"We have done a great thing as a nation. We freed a people and gave their country back to them."

[Karmadillo]

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2206-extraordinary-measures-shredding-the-curtain-of-an-enduring-atrocity.html

Extraordinary Measures: Shredding the Curtain of an Enduring Atrocity
Written by Chris Floyd
Thursday, 05 January 2012 23:10

Wise man William Blum has spent decades shredding the tired pieties of empire to reveal the rotten reality of the American war-and-domination machine, as it churns its way back and forth across the world, chewing up individual lives and whole countries. And so, as you might imagine, he has a few choice words to say about the bogus "end" to the American war crime in Iraq, recently praised to the highest heavens by our presidential Peace Laureate as "an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making."

Here are few excerpts from Blum's take on this extraordinary achievement, from his latest "Anti-Empire Report." (Go here to sign up for the newsletter.)

"Most people don't understand what they have been part of here," said Command Sgt. Major Ron Kelley as he and other American troops prepared to leave Iraq in mid-December. "We have done a great thing as a nation. We freed a people and gave their country back to them."

<edit>

Ah yes, the history books, the multi-volume leather-bound set of "The Greatest Destructions of One Country by Another." The newest volume can relate, with numerous graphic photos, how the modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state; how the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly, ... how the people of that unhappy land lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives ... More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ... unexploded cluster bombs lying anywhere in wait for children to pick them up ... a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put back together again …

more...

[eridani]

1. PUKE

[DJ13]

2. "We freed a people and gave their country back to them."

Who will free us?

[T S Justly]

3. K&R (nt)

[neverforget]

4. We freed them so sectarian violence can rip their country apart.

But our corporations profited off it!

[RC]

5. No, we illegally invaded a country, destroyed it murdered and scattered its people.

"We freed a people and gave their country back to them."


"We have done a very bad thing as a nation.
The last paragraph in the OP describes the evil that we, the barbaric nation called the United States, visited on Iraq.
We should all hang our heads in shame.

[sad sally]

6. Flash forward to the "victorious end" our glorious leaders will declare in another country -

Afghanistan. Another country the US is destroying - as we speak.

Each time Uncle Sam ventures abroad he leaves an unfinished story, and nowhere is it most unfinished than the story of Iraq, where despite flowery speeches regarding freedom and sovereignty by the Obama administration, despite assurances that tyranny has been “cast aside,” the tragedy caused by the United States invasion, occupation and inevitable abandonment is on an epic proportion.

Never mind that sectarian violence continues unabated and much of the populace remains mired in poverty, and that there’s a distinct possibility that the country is on its way to becoming a failed state if the Sunnis and Shiites cannot find a way to collectively govern.

The most unfinished story, however, is the population that the war has displaced. Whether tyranny has been cast aside is questionable, but certainly cast aside are the people of Iraq. They have been displaced both internally and internationally and are now imperiled by the sin of our omission.

According to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) there are 1.7 million Iraqis living as internally displaced refugees, while more than 2 million others have fled across the border to Syria, Egypt, Jordan and other countries.

http://www.firstpost.com/world/iraqs-unfinished-story-millions-of-refugees-abandoned-by-us-175314.html?du