America Must Stay in Iraq!

[Guest fountainhall]

Paull Bremer, charged by the Bush Administration with bringing order out of the chaos of the US-led invasion of Iraq and who then failed miserably, has donned his pro-consul's mantle again to make yet more weighty pronouncements.

 

We Americans, in particular, might moderate our criticism of the lengthy efforts to establish representative government (in Iraq). Remember: it took us seven years to win our independence, 12 years to write our constitution and 20 years before we even had political parties.

 

Establishing democratic rule in Iraq will not be easy, certainly no easier than it was in America. But to say that something is difficult is not to say that it's undesirable or impossible.

Well! Well! Well! I for one don't recall anyone in the Bush administration telling the world that it would take the better part of 40 years to establish democracy in Iraq. Wasn't "Mission Accomplished" declared to the world on 1st May 2003? OK, yes, I know that referred to the 'war' part. But if anyone had told Congress or the British Parliament that it would take 39 years to establish democracy as a result of that war, do you think any elected representative would have voted for war?

 

Spin! Spin! Spin!

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11102558

[Guest GaySacGuy]

I don't know why anyone would listen to anything that Paul Bremer has to say on any topic, but especially Iraq. He was as stated a miserable failure, and I feel that he purposely mislead a lot of people.

 

It took our founding fathers a while..but they were doing it with quill pens and horse transportation...I think it could be speeded up a little with the inventions of today. Besides, we had to win a war...we are handing the Iraq their country without an outside enemy present. If they can't stand on their own now, they will never be able to (which is probably the truth).

[Guest fountainhall]

If I had seen this article from today's Guardian newspaper in the UK earlier, I would have tacked it on to my earlier post about Paul Bremer.

 

In it, journalist Jonathan Steele revisits some of the people he met first in 2003 soon after the invasion to see how their lives have changed. It makes very interesting reading.

 

In Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit, the ruins of the Farouk palace, one of his many mansions, stand bereft and strewn with rubble. It seems only yesterday that I walked through them with the first Iraqi looters in April 2003 . . . Seven years later little has changed. The taps and furniture have gone, but soldiers' jubilant graffiti remain on the stuccoed walls. "1-10 ADA Ft Hood Texas … Killers," says one. "We weren't the first and we won't be the last," says another.

 

Surrounded by razor wire and guarded by the new Iraqi police force, the ruins are a reminder of an Iraq that is gone but not forgotten. Everywhere you go in this battered country Iraqis compare their life with what it was under the dictator's rule. The comparison rarely favours the mokhtalin, the word for invaders or occupiers that many use instead of "the Americans" or "the British".

 

With US combat troops leaving Iraq, I am trying to trace people I spoke to in April 2003. Some have died in sectarian violence. Some joined the exodus of two million refugees abroad or were among the two and a half million forced to flee their homes to safe havens elsewhere in Iraq. Some are hard to find because Iraq had no mobile phone network in those early postwar days and my old notebooks contain only names, ages, job descriptions and a few vague addresses to guide me.

 

I start in Tikrit, the symbolic capital of Saddam's tightknit family rule. When I visited him in 2003, Dr Bashar al-Duleimi, an ophthalmologist at the main hospital, was protecting the building from looters alongside a team of colleagues. The assault on the nearby Farouk palace had blown in most of the hospital's windows. "If the Americans are ready to offer protection, they can. But we will not ask them," he told me with stiff patriotic pride.

 

Now, he sits in front of shelves of medical books – mainly in English – and sums up the record of the US presence in Iraq: "We expected more – better infrastructure and better services, yet electricity supply is still only a few hours a day. Petrol is a disaster, with long, long queues."

 

His hospital has a large generator but ordinary citizens who rely on the public grid and suffer from constant power cuts suffer in the colossal heat. The only improvements are the increased salaries of government employees and access to advanced medical equipment, he says.

 

The collapse in security is the biggest change since Saddam's time and, like most Iraqis I speak to, he sees the US departure as irrelevant. "I'm happy to see them go. Security won't be worse," he says. Iraq's bloodshed can only be stemmed by Iraqis.

After more interviews, the article ends with reference to President Obama's forthcoming speech next Tuesday.

 

When he sums up their seven-year endeavour in a speech from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, Barack Obama will no doubt be smart enough to find a way of praising US forces while not resiling from his opposition to the war and his criticism of the surge. He could steal the words of Enas Ibrahim, the Iraqi reporter who accompanied me on the trip to Tikrit.

 

At one point a vast convoy of armoured American trucks carrying containers and military hardware trundled southward in the opposite lane. "How do you feel when you see that?" I ask her.

 

"I feel happy for them," she answers. "They sacrificed a lot but Iraqis sacrificed more."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/27/iraq-war-us-special-report

[Guest lvdkeyes]

We have to remember that Bush did not go to war to bring democracy to Iraq, his stated reason was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which, as we all know now, was a lie.

[Guest GaySacGuy]

We have to remember that Bush did not go to war to bring democracy to Iraq, his stated reason was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which, as we all know now, was a lie.

 

And the unstated reason was...Cheney told him to go to war, and he listened, Now it is time for Cheney to be brought up on charges by the world court!!

[Guest lvdkeyes]

Bush is so arrogant, even his father reportedly told him not to go into Iraq unless he had an exit strategy. He didn't, but went in anyway.

[Guest fountainhall]

Bush is so arrogant, even his father reportedly told him not to go into Iraq unless he had an exit strategy. He didn't, but went in anyway.

I guess he couldn't admit he didn't know what the phrase "an exit strategy" meant

[Guest MonkeySee]

From 2003 this disaster in Iraq has depleted our treasury (about $700 billion) and needlessly sacraficed (about 4,400) of our young men and women without any visible or tangible benefit to the people of the United States of America . Our leaders have, without the consent of the people, waged war for their own edification and gratification. These leaders deserve to be held accountable in an international court and punished for crimes against humanity. Both Bush and Blair will not escape the condemnation of history.

[Guest lvdkeyes]

They are war criminals just the same as the Nazis were. They just didn't kill as many. I agree that they should be held accountable, but I would bet my last $ that won't happen.

[Guest fountainhall]

They are war criminals just the same as the Nazis were.

And just the same as Nixon and Kissinger were in waging undeclared wars on Cambodia and Laos, actions which sadly did end up costing millions of lives and continue killing to this day - a result of unexploded ordinance that has never been cleared.