Perhaps
Junior should have listened to dad.. Well spotted by Iraq
Body Count for this pertinent quote from TIME
Magazine March 2, 1998: |
Echoes of the past“Our
armies do not come in your cities and lands as conquerors or
enemies, but as liberators… I am commanded to invite you
to participate in the management of your own civil affairs.” |
Life’s so much better now that the Americans have brought freedom to the country, right?
Rebellion against the occupying forces is hardly surprising. The number of untruths thrust upon the nation has become intolerable. Aside from the actual reasons for war in the first place, which everyone now just accepts were warped without demanding any kind of retribution to Messers Bush, Blair and Howard, since Saddam was deposed the national rebuilding has been farcical — corporate rebranding and profiteering more like. Iraqis have watched as the job of rebuilding the nation has not gone to them but to cronies of the White House who are given sweetheart contracts to remould the country according to the whims of the Bush administration.
Won the battle, lost the war
The set of lies that initiated the war on Iraq included the promise of installing democracy. This has proved to be yet another terminological inexactitude as the war spins more and more out of the US’ control. It is fair to say that the ‘Coalition’ had already lost this war way back in May 2003 when Dubya choreographed his victory speech onboard an aircraft carrier. Ousting Saddam was one thing: getting Iraqis to accept an occuptation force of infidels in the birthplace of civilisation quite another.
Iraq had been hard hit by 13 years of US-led sanctions which resulted in as many as 500,000 dieing. The US and the UK, imposing a no fly zone, routinely blew up supposed military installations but were apt to make mistakes.
The state of the nation on the eve of war was thus decrepit with many naturally hostile to the British and Americans for the hardship they had wreaked upon the country.
Once Bush and Co had rumbled into Baghdad and set up the Coalition Provisional Authority much of the country’s infrastructure and utilities lay in ruin, taken out by tactical strikes with little thought for the livelihood of the average citizen.
Indeed, a glance at what remained of the government buildings is telling. Just the Planning Ministry with its handy intelligence files and the Oil Ministry were protected.
Despite victory being declared the bullets continued to fly with hundreds of innocent citizens on the receiving end of American GI ignorance, firepower and brutality. Freedom was not shaping up well. Any sign of demonstration was greeted with a hail of bullets.
