in the fields, we were relocated to Mosul. A reasonably modern city, with a heavy Kurdish presence, so parts of the city were very quiet, with a Kurdish militia keeping an eye on things. Other parts of the city, decidedly not quiet. Depending on which part of the city you went to, there were some very nice houses, and there were also places with open sewers (which we discovered after driving through them). Roads were generally good in the city, though drainage sucked, with some underpasses for major roads being completely flooded after rains. Was the only place we ever saw an Iraqi woman not wearing headgear (Two of them, they were on a shopping street).

City services were non-existant. The police had just been run out of town (hence they sent my tanks up that way), and even the garbage collection wasn't working. The electricity grid was complete chaos, with people stringing up their own lines any which way they wanted. I'd wager this contributed as much to the lack of electricity (overloads and shorts) as a lack of production capacity. (Satellite dishes had started springing up all over the place over the course of the year. I'm told the most popular show was Oprah. No, I have no idea why). I saw one butcher slaughter a cow and let it bleed out on the sidewalk into the gutter. Not sure what the city Health and Safety folks would think of that.

That said, despite all the chaos, life in the city went on as close to normal as you could expect. We commuted every morning and evening in our tanks to our place of work just like everyone else, and got stuck in traffic jams like everyone else. Pretty surreal, really. (Of course, being in tanks, sometimes we just made our own lanes if the delays were too long. Not that we were the only people with a disrespect for the official traffic laws, Iraqi drivers in general sucked in the consideration towards other department). Local football league was in full swing, I parked the tank by a pitch once and just sat there watching the game. (Cue amusement once the locals figured out I was cheering for the guys in the green jerseys).

The big event, and the reason that there was so much emphasis on restoring order in the town, was the elections of January 2005. These would be the first free elections in years, and it turned into a bit of a city-wide party. To reduce the bomb threat, a three-day curfew on vehicles was placed just before the locations of the polling stations was announced: No traffic. An astonishing amount of badminton and volleyball nets got erected, to go with all the football matches that sprouted in the streets. Kindof limited where we could go.

Lots of smiles on election day. Nobody bothered to tell us about the blue dye, and for the life of us we couldn't figure out why the folks we were passing kept smiling and waving their fingers at us and why they were blue. Only one incident at a polling station in our area, a mortar landed about a block away. The people lined up to vote scattered, but they were all back again after about five minutes. They were quite determined to vote.

Anyway, that's the overview of my recollections of ten years ago from my little vantage point ten feet above the ground. My unit is having a ten-year-reunion later this year, I was shocked when I realized how much time had passed. Anyway, I had no particularly negative experiences with the Iraqis, I didn't seem to offend them too much, and the places I saw needed about all the help they could get.

Einhard · 24-03-2013 08:47PM

I think you can be against the war without trying to claim that George Bush was directly responsible everytime an AQ bomber strapped on a vest and blew himself and scores of innocents to pieces in a crowded marketplace...

Brown Bomber · 09-04-2013 07:48PM

Einhard wrote: »

I think you can be against the war without trying to claim that George Bush was directly responsible everytime an AQ bomber strapped on a vest and blew himself and scores of innocents to pieces in a crowded marketplace...

Would these people have died without US invasion/occupation?

Perhaps. But they wouldn't be "AQ bombers" they'd be Western-Gulf sponsored heroic "freedom-fighters" fighting for democracy.

Brown Bomber · 09-04-2013 07:54PM

Jonny7 wrote: »

I don't know how you settled on this figure, the casualties vary depending on source.

The Iraq body count puts the figure between 110,000 and 120,000 up till 2012.

Iraq Body Count's figures only include the deaths of Iraqi "civilians" that died through "violence".

If they were to apply the same standards to the number of Jews killed by the Nazis during WWII they would be ostracised as Holocaust deniers.

For example, the totals would exclude those "combatants" killed during the Warsaw Ghetto riots and those that died of starvation and diseases in the camps.

Brown Bomber · 09-04-2013 08:04PM

BLN,

This article should interest you. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jul/17/iraq.usa
It reveals the connection between the Office of Special Plans and the Israeli government. I've been racking my brain for the name of a whistleblower who was in the Pentagon pre-war who describes the Zionist-Neocon takeover of the Pentagon, Cheney, Wurmser, Feith, Perle etc and their planning and dissemination of war propaganda .

