Just on the 10:30 radio news: Republican criticize Obama for no Parade for the Troops from Iraq

[Botany]

11. Mission Accomplished

http://www.newstimeafrica.com/archives/23667

Statistics give some sense of the scale of the destruction inflicted by the American military:

• More than one million Iraqis were killed as a result of the invasion and occupation, according to scientific estimates carried out in 2007. The United Nations estimated in 2008 that 4.7 million people, or about 16 percent of the population, were turned into refugees.

• The infrastructure of the country, including the electrical system, was devastated. According to the United Nations State of the World’s Cities, 2010-2011 report, the percentage of the Iraqi urban population living in slums, defined as lacking access to basic necessities such as sanitation and water, increased from below 20 percent in 2003 to 53 percent in 2010.

• Real unemployment is on the order of 50 percent and inflation is over 50 percent. There has been a mass exodus of doctors and other professionals (estimated at 40 percent of those in the country prior to the war), and the education system lies in ruins.

• Iraq has experienced a staggering growth of infant and child mortality. A 2007 report estimated that 28 percent of children suffered from chronic malnutrition. An Iraqi government agency reported that 35 percent of Iraqi children in 2007 (about 5 million children) were orphans. An entire generation has seen their parents killed or disappeared.