Red Cross, Amnesty Paint Grim Picture of Post-Invasion Iraq
Five years after the US-led invasion, Iraq faces a major humanitarian crisis, with law and order and economic recovery a distant prospect, international aid and human rights groups said Monday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross highlighted the plight of millions of Iraqis who still have little or no access to clean water, sanitation or health care.
“The humanitarian situation in most of the country is among the most critical in the world,” the Swiss-based agency said in a report.
“Better security in some parts of Iraq must not distract attention from the continuing plight of millions of people who have essentially been left to their own devices,” said Beatrice Roggo, the ICRC’s head of operations for the Middle East and North Africa.
Although security has improved in some parts of the country, the Red Cross report stressed that Iraqis were being killed or injured on a daily basis in fighting and attacks.
Civilians are often deliberately targeted, in complete disregard for the rules of international humanitarian law, it added.
A recent World Health Organisation and Iraqi health ministry report estimated that 151,000 people were killed between the start of the invasion on March 20, 2003 and June 2006.
Other estimates have put the number of civilian deaths as a result of the conflict between nearly 48,000 and as high as 601,000.
The ICRC said hospitals lacked qualified staff and basic drugs, and therefore struggled to provide suitable care for the injured. Many health-care facilities have not been properly maintained, and the care they provide is often too expensive for ordinary Iraqis.
“To avert an even worse crisis, more attention must be paid to the everyday needs of Iraqis,” Roggo said. “Everyone should have regular access to health care, electricity, clean water and sanitation.”
In a separate report to mark the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion, Amnesty International said the rights situation in Iraq was “disastrous”.
“Five years after the US-led invasion that toppled (former president) Saddam Hussein, Iraq is one of the most dangerous countries in the world,” the 24-page report said.
Against a backdrop of insecurity, law and order and economic recovery were a “distant prospect” while most Iraqis were living in poverty, with food shortages, lack of access to safe drinking water and high unemployment.
More than four in 10 Iraqis lived on less than one US dollar a day — the UN standard for measuring poverty — while the health and education systems were at near collapse and women and girls at risk of violence from extremists.
“Saddam Hussein’s administration was a byword for human rights abuse,” said Amnesty’s director for Middle East and North Africa, Malcolm Smart. “But its replacement has brought no respite at all for its people.”
The failure to investigate alleged abuses “is one of the most worrying aspects for the future”, he added.
“Even when faced with overwhelming evidence of torture under their watch, the Iraqi authorities have failed to hold the perpetrators to account — and the US and its allies have failed to demand that they do so,” he said.
Amnesty also criticised the extensive use of the death penalty, the international community’s failure to cater for Iraqi refugees and despite the more stable situation, the lack of free speech in the Kurdistan region.
“Despite claims that the security situation has improved in recent months, the human rights situation is disastrous,” the London-based group said, highlighting the kidnap, torture and murder of civilians by armed groups.
“All sides have committed gross human rights violations, including war crimes and crimes against humanity,” it added, referring to militia groups, Iraqi security forces, US-led troops plus private and military security guards.
© 2008 Agence France Presse
John McClone tells us that everything is going good in Iraq.
Perhaps the Red Cross and Amnesty should hire the same PR firms the Bush regime employes to sway public opinion on all things military and economic.
Cheney and McCain announced that everything is going to plan and that the occupation is a success.
What kind of demented psychopath could possibly look at the misery and death that the Iraqi people are subjected to because of the criminal acts of the US, and announce that the mission is accomplished?
Only recipients of oil money with wizened hearts pumping toxic black oily blood could decide that an oil contract is more important than the lives of millions.
The massive death and misery that will last for generations is of little consequence to the Bush’s and McCains. “Success” means control of the region and its resources — the people are to them, expendable and irrelevant — and not just Iraqis. We too fall into that category in their sick view.
The disconnect with reality that the present administration fails to repair is certainly alarming. Stories were run in countless newspapers today telling of Cheney’s words, yet failing to challenge them or point to any of the numerous reports that fly in the face of things going “phenominal” over in Iraq.
Let’s also not forget how much of Iraq’s population, are children. I fear the blowback of this occupation will be present for generations.
For more accounts of the reality of the situation over in Iraq, I encourage those who have not viewed the coverage of “Winter Soldier” to visit www.democracynow.org to view some of the testimony, images and video from the gathering.
