SIX YEARS AGO TODAY- March 20, 2003 UNITED STATES ILLEGALLY INVADES IRAQ

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Six years of Washington’s war in Iraq

20 March 2009

Today marks six years since Washington launched its "shock and awe" campaign against Iraq, raining bombs and missiles on Baghdad. Despite the massive opposition of the American people to this war and the change from the Bush to the Obama administration, the US war in Iraq continues, with no end in sight.

This anniversary is both tragic and infamous. It marks the beginning of a war of aggression based upon lies. Launched in the name of "liberating" the Iraqi people, it has inflicted a catastrophe of world historic proportions upon their country and constitutes the greatest crime against humanity of the 21st century.

In six years, the Iraq war has, by the most credible estimates, claimed the lives of over 1 million Iraqis, while leaving countless others wounded and maimed. Nearly 5 million people have been driven from their homes, either forced into exile or displaced in Iraq by US repression and sectarian violence.



http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/pers-m20.shtml

A recent survey conducted among Iraqi women by the aid group Oxfam provides a glimpse of how the US war has driven an entire society brutally backwards.

• More than 55 percent of the women said that they had been victims of violence since 2003, and 30 percent said that family members had suffered violent deaths. Also, 55 percent said they had been forced from their homes at least once since 2003.

[leftstreet]

1. Six Years!

K&R

[Luminous Animal]

2. Apparently, we've now forgotten the troops

and are happy to leave them there for 2 or more years. And the fate of the Iraqi people? Who cares! We've got a Democrat in office!

[lpbk2713]

3. Mission accomplished.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

5. Shock and Awe

Hunger, disease spread in Iraq
Oxfam report
Mon Jul 30, 2007 12:47pm IST


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Hunger and disease are spreading in Iraq as violence masks a deepening humanitarian crisis, British charity Oxfam said in a report on Monday.

The charity said 28 percent of Iraqi children are malnourished, 15 percent of Iraqis regularly cannot afford enough to eat and 70 percent lack clean drinking water, all sharp increases since 2003.

"The terrible violence in Iraq has masked the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Malnutrition amongst children has dramatically increased and basic services, ruined by years of war and sanctions, cannot meet the needs of the Iraqi people," Oxfam director Jeremy Hobbs said.



http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-28727320070730

[TBF]

4. You drain the words out of my famished mouth when you scream,

a sun-drenched cry of dripping dates and palm-green nostalgia.
You, a thought in the womb before birth,
And all the lines of crimson of afterlife,
a bosom of Tigress-scented compassion,
thrown across a desert of aimless caravans.
You, a wan wanderer, in the pages of my history...


Continued here... http://www.chris-floyd.com/war/
(some pictures are graphic, as they should be)

[kimmerspixelated]

6. O Ghost, Thanks for reminding us!

Well-done post!

[corpseratemedia]

7. and where was the m$m?

championing *sh's lies

[blindpig]

8. Down the memoryhole.

k&r

[Orwellian_Ghost]

10. Nowhere to be found in any discussions

Look around the internet today. In very few places will you find this "anniversary" being discussed. The liberal blogosphere is as silent as could be.

FULL TEXT: New Lancet Report, Iraq 2003-2006



Email this indymedia.ie link to friends & comrades for future reference.

From Report: Figure 2. Mortality rates, 2002–06
From Report: Figure 2. Mortality rates, 2002–06

Download the PDF Format File:
http://indymedia.ie/attachments/jan2007/thelancet12oct2006iraqsince2003.pdf

Source: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/78999

[blindpig]

12. Well, it's 'their' war now.

Defending the indefensible can be daunting.

[ixion]

9. six years... is it still a cakewalk?

if so, that's got to be the longest cakewalk in the world.

Really, though, it's a tragedy that this abomination continues. It should have never been started in the first place.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

11. Iraqi Children: Bearing the Scars of War

Iraqi Children: Bearing the Scars of War

By César Chelala | Saturday, March 21, 2009

With just one child psychiatrist working at a government hospital, Iraq’s healthcare system is unprepared for the treatment of its children — many of whom suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from the long-running war. Middle East Times International correspondent César Chelala investigates this pressing issue.

The great number of Iraqi children affected by post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the saddest, and least known, legacies of the Iraq war.

That a new clinic for their treatment — opened last August in Baghdad — is the first of its kind says a lot about how this problem is being addressed.

UNICEF states that almost two million children have been displaced from their homes since the last war began.

Dr. Haider Maliki and his team at the Central Pediatric Teaching Hospital in Baghdad have treated hundreds of children suffering from PTSD. Hundreds of thousands remain untreated.

<snip>

http://www.theglobalist.com/printStoryId.aspx?StoryId=7621

[TBF]

14. And those are the ones that survive... (graphic image inside)

[UTUSN]

13. Has O'LOOFAH's apology to the nation come through yet?!1

He was war and Shrub mongering on the morning shows the day before and said in his inimically pompous, narcisicistic way that if no WMD were found he would "apologize to the nation."


Apparently he still believes that apologies actually MEAN something, which they DON'T, or else he wouldn't be avoiding it so long and so cowardly.

[Overseas]

15. K&R !

This is all the more appalling because I knew that Sadaam did not have WMD. I knew that Osama hated Sadaam for not running a Wahabi Theoratic society.

I knew that the USA supported Sadaam in its war with Iran and had told us to ignore his abuses because he kept the dangerous Iran in check.

The USA said Osama Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 and we were chasing him but then the Bush Gang pushed us off that course and into a new war against someone else. Some kind of "I'll show my Daddy" campaign, egged on by Dick Cheney.

And then after smashing Iraq to smithereens and looting its treasures, the same Bush Gang was telling us how dangerous Iran was. Well if Iran was so dangerous indeed, why had they gone about smashing its major enemy?

Why had they not, in six years, rebuilt Iraq to be a powerful, efficiently run, democratic society that could be sure to defeat Iran in any future confrontation?

Why had they instead given sweetheart deals to incompetent war profiteers that weakened Iraq and left it far worse than when they instituted their disgusting Shock & Awe?

Why had they instead trampled our constitution, international laws and reputation?

Was it all in their pig-headed effort to prove that government is BAAAD so we could return the era of the robber baron? So the top 1% could return to their rightful place as lords of our country?

[Mnemosyne]

16. .

:hug: