So how is the occupation of Iraq going after 8 years and 10 months? The war is still going, even though its alleged goal, toppling Saddam, was accomplished almost immediately. It has been humiliating for the biggest military on earth to be stalemated by an impoverished third world country less than a tenth its size.

Just before the invasion, Saddam offered to surrender. Bush turned him down and bombed Baghdad’s residential neighbourhoods on 2003-03-20, broadcast live on CNN (Cable News Network). Saddam immediately went into hiding. Saddam was captured in his “spider hole” on 2003-12-13. He was hanged on 2006-12-30. We discovered that Bush was indeed lying about Saddam’s nukes, ambiguously referred to as WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction) s. Saddam did not even have any poison gas left over from that George H.W. Bush gave him on credit to attack Iran.

As of 2010-05-08, the Iraqis managed to kill 4,404 invading Americans. There is no democracy, unless you count the sort of democracy enjoyed in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Iraq has become one of the most corrupt nations on earth.

From a booty point of view, things went rather well. The famous Iraq National Museum was looted. On 2011-06-23 (the same day Obama announced the troop withdrawal) Iraq’s remaining oil reserves were sold off to American and European oil companies. Monsanto now owns all of Iraq’s seed genome and has a monopoly to sell seeds in Iraq which it contaminates with a terminator gene to force repurchase each year. Farmers can no longer use their own seeds they have developed over millennia.

The USA has spent more money on the occupation than it would take to fix most American and planetary ills. It is gradually coming clear to the American public that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. That notion got started with Cheney’s dissembling. Americans are beginning to admit that they fought a completely pointless and illegal war. Americans excuse themselves for the error my claiming the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim, whether his country attacked or not.

~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)