Iraq - Tens Years After
 

I know that Pete gets a woody when he sees Iraqi women with purple thumbs, but a report issues by Brown University Watson Institute for International Studies shows that the Iraq War will cost us $2.2 Trillion, plus $3.9 Trillion in servicing the interest on that debt through 2053. Beyond that, a total of 190,000 people were killed (among which were 4,488 soldiers and at least 3,400 U.S. contractors).

And what did we get for this? A strengthened Iran, not to mention these other side benefits:

• Terrorism in Iraq increased dramatically as a result of the invasion and tactics and fighters were exported to Syria and other neighboring countries.
  
• Iraq’s health care infrastructure remains devastated from sanctions and war. More than half of Iraq’s medical doctors left the country during the 2000s, and tens of thousands of Iraqi patients are forced to seek health care outside the country.
  
• The $60 billion spent on reconstruction for Iraq has not gone to rebuilding infrastructure such as roads, health care, and water treatment systems, but primarily to the military and police. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has found massive fraud, waste, and abuse of reconstruction funds.

http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2013/03/warcosts

And the GOP is the party of national security and fiscal responsibility? Somebody 'splain that to me.:confused:

Hi Finn, Have you seen the documentary "Iraq For Sale"?

I haven't. But I did read about the nature of their 10th anniversary celebration:

By mid-afternoon today, there were "52 dead and nearly 180 wounded in separate attacks that included 16 car bombs, 2 adhesive bombs stuck to cars, and 1 assassination with a silenced gun."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/wo...niversary.html

Still a shithole?

Dave

Sticky bombs? That's old school, WWII stuff. Effective if you don't get shot trying to stick it onto a target.

+1.....
Iraq is a very violent place...right now there is a smoldering Sunni insurgency as evidenced by today's coordinated bombings. I think at this point it will be a race between an insurgency and the increase in wealth brought by oil production that will decide Iraq's future. Hopefully a better economy fueled by oil production will win out in the end. I am not optimistic however.

Yeah, still a shithole.

Dave

The Shia-dominated south and the Kurdish north are both relatively peaceful. However, central Iraq is problematic because the sizable Sunni minority feels pretty shit-upon by the Shia-dominated Maliki government.

Right. The country is filled with religious freaks who refuse to share space with other religious freaks.

Until they get their idiot religious leaders out of power and relegated to the sideshow, where all pinhead religious leaders belong, Iraq will be a shithole forever. What good is the right to vote when everyone thinks they will burn in hell for voting for anyone but the local Theo-dictators?:confused:

Church + State = Unreasoning, dogmatic, inflexible tyrants who base all of their decisions on fairytales, hallucinogenic fantasies, personal prejudices/hatreds and books written by men claiming to be prophets of "God", under the pretext that you will do as "God" (they) say, or you will, ostensibly, burn in hell.

I'll take the chance that I might burn in hell in the next life, rather than obey such men in this one. There's something about thinking for yourself that just bursts with the sweet smell of freedom.

Thank "God" for the 1st Amendment. (Pun intended.)

Regards,
Dave

And now the Islamists seem to be asserting control over the rebel-held areas of Syria.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...239_story.html