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Why The U.S. Will Lose The Iraq War

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No DUplicitous DUpe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 05:03 PM
Original message
Why The U.S. Will Lose The Iraq War
Why The U.S. Will Lose The Iraq War
posted with permission from http://sane-ramblings.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-us-will-lose-iraq-war.html

My name is Farrah and I'm a 32-year-old Iraqi wife and mother and I'd like to briefly tell you my story. I am hypothetical because the U.S. military will otherwise censor me from you, but I am based upon many real Iraqi women and our stories are real.

Two years ago, my 6-year-old daughter Leyla died from cholera after drinking polluted water. She began vomiting, her legs cramped, she had diarrhea and her temperature soared. To save her life, we rushed her to the hospital but we had to wait hours for a doctor because life threatening diseases are common here.

And there are few doctors and nurses because many have fled Iraq. Medicines are in short supply because most of it goes through government officials who trade it on the black market.

While we waited, Leyla died in my arms. Tens of thousands of children die like this, in the arms of their loved ones.

This happens also because in Baghdad we have electricity only four hours a day. There isn't enough to run the turbines to clean the water or process the sewage, nor even run the lights or electricity. Our summer temperatures can be 120 degrees and we try to avoid heat stroke. This alone is a killer of children and elders.

My husband hasn't had a job in three years because outside of government work which officials often set aside for family and friends, our unemployment is 50%, twice what you had during the Great Depression. He makes money selling scrap metal in the black market which he hates doing because some customers make weapons from it. But we don't have a choice. We must eat and have a place to live.

We have two other children, ages 7 and 10 and we home school them, for many teachers have fled Iraq. There is no trash pickup, so we are forced to live in filth. To buy gas, we wait for hours in long lines and pay high prices. Yet Iraq has one of the world's biggest oil supplies and gas used to be plentiful and cheap before the U.S. invasion in 2003.

We hated Saddam Hussein but our economy was solid and unless we were political, we were safe and crime was low. Everything worked, people had active social lives and tourists came. We were a first world nation.

Now we have a government that operates only in or near your ultra-secure Green Zone, a city within a city so your and other foreign officials don't have to live like we do. Our government, which you keep in power only travels in Iraq under heavy security, with top officials having secure motorcades as large as your president's.

Our lives are a living Hell. As an Iraqi, I have no voice in America but if you are an American, you do. Please speak for us and end your war and your occupation of our nation. Let us form a friendship with you, one of mutual respect and compassion, one based on what you would want for your family. Thank you.

Farrah

Dear Reader, The U.S. has actually already lost the Iraq War because it has lost the hearts and minds of the people by destroying their nation as it killed and injured many of them and it set off a civil war, which even now is right below the surface. Many of their women and children suffer from post traumatic stress disorder and the core of their society, most of the well educated people, have fled Iraq. What's left is a U.S. puppet government that can't even deliver basic services like medical care and electricity, nor even police protection, and is rife with corruption.
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wtmusic Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 05:07 PM
Response to Original message
1. War Crimes for Bush. nt
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Parche Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 05:08 PM
Response to Original message
2. its NOT a war
it was an illegal invasion.........

:hi:
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FiveGoodMen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 05:08 PM
Response to Original message
3. "I have no voice in America but if you are an American, you do"
If only.

Even here, I tried to use my voice to rec this and it didn't take (presumably because someone unrecced at the same time)...

No one who is against these wars has any voice against the children of hell that want to keep them going.

Not even on DemocraticUnderground.
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azurnoir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 05:16 PM
Response to Original message
4. The war was "lost" before it even began
it was based on conscious lies, there was no attainable objective, no exit plan, .......... need I go on. We as US citizens owe the Iraqi people much, much more than an apology
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texastoast Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 06:06 PM
Response to Reply #4
11. We owe them Bush/Cheney in The Hague n/t
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azurnoir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 06:34 PM
Response to Reply #11
12. That would be a start but we owe them more n/t
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Submariner Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 05:17 PM
Response to Original message
5. Bush and cheney lost that war years ago
Our Army was reduced to slinking out of the country under the cover of darkness just a couple of weeks ago.

Nice job AWOL-boy.
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madokie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 05:22 PM
Response to Original message
6. I so hope that we somehow can make it right for the Iraqi people
this invasion was wrong in all aspects of it. In fact it was a criminal act and there is no changing that. Hopefully someday it will be recognized for what it is/was here in our country and the criminals who caused it be held accountable. We, the usa, should be forced, by the UN, to replace and repair all that we took from them. IMHO

I want to be friends with the people of Iraq more than anything in the world.
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proteus_lives Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 05:26 PM
Response to Original message
7. "We hated Saddam Hussein but..."
Might have something different to say if your brother or sister was disappeared.

I'm 100% against the occupation of Iraq but I'm not going to white-wash Saddam.

I've seen this before, it's been circulating the net for years.
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speppin Donating Member (197 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 05:34 PM
Response to Reply #7
9. But these deplorable conditions have gone on 'for years" with no
end in site.
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No DUplicitous DUpe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 06:37 PM
Response to Reply #7
13. Re: "I've seen this before, it's been circulating the net for years."
What are you speaking of? The piece was written this morning. I know, because I helped edit it.

As far as Saddam goes, "Getting him" was not worth the price of 1 Iraqi child's life, or anyone's life, for that matter.
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proteus_lives Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 06:44 PM
Response to Reply #13
14. I think I'm mistaken.
I think I'm confusing this with a blog of another Iraqi woman.

And you're right it, it wasn't worth it for us. The whole Iraq ordeal was wrong.

But I don't think Saddam should be white-washed. He was a dictator, plain and simple.
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No DUplicitous DUpe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-06-10 02:42 PM
Response to Reply #14
16. No worries...
as fas as "He was a dictator, plain and simple." Yes, but we can't go attacking every country with a dictator, we need to consider the innocents caught in the middle.

Peace
:hi:
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No DUplicitous DUpe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 05:32 PM
Response to Original message
8. I agree with all the the posted comments, so far. nt
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northoftheborder Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 05:41 PM
Response to Original message
10. Too sad for anger.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, & other cohorts responsible for this crime should all have to go and live amongst the Iraqi people for the rest of their lives.
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FiveGoodMen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-05-10 07:00 PM
Response to Reply #10
15. I'd prefer to drop them off in the midst of the Iraqi people.
Without a guard.

Without weapons.

Then tell the locals that they are, in fact, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc...

After that, I think the situation would take care of itself.

If there's any justice in the world, they wouldn't end it quickly, either.

There are no tortures in all the stories of hell -- or the medieval church -- to fully punish these "people" for what they've done.
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No DUplicitous DUpe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-06-10 03:34 PM
Response to Original message
17. How life in Iraq has changed (graphic)
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No DUplicitous DUpe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-07-10 02:20 PM
Response to Original message
18.  "Will we raise our voices for the Iraqi people like Farrah....
...whether on blogs or letters to the editor of newspapers, or will we sit silent?"
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