The Bush Administration's legacy: "A New Level of Refugee Suffering" by Angelina Jolie

[Cleita]

KHANKE, Iraq — I HAVE visited Iraq five times since 2007, and I have seen nothing like the suffering I’m witnessing now.

I came to visit the camps and informal settlements where displaced Iraqis and Syrian refugees are desperately seeking shelter from the fighting that has convulsed their region.

In almost four years of war, nearly half of Syria’s population of 23 million people has been uprooted. Within Iraq itself, more than two million people have fled conflict and the terror unleashed by extremist groups. These refugees and displaced people have witnessed unspeakable brutality. Their children are out of school, they are struggling to survive, and they are surrounded on all sides by violence.

For many years I have visited camps, and every time, I sit in a tent and hear stories. I try my best to give support. To say something that will show solidarity and give some kind of thoughtful guidance. On this trip I was speechless.

What do you say to a mother with tears streaming down her face who says her daughter is in the hands of the Islamic State, or ISIS, and that she wishes she were there, too? Even if she had to be raped and tortured, she says, it would be better than not being with her daughter.

More at link

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/angelina-jolie-on-the-syrians-and-iraqis-who-cant-go-home.html?_r=0

Somewhere, some way a brave prosecutor has to throw the book at these criminals and put them on trial. That means George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice and all the miscreants from the Project For A New American Century who hatched the plot to invade Iraq. Also, since Jeb Bush was one of the signatories on this, he needs to be exposed so he can never run for President.

[Cleita]

1. ...

[Dont call me Shirley]

2. The People Who Have Been Dispossessed By The War Makers...

We need to strip the war profiteers of every cent they stole off the backs of the innocents and use it to rebuild communities and heal traumatized lives.

[Cleita]

3. Yes. These victims deserve reparation and who better to pay for it than them. eom

[AtomicKitten]

4. K&R

We are responsible for inflicting trauma on millions and, worse, it has been going on for years. There is no upside of constant war and conflict. It doesn't make us safer, it makes us hated. As a nation we need to acknowledge what we have wrought.

[Octafish]

6. Since 1991.

What Sec. Albright said:

'We Think the Price Is Worth It'

Media uncurious about Iraq policy's effects--there or here

By Rahul Mahajan

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.
--60 Minutes (5/12/96)

Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's quote, calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children, has been much quoted in the Arabic press. It's also been cited in the United States in alternative commentary on the September 11 attacks (e.g., Alexander Cockburn, New York Press, 9/26/01).

But a Dow Jones search of mainstream news sources since September 11 turns up only one reference to the quote--in an op-ed in the Orange Country Register (9/16/01). This omission is striking, given the major role that Iraq sanctions play in the ideology of archenemy Osama bin Laden; his recruitment video features pictures of Iraqi babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of medicine (New York Daily News, 9/28/01). The inference that Albright and the terrorists may have shared a common rationale--a belief that the deaths of thousands of innocents are a price worth paying to achieve one's political ends--does not seem to be one that can be made in U.S. mass media.

It's worth noting that on 60 Minutes, Albright made no attempt to deny the figure given by Stahl--a rough rendering of the preliminary estimate in a 1995 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report that 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five had died as a result of the sanctions. In general, the response from government officials about the sanctions’ toll has been rather different: a barrage of equivocations, denigration of U.N. sources and implications that questioners have some ideological axe to grind (Extra!, 3-4/00).

There has also been an attempt to seize on the lowest possible numbers. In early 1998, Columbia University's Richard Garfield published a dramatically lower estimate of 106,000 to 227,000 children under five dead due to sanctions, which was reported in many papers (e.g. New Orleans Times-Picayune, 2/15/98). Later, UNICEF came out with the first authoritative report (8/99), based on a survey of 24,000 households, suggesting that the total “excess” deaths of children under 5 was about 500,000.

CONTINUED...

http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/

Anyone who thinks people are more important than things knows the price wasn't worth it.

Thank you for the heads-up on AJ, Cleita. She is quite a remarkable person.

[riderinthestorm]

7. K&R. Angelina Jolie is so much more than a pretty face nt

[LittleBlue]

8. K&R

[malaise]

9. This should have 500 Recs

Rec