She has a Polish name. It'll come to me and I'll post back.

Brown Bomber · 11-04-2013 12:00AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

She has a Polish name. It'll come to me and I'll post back.

... think it might be "Sheen"...

MonaPizza · 17-05-2013 07:21PM

6000 Syrians estimated killed in march of this year and upwards of 90,000 Syrian civilians killed in a relatively low intensity conflict in 2 years. Yet some try to maintain that only 100,000 Iraqis died in 10 years of absolute carnage. Yeah, ok.

Be like Nutella · 17-05-2013 08:06PM

fair enough I suppose.

If you asked me my personal opinion on the Iraq numbers I would say you're right - deffo more than 100,000 people died than would have otherwise did the invasion not happen BUT and this is a big but - the groups who have done the research and produced the different numbers ALL used different ways to get to their respective numbers - some of them got to a number like 1 Million! but the top end has been rationally discredited so if you look at the most respected reports/investigations - those used by serious journalists who want to get to the truth - you end up between 100-200,000. For the purpose of not causing a ruckus here or when trying to have a rational balanced debate about Iraq and the US invasion and all the lies and all the BS - you're better shooting a little low rather than moving the focus off the issue and onto the numbers people would PREFER to believe depending on which side of the argument they fall down on. Shooting in at 1 Million or even 500,000 since 2003 just starts off on the wrong foot and also the higher numbers are just difficult to support. TBH I don't trust the methodology of groups who use sample techniques or formulas - when I want to know about drone strikes in Pakistan I go to Pakistanbodycount.org which links to actual new reports on each strike - which I can then look at - translate - and decide whether I trust them or not - compare with others and so forth. With Iraq unfortunately only a handful of groups had/have the reosurces to really investigate the bodycount and come up with a minimum figure you can trust. I can trust the 100,000 minimum figure because I know how they got to that figure - after that? who knows - but my gut says a lot more probably - but that's all. So I'm just saying you gotta play it safe, rational or you come off like an anti-US kook which is not helpful around here because you'll get pulled up quick smart if you BS around this forum as there are US citizens, people who served in Iraq and all kinds in between here. It's a very emotive subject and we all want to shout about 1 million dead Iraqis but the data is just not there to support it... and if you ask me 100-150,000 is a sh1tload of people that shouldn't have died and the whole thing is a god damn catastrophe and Dick Cheney and and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are personally to blame for knowingly lying to everyone and conning the US into war. Shame on the world for not stopping them! Syria's bodycount is exactly the same scenario - you gotta shoot a little lower than the figures the groups come up with - because you just know that these groups have a conflict of interest and wish to shock the world into 100,000 dead etc... I would mention the minimum figure of about 70-80,000 when talking Syria. I myself have quoted upper figures when discussing drone strikes and would in retrospect trust a minimum figure of 3000 people rather than the 4,500 upper figure you see from time to time. The numbers are of course important - vitally important - but shooting too high muddles the debate before you start. The RATE of deaths per day in Syria is the most troubling to me as it shows Assad is almost clinically keeping the bloodshed JUST BELOW a threshold above which the world will not accept. For instance if the 100 a day average turned into 500 a day for the next two weeks we would see a massive response form the worlds politics. And the FSA et al know this very well. Assad is playing a game of balancing killing the crap out of the rebel groups BUT not over stepping the mark - a real war of attrition and the world is shamefully falling for it hook line and sinker. If he hits 5000 with nerve gas tomorrow like Saddam did to the Kurds it's game over and he knows that. The US army did not massacre Iraqis or anything like that - it was the complicated insurgency and terrorist attacks which killed the vast majority of that 100,000+ number - attacks, bombings rose to an astounding totally unstoppable frequency.... as they are right now rising to once more in Iraq.

It certainly is not as easy to say the US is responsible for the 100,000 dead Iraqi's....but then again the facts are the facts - they lied to the world, to congress, to the UN to everyone and invaded and because of that invasion there are possibly 100,000-200,000 or more dead Iraqi's than would have otherwise been had the US not invaded in 2003. Therefore there is definitely oceans of blood on Cheney's hands... oceans and oceans of blood.

