"I Am an Iraqi American. The Iraq War Still Chills Me to the Bone."

[Nevilledog]

https://newrepublic.com/article/171201/iraq-war-20th-anniversary-still-chills-bone

No paywall
https://archive.is/DfIwT

A few days ago, waiting for a plane at Newark Airport, I stopped for coffee at a restaurant where the iPad menus doubled as small billboards. This ad from Unicef flashed by and caught my eye: “The children of Ukraine urgently need help.”

Indeed they do. War and children don’t go together.

Iraq was where I first saw what a malnourished wartime baby’s face looks like. On a single day, I saw about a dozen of them, in the arms of women lined up on benches outside a hospital in a slum quarter of Baghdad. Shrunken like prunes, tiny caricatures of old age. These babies were starving as a result of U.S. sanctions in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, a war waged in 1991 by the first President Bush to repel Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.

That war lasted just a few weeks and ended with Bush ignoring the entreaties of neoconservatives to “finish the job” by storming into Iraq to remove Hussein. Twelve years later, Bush’s son followed the neocons’ bidding. “Operation Enduring Freedom” launched March 20, 2003, 20 years ago next Monday, as people around the world huddled before their TV sets to watch spectacular explosions over Baghdad. The dictator was toppled, first in statue and then in person. For years afterward, the country was occupied by the American military and soldiers sent from “the coalition of the willing”—31 motley nations, excluding most of Europe, except for the U.K.

What TV didn’t show: Iraqi civilians dying like flies. Depending on which study you trust, the Iraq War caused between 110,600 (AP) and 654,965 (The Lancet) violent civilian deaths. Other estimates put the numbers somewhere in between. The United States disputes all the numbers. (Wikipedia has links to the research.)

*snip*

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[Carlitos Brigante]

2. K&Fuckin'R

[Irish_Dem]

3. The US dropped depleted uranium bombs on Bagdad, a city which is over 50% women and children.

How is that not a war crime?

[Alexander Of Assyria]

5. It is and it isn't. America didn't sign onto ICJ, so can't be prosecuted by anyone for any

war crime, big, small, General to Soldier…can commit war crimes with impunity.

Not a great example for the world, but all the nuclear nations refuse to admit this great hypocrisy.

[brer cat]

4. A very sad read, but an important one.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

6. 100,000 killed...zero evidence of nukes...oops! Sorry bout that! But the Oil is safe!

Remember The Dixie Chicks.

Don’t let the War Media manufacture consent to war again.

[WarGamer]

8. 100k is the bottom bottom end.

You have to add in all the sectarian violence related fatalities... and ISIS fatalities... and deaths from famine and illness... all caused by Shrub's illegal war of aggression.

[WarGamer]

7. SOME illegal wars are condemned by the world at large...

SOME illegal wars are swept under the rug by international powers.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

9. Will never forget the American war machine dropping a Hellfire missile on a shelter of a thousand

souls sheltering from the barrage…war crime…Pentagon said they would investigate..never heard back. Meanwhile the corpses piled up…far far away from the eyes of the American public whipped up to a bloodlust sad to witness.

Then the murder of thousands of defenceless soldiers retreating from Kuwait…war crime.

Many many more…not anyone brought to Justice.

Lines of thought prohibited from general discussion, to this day.

ICJ is not recognized by the Pentagon for such reasons.