Four Years Later, the Annihilation of Iraq is Still on Course

Tweet I highly recommend this whole article from the Daily Star of Egypt: http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=6260
Portion below:

"Some $18 billion in reconstruction funds, comprising both US and Iraqi monies, are unaccounted for.

"Raw sewage is pumped into Iraq’s rivers and streams, streets and neighborhoods. And in these neighborhoods, one now finds torture havens, homes converted into dungeons, mosques converted into arms warehouses, ministries converted into modern-day gulags. No, there aren’t any concentration camps in Iraq — there are concentration facilities. Jails are overcrowded with men and women waiting to be “disappeared”.

"Estimates today indicate some 40,000 Iraqis are languishing in US-run facilities — the equivalent of 100 Guantanamo prisons. In 2004, some 5,000 Iraqis were incarcerated. Is progress measured by the increase in the numbers of those detained and jailed?

"Of course, the above numbers are not reflective of the numbers of Iraqis held in Interior Ministry detention and torture dungeons.

"Iraqis flee all this while world powers debate whether to call the carnage in Iraq a civil war. Civil war or not, Iraqis are dying by the busload. The use of that metaphor is not inappropriate given that buses carrying ordinary Iraqis to and from their jobs are coming under routine attack. They are stopped, the occupants lined up, questioned, names checked. Then the occupants are separated into two groups, Sunnis on one side, Shias on the other. One day, it is the Shias who are executed, on other days the Sunnis.

"In more troubling cases, dozens of government employees are kidnapped en masse as are members of the national chess, ping pong, and tennis teams. Those of particular sects are released while the corpses of those not are found later dotting Baghdad's streets and alleys with visible drill holes and other signs of torture.

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"Four years ago, I watched as “Shock and awe” went into full effect. The Hollywood title applied to one of the most barbaric assaults in recent history was designed to describe the bombings which the US Air Force unleashed on Iraqis.

"They were meant to be shocked by the ferocity of US weaponry. Then they were expected to be in awe of the might of US willpower.

"Iraqis are shocked that their country is utterly destroyed. There is nothing that holds their awe.

"Four years ago, the breaking of Iraq and its people began. Some 1,461 days later, the world community is still bickering over the words to describe the situation.

Found on Today in Iraq