The Iraq War started by President George W. Bush is still not over. One could never have predicted how quickly the irony of the misguided bigotry of US foreign policy would play out.
Let’s go back to some basic facts first, since everyone knows the history of Colin Powell forever condemning himself with that unforgettable image of him holding the model vial of anthrax at the United Nations Security Council to the dustbins of ignominy and shame. Tony Blair and George Bush got excited about the idea of competing with Osama Bin Ladin as to who could kill more innocent people and so the war began.
1. The non-partisan Center for Public Integrity state that the Bush administration made a total of 935 false statements between 2001 and 2003 about Iraq’s alleged threat to the United States.
2. In March 2013, the total cost of the Iraq War was estimated at $1.7 Trillion by the Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University. Some estimate that the total cost of the war to the U.S. economy will range from $3-6 Trillion. The number does not really matter – it is just a ginormous amount.
3. 309,000 coalition forces killed over 650,000 civilians between March 2003-July 2006 alone, according to the Lancet Survey. Clearly, Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush won that competition with Osama Bin Ladin in a landslide.
So, on the back of several lies, the United States enters Iraq and occupies Iraq. Overthrows the government of Saddam Hussein, and a new regime supportive of the United States takes over. Iraq splinters into effectively three separate regions – a Shia south controlled the government and aligned with Iran; a Sunni heartland in the middle leading to the genesis of ISIS; and a Kurdish in the north. One nation broken in three!
The United States went in there to displace the Sunni government that was a mortal enemy of Iran. Replaced it with a government that was mostly made up of militia leaders and imams schooled and groomed for decades by Iran. The US government had claimed that they would be welcome as heroes on the fall of Saddam Hussein. May be they were!
Yet in 2020, the Iraqi government has asked the United States to leave their country. The welcome did not even last twenty years! The irony should not be lost. $3-6 Trillion later, all they get is a “GET OUT” notice, alas.
The issue with war crimes is that it is not a crime to declare war – all it takes is a model vial of pretend anthrax.
Unbigotry 