The new "forgotten" war

[IndianaGreen]

The new "forgotten" war

Dahr Jamail, author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, looks at how the U.S. war on Iraq continues to decimate the country.

March 17, 2010

AS AFGHANISTAN has taken center stage in the U.S. corporate media, with President Barack Obama announcing two major escalations of the war in recent months, the U.S. occupation of Iraq has fallen into the media shadows.

But while U.S. forces have begun to slowly pull back in Iraq, approximately 130,000 American troops and 114,000 private contractors still remain in the country (Congressional Research Service, 12/14/09)--along with an embassy the size of Vatican City. Upwards of 400 Iraqi civilians still die in a typical month (Iraq Body Count, 12/31/09), and fallout from the occupation that is now responsible, by some estimates, for 1 million Iraqi deaths (Extra!, 1/2/08) continues to severely impact Iraqis in ways that go uncovered by the U.S. press.

From early on in the occupation of Iraq, one of the most pressing concerns for Iraqis--besides ending the occupation and a desperate need for security--has been basic infrastructure. The average home in Iraq today, over six-and-a-half years into the occupation, operates on less than six hours of electricity per day (Associated Press, 9/7/09).

"A water shortage described as the most critical since the earliest days of Iraq's civilization is threatening to leave up to 2 million people in the south of the country without electricity and almost as many without drinking water," the Guardian (8/26/09) reported; waterborne diseases and dysentery are rampant. The ongoing lack of power and clean drinking water has even led Iraqis to take to the streets in Baghdad (Associated Press, 10/11/09), chanting, "No water, no electricity in the country of oil and the two rivers."

Devastation wrought by the occupation, coupled with rampant corruption among the Western contractors awarded the contracts to rebuild Iraq's demolished infrastructure, are to blame (International Herald Tribune, 7/6/09). Ali Ghalib Baban, Iraq's minister of planning, said late last year (International Herald Tribune, 11/21/09) that the billions of dollars the U.S. has spent on so-called reconstruction contracts in Iraq has had no discernible impact. "Maybe they spent it," he said, "but Iraq doesn't feel it."

http://socialistworker.org/2010/03/17/new-forgotten-war

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. "New" is stretching it.