Tag: Obama praises Iraq carnage

Obama praises US mass murderers in Iraq

A totally unprovoked

and illegal war on a defenceless people, causing years of horrific massacres, up to one million dead, countless families destroyed, 4000 US army deaths, a bill of $801BN for the US taxpayer, a campaign of torture with nearly 100% impunity… etc etc etc…

President Obama has sunk to a new low in praising all this, becoming an accessory to brutal mass carnage. All this to secure oil contracts for America??  To stop Saddam Hussein selling oil in Euros?? To get military bases to attack Iran?? To use up stocks of weapons and boost the military economy??

Maybe all these things, but none are any excuse . Meanwhile the tame US media has gone almost silent, American withdrawal, it seems, is hardly worth talking about

The Elusive Declaration of Peace

Ken Butigan     Friday 9 December 2011    Nation of Change

“Except for the occasional newsflash about sporadic violence—and the recent spate of stories about the sheer tonnage of materiel that the US is shipping stateside as it readies its departure—we don’t hear much about Iraq these days.”

The re­main­ing US troops in Iraq are sched­uled to leave by the end of this month. While there had been some talk about ex­tend­ing the De­cem­ber 31, 2011 dead­line Pres­i­dent Obama set early in his term, this was scut­tled in Oc­to­ber when the Iraqi gov­ern­ment re­buffed the ad­min­is­tra­tion on two de­mands: that US troops be guar­an­teed im­mu­nity from pros­e­cu­tion and that the Pen­ta­gon be al­lowed to main­tain bases in the coun­try going for­ward.

While the US will re­tain a large em­bassy and two con­sulates in the coun­try, with 4,000 to 5,000 con­trac­tors (down from a high of 180,000), this is a dif­fer­ent out­come from the US gov­ern­ment’s orig­i­nal ex­pec­ta­tion of per­ma­nently main­tain­ing scores of mil­i­tary bases, in­clud­ing su­per­bases, in the coun­try de­signed to in­def­i­nitely an­chor the US geo-po­lit­i­cal pres­ence in the Mid­dle East. While we may learn later that this long-term strat­egy, against all po­lit­i­cal ob­sta­cles, re­mains on track (in­clud­ing a plan for all that oil), the nearly nine-year-old oc­cu­pa­tion of Iraq is ap­par­ently com­ing to an end.

US soldiers examine another victim

 The ac­tion has moved on to Afghanistan, Pak­istan and Yemen. But five years ago, things were very dif­fer­ent. The mil­i­tary, po­lit­i­cal, and eco­nomic shock­waves from the US in­va­sion in 2003 were roil­ing the coun­try, the sec­tar­ian vi­o­lence was mount­ing, and Iraq was awash in blood and in­con­solable sor­row. The human wreck­age—as well as the huge eco­nomic toll—de­fied com­pre­hen­sion (and the blood­less num­ber-crunch­ing that sur­faced now and then).

Read full long article HERE  http://wammtoday.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/the-elusive-declaration-of-peace/