But they’re Islamofascists! They hate our freedom! They’re Al Qaida! Saddam attacked us! They have WMD’s! The next thing we see will be a mushroom cloud! Support our troops! You are either with us or against us! Freedom Fries! We have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here! We don’t cut and run! We don’t negotiate with tersts! We need 100 billion more for our troops! Michelle Obama hates our country! And so on…
Surely this cannot be true, because only yesterday we heard the venerable Mr Cheney and our own learned Mr Miliband saying how much progress had been made.
We should also be comforted by the fact, that Mr Miliband and the rest of the Blairites, can see no connection between the Iraq war and subsequent terrorist acts around the World.
I guess that I can now sleep easy in my bed, and dream pleasant dreams.
What a crock of s–t!!!
“Cheney and McCain announced that everything is going to plan and that the occupation is a success.”
Really? Anybody can say that if your well inside the green zone shielded by 40-50 security guards and wearing a bullet proof vests. They always say that but let them walk outside the wall completely unprotected. The greedy racist chronic underachieving frauds would never do it because they would have their W-T asses blown away in no time flat. No doubt about it.
http://www.bccmeteorites.com/misconduct-planetary.html
SRD
And w told our troops he is envious of their grand adventure, if only he were younger, he’d sign up himself. (Never mind that he missed his chance in Viet Nam)He actually had the gall to call it romantic, a fantastic experience. The psychos in this administration did brag about creating their own reality, can’t say we weren’t warned.
The Red Cross and Amnesty are good people.
Unfortunately, though, they use the language available to them, which is boilerplate.
For the same conclusions, only expressed more freshly, go to the young eyes of the Iraq actives and veterans who testified over four days in Silver Spring.
When you’ve read or better SEEN and HEARD their accounts maybe at Democracy Now, then consider who they were.
They were enlistees in the voluntary army
of the United States. That means that at some point they bought the Bush rhetoric.
Unlike Bush and his entire administration, however, they were educable. This is very sad. It means they were poorly educated, or they wouldn’t have joined Bush’s army.
But they WERE educable, and had full human feelings which eventually were able to survive all the murderous, dehumanizing and AIMLESS experience to which they were subjected not to mention the constant propaganda which has become a main characteristic of this off-of-its-track and out-of-its-gourd country.
When one of them them suggested the whole group were the greatest patriots in the history of the United States, I had to say, “You know, he may be right.”
I wish the dumb clucks who control us all and always start each sentence with the word, “Well,” would smarten up and get us out, not in a year but NOW. Don’t leave a single American there, not one. You’ll get my vote.
ezeflyer:
You’re very patriotic but badly misinformed about what goes on in Iraq! Have you ever really wondered why so many of our soldiers (god bless them) return to the U.S. with PTSD? Have you wondered how one soldier I know of told his father, “Dad, I can never tell you what I had to do there!” And that’s just one….
If you want to know exactly what’s going on I’d suggest you read Dahr Jamail’s book,
“Beyond the Green Zone” and then write us about how you feel! I’m not being a smartass, I think all American citizens should read the book - but alas! they’re too busy looking at all the nonsensical shows we’re deluged with! By the time good men start to really pay attention and dig for the truth, our country will have lost much of what our ancestors fought for in 1776!
McCain has embraced Bush’s policies and legacies to appeal to the intellectually and morally bankrupt fundamentalist Christians, conservative Catholics, right-wing hardcore Zionist Jews and greedy business interests who constitute his party’s base. He says the surge is working, that the results are worth 4000 dead Americans, a million dead Iraqis, 3 trillion dollars and a worldwide economic meltdown. He’s counting on Petraeus to keep the lid on things by buying off and arming warlords and extremist militias, just as we did in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion. I hope the American public can step back and see the larger picture and reject these people and their perverse agenda.
” greenerthanthou March 18th, 2008 11:47 am
…
Only recipients of oil money with wizened hearts pumping toxic black oily blood could decide that an oil contract is more important than the lives of millions.”
IT’S FOR MORE THAN ONLY ALL OF THE OIL resources. It’s also for more than that and the whole Iraqi economy being “modified” for the pigs of the West, combined. It’s for also …, well, think in terms like reconstructing and expanding Roman [Empire].
Oh, of course it’s also because of extreme psychopathy backed with super-military-power; iow, INSANITY and an insane lust of or for evil, ‘blood cult’ (borrowed from former Pope JP II, his thoughts about GW Bush during early 2003, if not also late 2002 or even earlier) “worship”, ….