InTheTrees · 18-05-2013 04:34PM

Wasnt it Churchill that said History is written by the winnners?

We had the George Bush Presidential "Library" open last month with all the orwellian distortions you would expect. And not one copy of "my pet goat" i'm sure.

Dick Cheney (how is he still alive?) doing the rounds of the talk shows to prop up sales of his book thats just out. I'm sure the timing was no accident.

Eugh...

Amerika · 12-06-2013 08:01PM

InTheTrees wrote: »

Wasnt it Churchill that said History is written by the winnners?

We had the George Bush Presidential "Library" open last month with all the orwellian distortions you would expect. And not one copy of "my pet goat" i'm sure.

Dick Cheney (how is he still alive?) doing the rounds of the talk shows to prop up sales of his book thats just out. I'm sure the timing was no accident.

Eugh...

Hmmm… I guess George W Bush was a winner then.

Did you ever think you would see the day that George W Bush was considered more popular then Barack Obama among Americans?

Gallup poll:
Bush 49% viewed favorably
Obama 47% viewed favorably

Oh the humanity?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/163022/former-president-george-bush-image-ratings-improve.aspx
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx

14-06-2013 12:53PM

Given that Iraq did not attack the US, nor did they possess WMD as claimed by the GW Bush administration, the 2nd Gulf War appears to be unjustified and a tragic waste of lives on both sides, as well as an extraordinary waste of taxpayer dollars (in part contributing to the financial mess that resulted in the 2008 Great Recession).

Amerika wrote: »

Gallup poll:
Bush 49% viewed favorably
Obama 47% viewed favorably

Gallup polling should be viewed with caution. They predicted a Mitt Romney win in 2012, not just immediately before the November election, but for several months before in their tracking polls (Rasmussen made the same errors).

After the national embarrassment of their 2012 prediction failure, Gallup have attempted to add more rigor to their sampling methodology, but even with this, caution should be exercised when interpreting results solely obtained from landline and mobile phone survey techniques; i.e., potential sample bias and nonrepresentativeness resulting from survey saturation, voice mail, caller identification, call blocking, privacy managers, etc.

Given these cautions, there does seem to be a warming-up of the memories of American voters over time for liking past presidents phenomena, suggesting that years from now Obama too will benefit from American forgetfulness.

Amerika · 14-06-2013 02:24PM

Black Swan wrote: »

Given that Iraq did not attack the US, nor did they possess WMD as claimed by the GW Bush administration, the 2nd Gulf War appears to be unjustified and a tragic waste of lives on both sides, as well as an extraordinary waste of taxpayer dollars...

Now that President Obama has decided to supply military support to the rebels in Syria, maybe we’ll finally find out if the chemical weapons used by President Bashar Assad's government against the rebels did in fact come from Saddam Hussein at the onset of Iraq hostilities as was reported. If so, will we say redemption for George W Bush?

But I now agree with you that it was a "tragic waste of lives on both sides, as well as an extraordinary waste of taxpayer dollars." We can’t fix the problems in the middle east… We’ve tried to help but couldn’t. They need to fix their problems themselves. Either they will find a way to peace or kill themselves in the process, but the US should stay out of it (including Syria) unless direct US interests are threatened. Support Israel and let the rest of the middle east fend for themselves I say.

Jonny7 · 15-06-2013 10:02AM

Amerika wrote: »

Now that President Obama has decided to supply military support to the rebels in Syria, maybe we’ll finally find out if the chemical weapons used by President Bashar Assad's government against the rebels did in fact come from Saddam Hussein at the onset of Iraq hostilities as was reported. If so, will we say redemption for George W Bush?

Tongue-in-cheek I think..

Iraq did actually have a large range of biological and chemical weapon capabilities, the "components" of which were directly or indirectly supplied by a wide range of countries, including allegedly the US and European countries

It's not so much that evidence was fabricated, more that bad intelligence (or colourful assumption) was pushed as fact.

10 years since the lies 100,000+ dead Iraqis 4000 dead US/British troops

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