The Good News from Iraq

Iraqis Who Sweated Out Hussein Are Leaving Under Bush

By Sherwood Ross

It’s not easy to create a situation where life is better under a dictatorship than in a democracy, but George Bush has succeeded in achieving the impossible by invading Iraq.

At least 40,000 Iraqis have been killed in the past three years, with scores more murdered every day. Hospitals overflow with the wounded. Conditions are so bad, an estimated 1-million Iraqis have fled their homes for sanctuary in Jordan, Syria and Egypt. Iraqis, particularly middle-class families, who survived Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, are leaving en masse. Even Mr. Bush admits things are “terrible” in Baghdad.

According to Washington reporter Bill Blum, author of “Rogue State,”(Common Courage Press) “thousands of Iraqis have lost an arm or a leg, frequently from unexploded U.S. cluster bombs” and the air has been fouled by depleted uranium from U.S. shells, infecting the water, soil, and human genes, causing deformed births.

Iraqi’s chances of ending up in jail may be greater under Bush. Fifty thousand Iraqis have been imprisoned since he invaded, yet “only a very tiny portion of them have been convicted of any crime,” Blum writes. One Bush legacy will be his practice of holding men without charges, lawyers, or trials.

American-backed militias kill, kidnap and torture people at random. According to The New York Times (May 22), “the corruption in Basra had gotten so bad that the 135-member internal affairs unit, set up to police the police, was operating as a ring of extortionists, kidnappers and killers, American and Iraqi officials said.”...

Joe Carr of the Christian Peacemakers Team in Baghdad, (cited by Noam Chomsky in his essay “War Crimes in Iraq,”) says the U.S. in the city of Fallujah “has leveled entire neighborhoods, and about every third building is destroyed or damaged.” Fierce, destructive firefights have raged in other cities as well.

Violence is so commonplace 20 percent of U.S. funds marked for reconstruction go instead to pay security guards. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote half of the $22-billion America earmarked to develop Iraq’s economy has been wasted.

Thousands of Iraqis are dying of their wounds, lack of hospital care, or sickness caused by malnutrition. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, accused Anglo-American forces of “breaching international law by depriving civilians of food and water in besieged cities as they try to flush out militants.” That’s a violation of the Geneva Convention.

While on Fox (from Raw Story):

The declining rate of terrorist convictions in the U.S. shows that the Department of Justice is more effective at fighting terrorism, says Craig Mitnick who is a Fox News Legal Analyst.

"Here's why. Terror prosecutions are down... or you say, 'there's unsuccessful terror prosecutions.' That's a great thing. That means, as far as I'm concerned, we are legally, as I call it, engaging the enemy earlier. If you don't have the evidence, that means we are arresting them before their final acts becomes devastating."

"What I think, and the way that I can answer the question is, I think, right after 9/11, this was anew thing to all of us and everyone got picked up and there was all these prosecutions. Our Department of Justice is now becoming precise and more accurate in who they pick up so no one's right are violated."