US troops and defence officials attend a flag-lowering ceremony in Baghdad to mark the end of operations in Iraq. Photograph: Ali Al-Saadi/AFP/Getty Images
There was a war, now there isn’t.
Yesterday, as the US formally declared at an official ceremony in Baghdad that its most controversial war had ended, the American Army had to draft in extra troops to fill seats after Iraqi dignitaries failed to attend.
Reflecting the uneasy relationship Washington has with Baghdad, almost no Iraqi VIPs showed up at the End of Mission ceremony…… front-row seats marked for President Talibani and Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, among other VIPs, had to be filled with extra US troops……..The ceremony yesterday underlined that America is being kicked out of a country where it has been engaged in one of its longest ever wars.
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The United States is also expected to bring in up to 17,000 staff and security contractors to work in and protect its Baghdad embassy, the largest in the world, leading some Iraqi politicians to label it a military camp in disguise.
When I think of what my country has done to Iraq since our invasion in 2003, nothing stands out for me as much as the indiscriminate killing of civilians otherwise known as collateral damage. One famous example of these killings that came to the attention of the American public is known as Haditha, for the Iraqi city where the slaughter took place on November 19, 2005 carried out by Marines of Kilo Company. The following article published yesterday by the NYT give us a glimpse into the horrors inflicted on the people of Iraq, as revealed by interrogations of American soldiers that took place during the US military’s 2006 investigation of the Haditha massacre.
Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq
Ishaqi children massacre
“I mean, whether it’s a result of our action or other action, you know, discovering 20 bodies, throats slit, 20 bodies, you know, beheaded, 20 bodies here, 20 bodies there,” Col. Thomas Cariker, a commander in Anbar Province at the time, told investigators as he described the chaos of Iraq. At times, he said, deaths were caused by “grenade attacks on a checkpoint and, you know, collateral with civilians.”
The 400 pages of interrogations, once closely guarded as secrets of war, were supposed to have been destroyed as the last American troops prepare to leave Iraq. Instead, they were discovered along with reams of other classified documents, including military maps showing helicopter routes and radar capabilities, by a reporter for The New York Times at a junkyard outside Baghdad. An attendant was burning them as fuel to cook a dinner of smoked carp.
Great sorrow, great, great sorrow shrouds my apology to you Iraq. I hope one day your wounds heal and you can forgive us. However, I do not know if I can ever forgive my country for the atrocity of this war against your people in the cradle of civilization. For all the brave Iraqis who gave their lives for freedom, rest in peace. For all the innocent lives wasted in vain, rest in peace.
Beloved Iraq, I am sorry.
(Photos of the Haditha slaughter have not been made public. The photo accompanying this article is from another massacre, carried out execution style in the town of Ishaqi).
Annie, this is the right article for this moment.
The invasion of Iraq was, and still is, the greatest crime of the 21st century.
“In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital, Iraq, had 170 new born babies, 24% of whom were dead within the first seven days, a staggering 75% of the dead babies were classified as deformed.
This can be compared with data from the month of August in 2002 where there were 530 new born babies of whom six were dead within the first seven days and only one birth defect was reported.
Doctors in Fallujah have specifically pointed out that not only are they witnessing unprecedented numbers of birth defects but what is more alarming is: “a significant number of babies that do survive begin to develop severe disabilities at a later stage.”
Very disturbing pictures of Iraqi children, severly deformed by depleted uranium weapons, that were used by the Army, who wanted to “bring democracy to Iraq in a ‘humanitarian’ aka militarized way”.
God, please protect us from such a “humanitarians” with weapons of mass destruction.
http://www.thewe.cc/weplanet/news/depleted_uranium_iraq_afghanistan_balkans.html
“I’m deeply sorry too” and did everything I could with hundreds of thousands of others (millions around the world) to stop the invasion based on what we were hearing from so many experts (Scott Ritter etc) who were questioning the validity of the intelligence before the invasion. Many of us lobbied our Reps to vote against that bloody Iraq war resolution. I audio taped hundreds of people at the anti invasion marches, in the halls of congress etc who were there to stop the invasion. Teachers, teamsters, lawyers, WWII , Korean, Vietnam, Desert Storm Vets. Families of 9/11 victims against the invasion led the march in Feb 2003 in New York. Dear friends Bev and John Titus who lost their daughter Alicia who was a stewardess on one of the United flights led the march with other 9/11 families against the invasion as well as the Vets leading the march with them. Hundreds of thousands marched and the MSM would show the same fucking clips of the 20 people with hoods over their heads over and over again on the evening news. The MSM did not show those at home who was really at those marches. Most were complicit in the run up to the invasion.
I had never watched the ginning up of a war and the complicity of the MSM so so closely. It was infuriating knowing that my government was about to invade Iraq based on false intelligence and have absolutely no affect. None.
Thousands in Iraq have died, been injured, millions displaced and barely a whisper on our MSM outlets about the hard facts on the ground over there.
And now we have a President and a congress who say “turn the page, next chapter” on Iraq. Don’t be about “retribution, witch hunts, vengeance” The least the very least we can demand of our congress and the international community is that those who purposely created, cherry picked and dessiminated false intelligence be HELD ACCOUNTABLE. That is the very least we can all do for the unnecessary immoral deaths and injuries of thousands of Iraqi people and American soldiers.
We owe this to the Iraqi people and to the families of American soldiers who have so needlessly died and been injured. (I have talked with many American soldiers who are missing limbs from serving in Iraq ) whose stories rip your heart out
We can also demand that our news outlets and host of these shows stop allowing guest to repeat unsubstantiated claims about Iran which has been going on for 8 long years. We can demand that they challenge people when they repeat these claims
We have created so much bad karma over the years. Will there ever be any redemption for our damned souls?