Chris Floyd: Ninth Circle: The Widening Gyre of Iraq's Death Spiral

[babylonsister]

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/2506/81/

Ninth Circle: The Widening Gyre of Iraq's Death Spiral
Thursday, 27 September 2007
by Chris Floyd

If you would like a glimpse of the raging, death-clotted hell that George W. Bush and his willing executioners in the bipartisan American Establishment have created in Iraq, then steel yourself and plunge into Nir Rosen's shattering report in the latest issue of Boston Review: No Going Back.

Rosen, long one of the most dogged and fearless truth-tellers about Iraq, portrays a reality light-years away from the obscenely mendacious and ignorant American "debate" over Bush's rapine and its consequences. He takes as his theme the millions of Iraqis driven from their homes by the invasion and occupation – and by the Iraqi "government's" own "security forces." These ruthless militias – armed, trained, funded and empowered by the United States – are, as Rosen rightly terms them, death squads, carrying out a savage ethnic cleansing – with American connivance – while waging a multi-sided civil war, again with the eager assistance of the White House and its myrmidons.

You should read the whole piece – a deftly-woven tapestry of individual stories of the actual human beings whose lives and families have been ravaged by this war crime carried out in your name – but below are some excerpts, mostly drawn from Rosen's devastating conclusion:

For the U.S. to acknowledge the size and seriousness of the humanitarian disaster in Iraq would be to admit that the recent troop “surge” is not working. According to a senior UN official, “the U.S. government doesn’t want to admit there is a refugee problem because it is a sign of failure.” It would also mean acknowledging that a massive process of ethnic cleansing has taken place under the watch of the U.S.-backed government—indeed, that it has been perpetrated by the Iraqi government’s own security forces...

What will happen to Iraq? Think Mogadishu, small warlords controlling various neighborhoods, militias preying on those left behind, more powerful warlords controlling areas with resources, such as oil fields, ports, and lucrative pilgrimage routes and shrines. Irredentist Sunni militias will attempt to retake their lost land, but they will be pushed into the Anbar Province, Jordan, and Syria, where they may link up with local Islamist militants to destabilize Amman and Damascus. Some will look to fight elsewhere; unable to continue the jihad in Iraq they will find common cause with Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and others alienated from their societies and hateful of Shias. The new rump Shia statelet, including Baghdad and the South, will be quarantined by the Sunni states in the region and pushed inexorably into Iranian hands whether Shia Iraqis want this or not. It will be isolated and radicalized, and Shia militias loyal to Muqtada al Sadr, Abdul Aziz al Hakim, Muhamad al Yaqubi, and others will battle for power.

There is no “surge.” At best it can be called an ooze, a slow increase of American occupying forces by a mere 15 percent, consisting of few new soldiers and many whose terms of service have been merely extended. Yet the U.S. has doubled the size of its mission, announcing it will also take on the Shia militias as well as the Sunni ones. On the ground, that means American soldiers secure areas and then hand them over to Iraqi security forces who impose a reign of terror on the inhabitants. In the Iraqi civil war the army and police are not the solution; they are combatants, fighting on behalf of Shia-sectarian Islamist parties. The vaunted efforts to train Iraqi security forces have merely trained better death squads. The Americans continue to imprison thousands of Iraqis, and kill many others. Meanwhile, humanitarian organizations that would normally demand that the United States comply with international law and hand over imprisoned Iraqis to the “sovereign” Iraqi government are not doing so, knowing that their treatment at the hands of the government would be far worse than anything they would endure while in American captivity. The occupation is not benign. It is profoundly painful, humiliating, and lethal.

more...

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/2506/81/

Nir Rosen's piece here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x310396

[gula]

1. No replies?

Is it that the truth is too hard to take or simply that we: 1) are too war-fatigued, 2) think that people who are not "americans" don't count or 3) think that voting for a democrat fulfilled out duty.

[Cobalt-60]

2. Its all true

What can I say but I want the Republicans gone?
And I'll use Hunter thompson's meat hammer to get it.

[ShortnFiery]

3. It will take people hitting the streets, et. al., to stop this war - don't count on "the democrats"

Do NOT dismiss the following: The Gulf of Tonkin was under a Democratic President.

We need to oust the warmongers and preferably replace them with anti-war representatives of the Democratic persuasion. ;)