The concept of the Iraqi population being held hostage—poor electricity, dirty water, attacks on hospitals and doctors, war in the streets—until the government turns over the future of their oil to US corporations…

Sobering.

Please do post again, every day if necessary, to get this idea thru. We don’t get it yet. I’m not even sure I get it. Try again to educate us this is really important.

edit—I think it was the attack on the hospital that pushed me over the line into understanding how this game is being played out. We have them in a sqeeze play. Nice country ya got here, too bad all these attacks are happening. Oil change?

You raise good points that I fear no one will see, as people have moved on to other threads. You might try posting them again later or even tomorrow for a wider audience.

Sona – Iraq belongs to Iraqis and the only actions taken should be at the request of Iraqis – not from the outside. Iraq has quite competent people – we just have made sure they are not allowed to exercise that competence. But is it *their country* and their sovereignty must be respected -for a change.

Perhaps I am not expressing myself well to explain the misunderstanding. I do not doubt that Iraq has capable people – it had a functioning system, including a heath care infrastructure which was the envy in the middle east despite the sanctions throughout the 90’s. The Moustansihriya University was an elite academe that attracted both students and academics from the region, including Iran.

De-Ba’athification has sidelined many professionals who had to join the party to be able to exercise their profession. Many have been killed in the ensuing chaos and many many more are in exile or refugees. We are dealing with a situation where Iraqi refugees, in and out of the country, outnumber the population of Eire.

Iraqis should have sovereignty to exercise but all the talk about benchmarks affirm an occupation, not sovereignty.

Why should the Iraqi Parliament need to come to an agreement re their oil industry that is against their own national interests within a specified timeline dictated by the occupying powers?

The Parliament was put under indecent pressure to finalise a Constitution because without that the oil contracts could not be formulated. Now, these need to be ratified but Iraqis do not accept the terms for good patriotic reasons. Yet, this is touted as a benchmark, so much so that the occupation decrees that the Iraqi Parliament cannot recess for the unbearably hot summer with little electricity, let alone security, available. Is that sovereignty?

Occupation needs to end asap with no benchmarks tied to Iraqi performance.

I am not American though I have lived and worked there for a number of years.

My point is that the world cannot simply wash its hands off Iraq even if the US does as it did in Vietnam. I don’t see a Marshall Plan for Iraq in view. Yet that is what is needed. I referred to training because de-Ba’athification has decimated the country’s intelligentsia. Repatriation and resettlement of displaced Iraqis are also issues that need to be addressed – yes by Iraq, if there is an Iraq after all this, but with help from outside too.

My country(ies), Australia and the UK, are equally complicit in this unjustifiable war crime. But who picks up the pieces? The world cannot make the US do anything it will not do nor can disempowered citizenries exercise their representative democracies except at periodic elections.

I have worked at the UN on secondment from the Australian Public Service (APS). I know the labyrinthine backroom deals and the woeful bureaucracy that one has to work with. I have also worked at the OECD, again as an APS employee. I am well aware of the length of time it takes to get anything meaningful on the radar screen. I have retired now on medical grounds but I am not an invalid by any means. I still have contacts within the bureaucracies. That is how I know that there is no focus on what needs to be done for the future.

I really don’t want to see the World Bank and the IMF dictating Iraq’s future because it will go down the gurgler even faster with no hope of return.

Public pressure is important if only because politicians every now and then need to refer back to their electorates for legitimacy. I have worked tirelessly (in the background) against John Howard’s draconian and inhumane immigration policies re refugees. The gains have been small but important.

I am a fan of the FDL and its many contributors and also of Glen Greenwald. I do not comment often because I know the US democracy has what it takes to assert itself and address abuses. I wish I could be as confident about Australia where I returned last July. Then again, things have a tendency to unravel which I hope is happening here too.

Starving them.
Bombing their water treatment plants.
Depleted urnanium.
Child cancer courtesy of that.
Denying them the medicines for those children.
Bombing civilian targets.
Invading them.
Looting their country.
Mass murder.
American troops using chemical weapons (Fallujah, Haditha, Tal Afar.
Torture.
Arming, training, and financing death squads.
Unlawful detentions.
Trying deleiberately to start a civil war so you can control their assets.
Turning large parts of their capital into gigantic open air prisons.
Doing the same to some of their citys.

Really with “help” like that maybe they’d be better off with some hindrance. Here’s what one of our writers has to say about your help:

I am getting very tired of going to funerals. I am getting very tired of seeing my family, my city, my country, my people, being used by American politicians.

The reason why there is so much killing in Irak is because you Americans are here.

The killing cannot even begin to stop until the root of the evil is removed.

The root of the evil is that you Americans are here. What part of this are you Americans incapable of understanding? We don’t want your help. We don’t want your troops. We don’t want your money. We don’t want the “freedom” you have have brought. The freedom to starve. The freedom to die of contaminated water. The freedom to be raped. The freedom to be tortured. The freedom to have your soldiers kill us. The freedom to have your mercenaries kill us. The freedom to bury our children. Those are the freedoms America has brought to Irak.

We want nothing to do with you or your so-called “freedom”.
Leave.
Ali

This is what we posted that day – one of many funerals

Image

I also have both a father in law and a husband (who has not yet had a chance to hold his children) now in Irak working with humantarian organisations trying to mitigate not even undo just mitigate some of the evil done by America to the Iraki people. I get very p*ss*d off when I read that garbage about “help.”

Go dance on some other mass graves.

Iraq belongs to the Iraqis and they have no desire to have any more of our “help”.

How to be moral in an immoral and illegal war?

I have had conversations with 7 young soldiers in Appalachia that have returned from Iraq. I have asked them some tough and direct questions. Many of them are not proud of what they were required to do and not required to do in Iraq. They all and I do mean all 7 have said that the American people do not have a clue as to what is really taking place in Iraq.

They were all shocked by the lack of “real” coverage in the MSM on just what is taking place there.

It sounds like FireDogLake.com needs to give them a stage and audience so they can tell the story.

It probably wont go out for quite a while. Friday is prayer day in Muslim country’s so …..

sona @ 1:12 pm

Do you really think that they want training from a country that has treated them as barbarically as yours has?

You have no IDEA the contempt with which they refer to your country your troops and your values if you say things like that.

Your country has managed to treat them infinitely worse than Saddam ever managed and you have the gall to say that your country has to arrange training for them?????

Siun thanks again – the twins are being peaceful tonight :-)

Sorry, as soon as you illegally invade a country to take over its oil and enrich your Big Oil cronies, all possible morality has vanished. There is nothing our military can do to fix that, except leave.

Don’t make “the perfect” the enemy of “the good”.

Every step in the Right direction is worth taking. After all, it’s gonna take us a while to evict the pResident, so we should take every gain we can until that glorious day.