Newsgroup: it.politica.pds
Titolo: Five Years, No End in Sight

Five Years, No End in Sight 
 
by Dahr Jamail 
Devastation on the ground and widely held Iraqi opinion contradicts claims
by U.S. officials that the situation in Iraq has improved toward the fifth
anniversary of the invasion March 20.
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney during a surprise visit to Iraq on Monday
declared the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq a "successful endeavor." 
According to the group Just Foreign Policy, more than a million Iraqis
have died as a result of the invasion and occupation, now entering its
sixth year. A survey by British polling agency ORB estimates the number of
dead at more than 1.2 million. 
Nobel laureate and former chief World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz
recently published a book with co-author Linda Bilmes of Harvard
University titled The Three Trillion Dollar War, a figure it considers a
"conservative estimate" of the long-range price tag of the invasion and
occupation of Iraq. 
The authors say the Bush administration has repeatedly "low-balled" the
cost of the war and has kept a set of records hidden from the U.S. public. 
According to the U.S. Department of Defense, close to 4,000 U.S. soldiers
have been killed. The number of British casualties is 175. 
"The war in Iraq has been one of the most disastrous wars ever fought by
Britain," journalist Patrick Cockburn of London's Independent newspaper
wrote March 17. "It will stand with Crimea and the Boer War as conflicts
which could have been avoided, and were demonstrations of incompetence
from start to finish." 
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than
4 million Iraqis are displaced from their homes, with roughly half of them
outside of the country. 
The Iraqi Red Crescent estimates that one in every four residents of
Baghdad, a city of 6 million, is displaced from home. 
The International Committee of the Red Cross said in a report March 17
that millions are still deprived of clean water and medical care. 
Iraq's infrastructure is worse on every measurable level compared to Iraq
under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, and including 12 years of the
harshest economic sanctions in history. During those sanctions more than a
million Iraqis died from malnutrition, disease, and lack of medical care. 
The international aid group Oxfam International released a report last
July that found that 4 million Iraqis were in need of emergency
assistance. It found a 9 percent increase in childhood malnutrition and
that 70 percent of Iraqis lacked access to safe drinking water. 
The average home in Iraq, even in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, which
has been held up by the Bush administration as an example of success, has
on average less than five hours of electricity a day. 
Oil exports, from which Iraq has obtained over 80 percent of its income,
have not for a single day of the occupation matched prewar levels. 
Unemployment, already 32 percent before the invasion, has vacillated
during the occupation between 40-70 percent, according to the Iraqi
government. 
With more than a million dead, more than 4 million displaced, and another
4 million in need of emergency aid, a third of Iraqis are displaced, in
need of emergency aid, or dead. 
All this Cheney calls a "successful endeavor." 
Soon after he said that, a suicide bomber killed at least 32 and wounded
51 near a mosque in the holy Shia city Karbala, south of Baghdad. Bombings
in Baghdad near the Green Zone just after Cheney arrived killed another
four and wounded 13. 
Baghdad has become the most dangerous city in the world, largely as a
result of a U.S. policy of pitting various Iraqi ethnic and sectarian
groups against one another. Today Baghdad is a city of walled-off Sunni
and Shia ghettoes, divided by concrete walls erected by the U.S. military. 
These areas even fly their own flags: Sunni areas fly the old Iraqi flag,
Shias use the new version, and the Kurds have their own flag. 
Ethnic and sectarian cleansing strategies, backed by occupation forces,
have virtually eliminated all mixed areas of Baghdad. 
Republican Party presidential candidate John McCain, also in Iraq, met
with Iraqi leaders as part of a Senate Armed Services Committee
fact-finding mission. He, like Cheney, said he would support the Iraqi
government and maintain a long-term military commitment in Iraq. 
"The surge is working," McCain told reporters, referring to the troop
buildup in Baghdad. 
With "enduring" U.S. military bases established in Iraq, and an embassy in
Baghdad the size of the Vatican City, there appears to be no end in sight
for the U.S. occupation of Iraq. 
(Inter Press Service)
 
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credo sia difficile farlo per chiunque constatata la tua presenza. 

*POMERO* ha scritto:

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e se lo scrive claudinalavacca, giustificazionista delle torture di
Bolzaneto e dell'assassinio di Carlo Giuliani...
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fallocefalo,
tu neghi ed hai negato:
le foibe
i gulag
i fatti del tibet
i crimini di pol pot
le purghe di stalin
i laogai..
aderire al partito che voti tu.. per quel solo fatto, è segno di nullità 
mentale.

 i crimini di pol pot
prego. Indica il mio post con tanto di link.
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questo articolo e` stato inviato via web dal servizio gratuito 