” FreeTheMedia March 18th, 2008 12:48 pm
…
Let’s also not forget how much of Iraq’s population, are children. I fear the blowback of this occupation will be present for generations.”
THAT IS NOT ONE OF MY CONCERNS, anyway. I don’t care at all about that so-called fear, finding it quite hilarious, really. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha … (interruption) don’t bogart that joint my friend, (back to laughter) ha ha ha ha ha, fear of blowback, … ha ha ha ha ha …; HILARIOUS.
It’s very baseless, the way I consider it anyway. After all, it’s entirely [hypothetical], and I care far more about what I think urgently needs to be considered and stopped.
I don’t give a damn (at this point) if there’s ever blowback because of these hellbent crimes of hellish scale; if it, zee blowback, ever comes, then so be it, the crimes should not have been committed, and this is my concern, one that has nothing to do with hypothetics at all. This world is of hellish kind, so I have no real cause to care if there’s ever blowback.
But, and hopefully, if I happen to not be noticing when and if blowback begins, then someone will, svp, let me know when the fireworks begin. I definitely wouldn’t want to miss those or these; get some good microbrew (preferably organic) and (also preferably) “smoky”, and then watch the spectacle on a tv with a good-sized screen.
” ezeflyer March 18th, 2008 4:05 pm
But they’re Islamofascists! They hate our freedom! They’re Al Qaida! Saddam attacked us! They have WMD’s!”
GOOD PICTURE OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION! After all, all of the above applies to them; “Christians” who create Islamic fascism, while also employing Islamophobia, hating our freedom, claiming that Saddam would fantastically (as in fantasy, not as in good or great) attack us, and possessing WMD, more than the rest of the whole world, i.e., planet, all combined.
As I said several years ago, nearly every time I heard Bush speak I could’ve sworn he was speaking of himself et al; and this has continued ever since, too. F.e., ‘They hate our freedom!’, ‘They hate our (non-existing) democracy!’, …, he said, and he’s right; he et al really do hate our freedom, including what little we still have, too, after they’ve trashed most of it.
It was like he was describing himself, or himself and his administration, totalitarian regime, etc.
In comparison, what he said of Saddam Hussein and his govt, and while I mean words that did not quite reflect a description of Bush and his regime, amounted to very LITTLE.
It’s to be expected of pathological LIARS who are hellishly malicious, malevolant, wicked, … evil. Dalai Lama is right about Bush not being Evil; however, evil is another matter, and Bush et al are this, most definitely and clearly. After all, Evil is not temporal, though sure does seem to act within the temporal frame(work). So of course it’s obvious that none of us can be Evil, given we are temporal; we can simply be like Bush et al, in “worship” relationship with Evil.
‘Blood cultists’!
FreeTheMedia wrote:
“…..I fear the blowback of this occupation will be present for generations…..”
As someone who will be 60 this year I have to say I’m afraid you’re right.
The reverberations of the Bush administration’s foreign and domestic policy have already altered the tenor of life as those of us born prior to 1970 have known it. There are so many things that will never be the same again, such is the damage done.
I consider myself pretty well-informed but I swear I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would witness such unbridled greed, arrogance and outright callousness in my lifetime.
I pray daily that we can learn to live gracefully with what can’t be undone and somehow find the strength to protect and sustain that which is life-affirming and uplifting.
The Edit function here has a bug in it.
For what it’s worth.
“A recent World Health Organisation and Iraqi health ministry report estimated that 151,000 people were killed between the start of the invasion on March 20, 2003 and June 2006.
Other estimates have put the number of civilian deaths as a result of the conflict between nearly 48,000 and as high as 601,000.”
Nonsense — they well-know the ‘count’ exceeded a million awhile-back.
[I’ve read that the Red Cross, at the war’s close, estimated the number of Holocaust-dead at ‘147,000′ (mostly due to starvation, after the Allied-bombing — when many German-civilians also starved) — and the R.C. were in-and-out of most of those Camps (while reporting relatively “humane-treatment”) throughout the war.]
I don’t much trust the ‘Red Cross’, for some-reason…maybe due to their ‘origins’…? Sometimes, they of-course do fine-work/charity here and elsewhere — but, their ‘accountings’ are amateurish (but then, so was Arthur Andersen’s — once Corrupted!).
