The puppet government in Iraq has named June 30 as "National
Sovereignty Day," and-without mentioning the hundreds of thousands of
Iraqis maimed, killed, tortured or made refugees by the US invasion and
occupation-thanked the occupiers for placing them in power.
There's little to celebrate about the US pullback in Iraq.
More than six years after the US invasion, Iraq is shattered. Hundreds
of thousands of Iraqis are dead -- far more, incidentally, than even
the largest estimates of the number of Iraqis who died during 35 years
of Saddam Hussein's rule -- its social fabric is utterly destroyed, its
economy is in ruins, and its dominant political faction is in hock to
neighboring Iran.
And now what?
On
November 17, 2008, when Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and U.S.
ambassador Ryan Crocker signed an agreement for the withdrawal of U.S.
troops from Iraq, citizens from both countries applauded. While many
were disappointed about the lengthy timeline for the withdrawal of the
troops, it appeared that a roadmap was set to end the war and
occupation. However, the first step — withdrawing U.S. troops from
Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009 — is full of loopholes, and tens of
thousands of U.S. soldiers will remain in the cities after the
"deadline" passes.
BAGHDAD - Iraqi taxi driver Haitham Nief is looking forward to the partial pull out of U.S. combat troops this month from the northern city of Mosul and elsewhere.
Mosul remains one of the most violent places in Iraq, but Nief says he is sure the security situation will improve once the Americans leave town and withdraw to camps outside.
"Anyone who wants to fight them can go there and attack their bases without harming civilians," he said.
BAGHDAD - Most US troops have moved outside Iraqi cities and the American pull-out from the country's urban centres, due by the end of the month, is on schedule, the top US commander said on Monday.
General Ray Odierno added that American forces will leave the restive northern city of Mosul as well.
"The dark days of previous years are behind us," Odierno told reporters at a press conference in Baghdad. "It is a fitting time that our combat forces move out."
The Nuremberg Principles, a set of guidelines established after World War II to try Nazi party members, were developed to determine what constitutes a war crime. The principles could also be applied today, when judging the conditions that led to the Iraq war and in the process to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, many of them children, and to the devastation of a country's infrastructure.
One hundred and seventy-nine dead soldiers. For what? 179,000 dead
Iraqis? Or is the real figure closer to a million? We don't know. And
we don't care. We never cared about the Iraqis. That's why we don't
know the figure. That's why we left Basra yesterday.
WASHINGTON - Although many have ties to the
United States, only one fifth of Iraqi asylum seekers to the United
States have been accepted, says a new report examining the progress and
problems with the U.S. government's pledge to help Iraqi refugees.
Remember when Barack Obama made that big announcement at Camp
Lejeune about how all US combat troops were going to be withdrawn from
Iraqi cities by June 30? Liberals jumped around with joy, praising
Obama for ending the war so that they could focus on their "good war"
in Afghanistan.
President Barack Obama holds my admiration
with high hopes for his message of change in Washington, D.C. It is
puzzling, however, that he has adopted most of the previous
administration's formula for dragging out the withdrawal of our
troops from the mistaken war in Iraq for nearly three more years.
Very little "change" here.
