Iraq War as War Crime (Part One)

[marmar]

from Consortium News:



Iraq War as War Crime (Part One)

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry
March 18, 2008


Editor’s Note: The Iraq War – now ending its fifth bloody year – represents not only a human tragedy of enormous consequence and possibly the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history but also a systemic failure of American political and journalistic institutions.

Instead of checking George W. Bush’s imperial impulse for the good of the Republic, the Congress – including Sen. Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats – and the national press corps tended to their careers and their political viability.

In recognition of this tragedy – and in honor of the thousands of American dead and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead – we are publishing the first of two excerpts from Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush:

Iraq’s “Day of Liberation” – as George W. Bush called it – was supposed to begin with a bombardment consisting of 3,000 U.S. missiles delivered over 48 hours, 10 times the number of bombs dropped during the first two days of the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Officials, who were briefed on the plans, said the goal was to so stun the Iraqis that they would simply submit to the overwhelming force demonstrated by the U.S. military. Administration officials dubbed the strategy “shock and awe.”

In his 2003 State of the Union speech, Bush had addressed the “brave and oppressed people of Iraq” with the reassuring message that “your enemy is not surrounding your country – your enemy is ruling your country.”

Bush promised that the day that Saddam Hussein and his regime “are removed from power will be the day of your liberation.”

But never before in history had a dominant world power planned to strike a much weaker nation in a preemptive war with such ferocity. It would be liberation through devastation.

Many projections expected the deaths of thousands of Iraqi non-combatants, no matter how targeted or precise the U.S. weapons. For those civilians, their end would come in the dark terror of crushing concrete or in the blinding flash of high explosives.

In the prelude to the invasion, the United Nations predicted possibly more than 500,000 civilians injured or killed during the war and its aftermath and nearly one million displaced from their homes.

The International Study Team, a Canadian non-governmental organization, raised similar alarms. The invasion of Iraq would cause a “grave humanitarian disaster,” with potential casualties among children in “the tens of thousands, and possibly in the hundreds of thousands,” the group said.

Assuming U.S. forces succeeded in eliminating Saddam Hussein and his army with relative speed, the post-war period still promised to be complicated and dangerous. The Bush administration outlined plans to occupy Iraq for at least 18 months, installing a military governor in the style of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Japan after World War II. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/031708.html

[Orwellian_Ghost]

1. K&R

Thanks for the truth Robert, Sam and Nat Parry.

Now lets name names in who is complicit. All parties involved.

Thanks marmar.

[MadMaddie]

2. How ridiculous,how bullying and mostly how arrogant

the bunch of assholes in the * Administration were and still are....


<snip>
Officials, who were briefed on the plans, said the goal was to so stun the Iraqis that they would simply submit to the overwhelming force demonstrated by the U.S. military. Administration officials dubbed the strategy “shock and awe.”
<snip

[JuniperLea]

3. “your enemy is not surrounding your country – your enemy is ruling your country.”

Wrong, Bush... that should have been "Your enemy is INVADING your country."

We should all look up the word "insurgent" and see how inappropriately it is being used these days. Unless, of course, you consider the USA as the "civil authority or established leadership."