One wonders, also, if the Red Crescent agrees with the International Red Cross in Iraq, or the ME in-general — especially post-Fallujah?
“I consider myself pretty well-informed but I swear I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would witness such unbridled greed, arrogance and outright callousness in my lifetime.”
I’m your age (and agree with you ‘in-Spirit’) — but, I’m obviously “better-read” than you.
For “unbridled greed, arrogance and outright callousness” today simply Pales when compared to our tactics/methodology first-employed by our Governing Interests here in the ‘New World’, the ‘Indian-Wars’, the Civil-War, the Spanish-American war, the World-Wars (and nonsense ‘motivated/justified-them’), Korea, or even in Vietnam. I wonder ‘where have you been’, and ‘why’ did you choose to start reading/analyzing/’judging’ those ‘Interests’ — only at this late-stage in your Life?
For five years now the republicans have been icing a crap-cake. No matter how much icing you use; you can still smell the crap.
Iraq has been destroyed by America. America needs to realize this. Talk about your bad Karma.
MeAlsoToo,
ZEPHYR WROTE:
“…..I consider myself pretty well-informed but I swear I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would witness such unbridled greed, arrogance and outright callousness in my lifetime……”
YOU REPLIED:
“…..I’m your age (and agree with you ‘in-Spirit’) — but, I’m obviously “better-read” than you.
For “unbridled greed, arrogance and outright callousness” today simply Pales when compared to our tactics/methodology first-employed by our Governing Interests here in the ‘New World’, the ‘Indian-Wars’, the Civil-War, the Spanish-American war, the World-Wars (and nonsense ‘motivated/justified-them’), Korea, or even in Vietnam. I wonder ‘where have you been’, and ‘why’ did you choose to start reading/analyzing/’judging’ those ‘Interests’ — only at this late-stage in your Life?…..”
I guess I should have made myself clearer.
What I have a hard time believing is that we haven’t come very far in improvement of the “tactics/methodology” departments since this country was “founded.”
In fact we seem to be regressing.
I am quite aware of the history of aggression to which you refer. I have always hoped, however, that we could and would do better. In other words, evolve beyond that level. I think people will understand what I mean.
Kidnap, torture & murder- the Bush Administration are also guilty on all counts.
Countries brought to ruin by the Bush administration, either directly or indirectly:
Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, the USA and on and on…
The concept that about 4 million Iraqis have been displaced from their homes, 2 million out of the country over 48,000 deaths is not reasonable. If that were true then they would have left when Saddam was running things.
It constantly amazes me to see numbers puked out by the government that are in direct conflict with reality yet swallowed whole by otherwise intelligent people. 5% has been deemed full employment by the gods of economy so we always have less than that unless the politics indicate it should be more. Theory says that the US economy grows faster than Europe so that is reported year after year, yet Norway, Sweden and several other countries including England have passed us in many objective measures of prosperity.
In every case where the numbers look bad the calculation is juggled until they fit. I just read a financial report prepared by a subscriber only, right wing investment outfit that indicates inflation calculated by the standard 15 years ago - a basket of goods - has been running 6% higher than the government reported numbers. This can be verified - compare prices of things you NEED to buy.
By the way, include the 12% water now allowed to be packaged with meat and sold by the pound.
I forgot to say that you should add at least 4% to all unemployment numbers put out over at least the last 25 or so years not including part time workers that would like to work full time.
Someone finally reported the true unemployment figure (the same method as EU). It is called long term unemployment. The % includes all who have run out of unemployment insurance (since the feds cap it at 6 months). These are considered to have left the work force. The figure - 17% unemployment. It has remained constant for 3 years but no one has dared print it.
America is a true fascist state now. I just heard today on both NPR and the BBC how great the Iraq war was going without a word of dissent allowed. They did manage to report that there were protesters arrested at the IRS but they declined to interveiw any of those same protesters. Never mind that a majority of the US population is against the war not a single one of those persons was allowed to speak on the issue on major media channels today.
We have replicated the information control of the Stalinist Soviet State. This was always one of the features of communism that made republicans the most jeleous along with the Gulags. Of course if you look at Eliot Spitzer and former Governer Siegelman it appears that the gulags and the black maria’s are coming to the US also.
The war on Terra is just an excuse to institute a fascist empire with the Bush/Cheney cabal in charge. Our only hope now is that they start to consume each other in an attempt to grab even more power.