Will American Troops Leave Iraq Better Off?

[robdogbucky]

Will American Troops Leave Iraq Better Off?

By Nicole Gaouette - Oct 22, 2011 7:57 AM PT

The end of the long American war in Iraq will begin the test of what that effort has produced.

After almost nine years, $800 billion and almost 5,000 U.S. dead, President Barack Obama announced yesterday that the 39,000 remaining troops will be home for the holidays, “heads held high, proud of their success.”

They will leave behind a U.S. presence in the form of the world’s largest embassy, without a large military force’s protection, intelligence, supply chain and transportation. Diplomats will encourage peace and development in a largely Shiite Muslim Iraq that is divided by ethnic and religious tensions and sits on the fault line between Persian Shiite Iran and the Sunni Arab world.

“This has profound implications,” said Mohsen Milani, chairman of the government and international relations department at the University of South Florida in Tampa, in a telephone interview. “It will intensify the competition for power inside Iraq, leave the Iraqi Shiites more dependent on Iran and the Sunnis on Saudi Arabia and leave the Kurds as orphans who probably will continue to align themselves with the Shiites.”

Gift to Iran

The U.S. pullout is “an unprecedented strategic gift to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” said Milani...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-21/will-american-troops-leave-iraq-better-off-.html

[robdogbucky]

1. In all, about 16,000 personnel will be assigned to the embassy in Iraq

"...History of War

Robin Wright, at the U.S. Institute of Peace, cautioned against the idea that withdrawal from Iraq will allow Iran to extend its influence. While both are both predominantly Shiite Muslim nations, they fought the Middle East’s deadliest war from 1980 to 1988, leaving 123,000 dead. They are rivals over religious leadership, identity, politics and territory, said.

“Yes, the Shiites have a natural link,” Wright said in a telephone interview. “But the nationalism and history also will be important in defining what happens to Iraq after the United States leaves.”

Newton concurred. “The Shias of Iraq, having waited so long to come to power, don’t want to hand it over to Iran,” he said.

Still, the withdrawal may intensify the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, said Milani. The Saudis blame Iran for fomenting unrest in majority-Shiite Bahrain and in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province..."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-21/will-american-troops-leave-iraq-better-off-.html

[spanone]

2. i doubt it considering we should never have been there in the first place

[robdogbucky]

3. Yup, it's gonna be tough walking that plastic turkey back, no? n/t

[AmirDal]

4. Kind of crazy question. Iraq was a major regional economic power before the war, despite sanctions

Every family lives in the trauma of the shock and awe and endless killings which have followed.

The Kurds are pretty ok. Maybe if they got their own country.

[Bo]

5. What was the final death count of Bushys war?..civilian that is

Was Iraq worth it? NO...it was a just a Halliburton cluster fuck for money

[robdogbucky]

6. Iraqi Body Count?

You mean someone in the west cares about this?


I recall much disagreement over this, as it did not suit the propagandists' purposes to have the real numbers revealed.


Fog of War and all that.



I believe the British medical publication Lancet had it somewhere around 1,000,000, and that was a few years ago.

That has no doubt been scrubbed to fit Blair's narrative of the clusterfuck.

[Desertrose]

8. Yeah, I was wondering if they ever had an accurate count....I somehow doubt it.

I remember years ago it was quite high. And then there is all the DU still harming civilians over there...bad bad mess.

But hey, we're leaving so it's not our problem any more, right?

:sarcasm:

[pokerfan]

9. we will probably never know

but some of the numbers are staggering...

The US invasion of Iraq itself resulted in the violent deaths of no less than 100,000 Iraqi civilians, according to the most conservative estimate. A 2006 study by the British medical journal Lancet found that up to that point there had been more than 650,000 “excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war,” factoring in the lack of medical supplies and the civil war the invasion set off. Polling firm Opinion Research Business estimated in 2008 “that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens” died as a result of the conflict.

More than 4.7 million Iraqis were forced to flee their homes, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency, with 2 million forced to leave the country entirely. Many Iraqi women, three million of whom are now widows according to their government, were forced into lives of prostitution, with one refugee telling the New York Times that if “they go back to Iraq they’ll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available.”

http://original.antiwar.com/medea-benjamin-davis/2011/10/21/only-success-in-iraq-is-that-us-troops-are-leaving/

[riverwalker]

7. all the pundits, and think-tankers

and "middle east experts" bloviating on TV about whats best for Iraq. When is the last time anyone (if ever) saw an interview with everyday Iraqi's about what they want?
An interesting observation about the recent Libyan revolution, is that everything Buchco tried desperately to artificially create and manufacture by illusion in Iraq, came to pass naturally in Libya. (and that is what pisses the RW off the most)
The phony cheering mob tearing down Saddam's statue was orchestrated look like joyful liberated masses, but we now know it was staged. In Libya, when they destroyed symbols of Gaddaffi it was authentic, it was real.
Remember when the US actually attempted to arrogantly design a new flag for the "liberated" Iraqi's? The idea was tossed when some realized how insulting and offensive it was.
In Libya, the flag of the revolutionaries was to adopt the former pre-Gadaffi flag which had been banned (along with any teaching or mention of their pre-Gadaffi history) for 42 years. It had deep meaning to them.
There's lots of disagreement about our involvement in Libya, that's o.k. But the contrast between what Obama accomplished in Libya and what Bush failed in Iraq, is eating at the guts of the repukes like maggots on a dead fish.

[NBachers]

10. How long will the "depleted" uranium be toxic?