Irak 27

Information Clearing House maakt de rekening op: '“She opened it and out flew all the terrible things like greed and envy, hatred and cruelty, poverty and hunger, sickness and despair, and more .. .”The fable of Pandora’s Box applies well to Iraq. War supporters wish us to judge the invasion and war on the removal of the brutal Saddam Hussein. A broad up-to-date analysis yields a disturbingly more negative assessment, with implications reaching far into the future.Are the Iraqi people better off today? No. A 2004 Lancet study based on U.S. approved research methods puts the war’s Iraqi death toll at 100,000. However, Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Les Roberts, who led the study, said that the results were based on “conservative assumptions.” Deaths increased 1.5 times since the invasion, mostly among women and children, and caused by diverse factors, like U.S. air strikes and military interventions, devastated water and health care systems, and militia or death squad activities. International news sources cite studies pointing “to about 250,000 excess deaths since the outbreak of the U.S.-led war" when deaths in Falluja are included.Surviving Iraqis confront multiplying tragedies: Poverty rose to 20%; A year-old UN report shows childhood malnutrition doubled; Minority Rights Group International cites Iraq as the country where minority rights are most under threat; the brain-drain of professionals leaving Iraq takes away its future; a rampant "kidnap-and-ransom" industry complicates security; inflation is skyrocketing; the U.S. backed Iraqi constitution privatizes State industries, expatriating profits into Western pockets; and the budget for the highly touted U.S. Iraqi reconstruction has dried up. Iraq is a deadly mess.Even if Iraq overcomes internal maladies, effects reaching beyond its borders make this war a disaster for the world and the U.S.Is the world (including the U.S.) safer? No. Ethnic cleansing in Iraq is pushing the country closer to civil war, risking chaos in the region. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (London) stated “al-Qaeda's recruitment and fundraising was greatly boosted by the U.S. invasion of Iraq.” Militants expanded their influence across the region, be it the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the growing militant threat on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan (New York Times), increased al-Qaeda influence in Afghanistan (noted by its Defense Minister), the recent success by Hamas in Palestine, and the hard-liners in Iran (now also influencing Iraq).Iraq is now a breeding ground for terrorism. An embarrassed State Department discontinued its annual terrorism report because international terrorist attacks are at the highest level since the first report in 1984. The U.S. sponsored National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism counted 3,991 global terrorist attacks in 2005, up 51% from 2,639 in 2004. Ironically, a war intended to produce freedom has, according to Amnesty International, lead to an increase in worldwide human rights violations. Tyrants can legitimately argue that since the U.S. waged pre-emptive war, so can they. In 2003, North Korea stated “preemptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the U.S.”U.S. foreign policy has also suffered, with our reputation at an all time low. We found no WMDs. We just heard from a former CIA chief for the Middle East that the Administration “cherry- picked“ pre-war intelligence. Britain’s Downing Street memo stated that U.S. “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” of invasion. Western Alliances are in tatters, while our self-declared “New American Century” has us creating a world empire, with Iraq being the first step.' Lees verder:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12016.htm