[E-rundbrief] Info 1199 - The Sociocide of Iraq by Bush/ Cheney.

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 1199 - Ralph Nader (USA): The Sociocide of  Iraq by 
Bush/ Cheney.

Bad Ischl, 24.3.2013

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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The Sociocide of  Iraq by Bush/ Cheney

By Ralph Nader

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34389.htm

March 23, 2013 " Information Clearing House " -  Ten years ago George 
W. Bush and Dick Cheney, as war criminals, launched the sociocide of 
the people of Iraq – replete with embedded television and newspaper 
reporters chronicling the invasion through the Bush lens. That illegal 
war of aggression was, of course, based on recognized lies, propaganda 
and cover-ups that duped or co-opted leading news institutions such as 
the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Wars of aggression – this one blowing apart a country of 25 million 
people ruled by a weakened despot surrounded by far more powerful 
adversaries – Israel, Turkey and Iran – are major crimes under 
international law and the UN Charter. The Bush/Cheney war was also 
unconstitutional, never declared by Congress, as Senator Robert Byrd 
eloquently pointed out at the time. Moreover, many of the acts of 
torture and brutality perpetrated against the Iraqi people are illegal 
under various federal statutes.

Over one million Iraqis died due to the invasion, the occupation and 
the denial of health and safety necessities for infants, children and 
adults. Far more Iraqis were injured and sickened. Birth defects and 
cancers continue to set lethal records. Five million Iraqis became 
refugees, many fleeing into Jordan, Syria and other countries.

Nearly five thousand U.S. soldiers died. Many other soldiers committed 
suicide. Well over 150,000 Americans were injured or sickened, far 
more than the official Pentagon under-estimate which restricts 
nonfatal casualty counts only to those incurred directly in the line 
of fire.

So far the Iraq War has monetarily cost taxpayers about $2 trillion. 
Tens of billions more will be spent for veterans disabilities and 
continuing expenses in Iraq. Taxpayers are paying over $600 million a 
year to guard the giant U.S. Embassy and its personnel in Baghdad, 
more than what our government spends for OSHA, whose task is to reduce 
the number of American workers who die every year from workplace 
disease and trauma, currently about 58,000.

All for what results? Before the invasion there was no al-Qaeda in 
Saddam Hussein’s secular dictatorship. Now a growing al-Qaeda in Iraq 
is terrorizing the country with ever bolder car bombings and suicide 
attacks taking dozens of lives at a time and spilling forcefully over 
into Syria.

Iraq is a police state with sectarian struggles between the dominant 
Shiites and the insurgent Sunnis who lived together peacefully and 
intermarried for centuries. There were no sectarian slaughters of this 
kind before the invasion, except for Saddam Hussein’s bloodbath 
against rebellious Shiites. The Shiites were egged on by President 
George H.W. Bush, who promptly abandoned them to the deadly strafing 
of Saddam’s helicopter gunships at the end of the preventable first 
Gulf War in 1991.

Iraq is a country in ruins with a political and wealthy upper class 
raking off the profits from the oil industry and the occupation. The 
U.S. is now widely hated in that part of Asia. Bush/Cheney ordered the 
use of cluster bombs, white phosphorous and depleted uranium against, 
for example, the people of Fallujah where infant birth deformities 
have skyrocketed.

As Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi-American analyst observed: “Complete 
destruction of the Iraqi national identity” and the sectarian system 
introduced by the U.S. invaders in 2003, where Iraqis were favored or 
excluded based on their sectarian and ethnic affiliations, laid the 
basis for the current cruel chaos and violence. It was a nasty, 
brutish form of divide and rule.

The results back home in our country are soldiers and their extended 
families suffering in many ways from broken lives. Phil Donahue’s 
gripping documentary Body of War follows the pain-wracked life of one 
soldier returning in 2004 from Iraq as a paraplegic. That soldier, 
Tomas Young, nearing the end of his devastated life, has just written 
a penetrating letter to George W. Bush which every American should read.

The lessons from this unnecessary quagmire should be: first, how to 
stop any more wars of aggression by the Washington warmongers – the 
same neocon draft dodgers are at it again regarding Iran and Syria. 
And second, the necessity to hold accountable the leading perpetrators 
of this brutal carnage and financial wreckage who are presently at 
large – fugitives from justice earning fat lecture and consulting fees.

In the nine months running up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, at 
least three hundred prominent, retired military officers, diplomats 
and national security officials publically spoke out against the 
Bush/Cheney drumbeats to war. Their warnings were prophetically 
accurate. They included retired Generals Anthony Zinni and William 
Odom, and Admiral Shanahan. Even Brent Scowcroft and James Baker, two 
of President George H.W. Bush’s closest advisors strongly opposed the 
invasion.

These outspoken truthsayers – notwithstanding their prestige and 
experience – were overwhelmed by a runaway White House, a disgraceful 
patsy mainstream media and an abdicatory Congress. Multi-billionaire, 
George Soros was also courageously outspoken. Unfortunately, prior to 
the invasion, he did not provide a budget and secretariat for these 
men and women to provide continuity and to multiply their numbers 
around the country, through the mass media and on Capitol Hill. By the 
time he came around to organizing and publicizing such an organized 
effort, it was after the invasion, in July 2003.

Nine months earlier, I believe George Soros could have provided the 
necessary resources to stop Bush/Cheney and their lies from stampeding 
the government, and country, into war.

Mr. Soros can still build the grassroots pressure for the exercise of 
the rule of law under our constitution and move Congress toward public 
hearings in the Senate designed to establish an investigative arm of 
the Justice Department to pursue the proper enforcement against Bush/ 
Cheney and their accomplices.

After all, the Justice Department had such a special prosecutors’ 
office during the Watergate scandal and was moving to indict a 
resigned Richard Nixon before President Ford pardoned him.

Compare the Watergate break-in and obstruction of justice by Nixon 
with the horrendous crimes coming out of the war against Iraq – a 
nation that never threatened the U.S. but whose destruction takes a 
continuing toll on our country.

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Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
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fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
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Honoured by the (Austrian) "Journalism-Award from below 2010"