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Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

Welcome to the Neno's Place!

Neno's Place Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality


Neno

I can be reached by phone or text 8am-7pm cst 972-768-9772 or, once joining the board I can be reached by a (PM) Private Message.

Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

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Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

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    Mideast will pay the bill for US failure in Iraq

    Hkp1
    Hkp1
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    Mideast will pay the bill for US failure in Iraq Empty Mideast will pay the bill for US failure in Iraq

    Post by Hkp1 Thu 04 Apr 2013, 2:36 am

    Mideast will pay the bill for US failure in Iraq

    by Z Pallo Jordan, 04 April 2013, 05:51


    TEN
    years ago, TV viewers across the world watched US President George Bush
    demand the unconditional surrender of Saddam Hussein, his sons and the
    government he led. By the next day, these TV audiences could watch in
    awe as the US unleashed its digitised war machine on Iraq. Within two
    weeks, Bush could land on an aircraft carrier and proudly declare,
    "Mission accomplished!" to the soldiers assembled for the purpose.

    We
    could be forgiven our confusion about the exact nature of the
    accomplished mission, but a number of things were clear. First, Iraq’s
    infrastructure had been well-nigh destroyed by US aerial bombardment.
    Second, thousands of noncombatant Iraqis had perished. Third, although
    Bush sounded extremely confident, the conflict he had ignited in Iraq
    was far from over.

    The war that finally arrived in March 2003 had
    a long incubation in the planning rooms of Washington, DC. Like all
    modern wars, it was preceded by a lengthy propaganda campaign to
    convince the US public of the justice of the war and to persuade
    international opinion that the US was acting in everyone’s best
    interest.

    Even before Bush assumed the presidency, many who then
    took up official positions in his administration had advocated the
    invasion of Iraq. Using the repetition of misinformation, they created
    the false impression that Iraq was behind the September 11 2001 attacks
    on the US. Every possible inducement was also used to persuade the
    Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to link those attacks to Iraq. An
    alleged meeting between one of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta, and Iraqi
    intelligence officers in Prague turned out to be a lie. A front group,
    named Citizens for a Free Kuwait, was established with the assistance of
    one of the largest public-relations companies, Hill & Knowlton.
    Another group, called the Council of American Muslims for Understanding,
    launched the Open Dialogue website, funded by the US state department.
    Even the much-touted Iraqi National Congress, whose spokesmen
    unashamedly called for the invasion, turned out to be little more than a
    front organisation funded by the US government.

    The invasion was
    ostensibly to uncover and destroy the weapons of mass destruction
    Saddam had allegedly amassed. Throughout the build-up to the invasion
    and during the war itself, the huge elephant in the room was the nuclear
    power in the region, Israel.

    The first casualty in all wars had
    already been ruthlessly mutilated by a compliant US media even before US
    boots hit the ground in Baghdad. Their Goebbelsian style was
    shamelessly emulated by virtually every media organisation in the West,
    including our own. Within days of the initial US aerial assault, they
    had invented a name with a profoundly racist undertone, "Ali", as a kind
    of "one name, fits all" for all Iraqi officials.

    Ten years
    later, about 5,000 US soldiers, most of them young men and women who
    went into the military for lack of opportunity, have died in Iraq. The
    Iraqi dead are numbered in the hundreds of thousands; the wounded in the
    millions. Not one weapon of mass destruction was found and disarmed.

    Many
    of the trailer-park lads and lasses who fought the war will come home
    minus a finger, a leg, an arm or an eye; 200,000 have already returned
    home with post-traumatic stress disorder; 5,000 will never see their
    homes again. The stated aims of the war — to restructure Iraqi political
    institutions and unseat a dictator — have been only partially achieved.
    The US invasion has left the country and the region less stable and its
    future far less certain than before. The armed US presence next door
    has fuelled Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons as a deterrent.

    Clearly
    Saddam’s "weapons of mass destruction" were a pretext for the invasion.
    Had the CIA been less rigorous, September 11 would have served the Bush
    administration equally well. Iraq has now been reduced to a divided
    nation state, its military capacity destroyed and its infrastructure in
    ruins. Thanks to the US war, there are now only two regional powers,
    Israel and Iran. Of the two, Israel is the nuclear power.

    To his
    credit, while serving as a senator for Illinois, US President Barack
    Obama denounced the war as "dumb". Ironically, he is now obliged to
    clear up the mess made by his predecessor and to salvage what he can of
    US dignity. Obama has slapped down Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
    Netanyahu’s invitation to a confrontation with Iran and twisted his arm
    to apologise to Turkey. As he disengages US forces, the question arises:
    what did the US war in Iraq achieve?

    The war has demonstrated
    the limits of US power. Instead of bringing a new order to the Middle
    East, it has stimulated instability. The "new American century" Bush and
    his neoconservative backers had hoped the war would inaugurate has
    lasted less than a decade. But the price for that failure will be
    exacted in the Middle East, not in the US.

    • Jordan is a former arts and culture minister.



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