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- After 15 years of repudiating claims that the invasion of #Iraq was only initiated to seize Iraqi resources, large oil corporations fronted by former architects of the war who vacated to the private sector are flagrantly advertising their contracts.
They believe the crime's far enough in the past that they can flaunt and parade today.
Arthur McMillan (THE NATIONAL) reminds that freedom was only the 'reason' for the war after it began and after every other excuse fell apart:
Iraqis instead got Paul Bremer, who had left the US diplomatic service in 1989. It says a lot about the misadventure Iraq would become that a man from the private sector would be chosen to head the Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq rather than a serving diplomat.
With his desert boots, dark glasses and renown for not listening to anybody, Mr Bremer was permitted to rule Iraq by decree. This he did by immediately banning the Baath Party in any form and, fatefully, disbanding the Iraqi Army. No orders that Mr Bremer would later issue are thought to have been more responsible for creating the conditions for the maelstrom Iraq would become.
Overnight, millions lost their jobs in the institutions of Saddam’s government. Many thousands of them were military men with access to weapons. An Interim Governing Council was chosen from a list of Iraqi groups and individuals that had supported the invasion. Mr Bremer retained the power to veto any decision made by those he had hand-picked. All along he conveyed an image of the occupier, a figurehead unacquainted with a complicated region, combined with a transparent lack of cultural sensitivity. If the potential for discord was not discernible then, it at least is understood now.
There is no excuse for the Iraq War -- not for the start of it, not for the continuation of it.
Any real sense of belief in the United States would have Americans demanding democracy and self-rule be honored in Iraq. Self-determination would mean the Iraqi people would protect their government -- if they supported it. And if it didn't? It would fall.
US troops should not be used to prop up a government. That's not the mission of the military -- the stated mission. That's the mission of empire.
Betty's "They won't let go of war on Syria" went up earlier.
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