Religious Lunacy and Chaos In Iraq

Photo: An Iraqi girl mourns the death of her father, an employee of a telephone exchange in Baghdad's Sadr city neighborhood. Four employees of a telephone exchange were shot dead as they arrived for work Sunday.
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IRAQ FALLING APART BEFORE OUR EYES

The Chaos in Iraq seems to be heating up. Al Qaeda has been successful at expanding the madness from just an insurgency to a conflict among the country's different cultures and religious sects. Something that the U.S. could not afford to let happen has happened- an internal conflict has begun for which no one knows how long or how bad it will be. But it doesn't look good.

But the Republican government here will immediately say that they are winning. They are still reading from the same script.

Some grizzly reports from Iraq over the last 48 hours or so:

Heads found- religious revenge killings.

Civilians dragged from buses and shot in cold blood.

50 civilians attacked and kidnapped from bus stations in broad daylight by masked gangs. They were herded away on buses by men dressed in Police uniforms.


Iraq is seeing the worst chaos since the invasion in March of 2003. The civil war is official as far as i'm concerned. There should be no more questions or debates about that fact....and I was one of the people reluctant to see it that way at first, in hopes that it would turn around. Civil war, civil unrest, whatever one wants to call it, that's where Iraq is today. It is clear that Iraq is out of control, and beyond fixing by the United States. It's too late for that. The U.S. has no clout and little influence there (if it ever really had any to begin with).

What a mess that the U.S. has created. Now U.S. policy dictates that U.S. troops must stay there to be a part of the chaos and carnage that it has created. The U.S. is committing suicide there!!!
The United Nations needs to take control of this situation without delay!!! Without such intervention, the already out of control carnage will get much worse. Iraq is losing its young base of able bodied workers, particularly young men- heads of households and bread winners, and they are losing them at a pretty fast clip. Iraq is also losing a large number of children, not only from the bullets and bombs, but also from malnutrician. See also here. Young girls are kidnapped and raped on a regular basis now because there is no law and order there. Girls are losing their innocence. And women are being left to raise families on their own, with no money, no social support systems, etc, after their husbands, fathers, brothers die in this carnage. With no one in these families left to work (or fewer adults left) there will be no one to go out to earn wages. With no wage earners, there will be less tax revenue, less investment, and less financial and social security...especially for widowed women with children. Ultimately, the quality of life for Iraqis will suffer long term, with increased poverty & lawlessness spreading. This is what happened with Afghanistan. This is exactly how Afghanistan became one of the poorest countries in the world. We are seeing a replay with Iraq.

Even under Saddam, Iraq did not have these kinds of problems. What most crazy Right Wing Americans don't understand (because they first picked up a damn newspaper on Sept. 12, 2001), is that Iraq was one of the more modern, more progressive, more secular countries in the Middle East before 1991 (Gulf War I). The education system there was pretty good when compared to similar countries in the region. And healthcare was fairly good when compared to other Middle Eastern countries.

From the pre-war intelligence, from the intelligence that led to the lies about U.S. troops being greeted with flowers and kisses (I knew that was bogus from the beginning because I knew the sentiment on the ground), to the intelligence about WMD.... it was all either off the mark, or fabricated lies to help build support for the war, or a combination of the two.

I wish the kids of rich Americans, particular rich politicians, were required by law to serve on the front lines in the Army or Marines for at least one year....and not in some cushy assignment. If we had such a law, U.S. foreign policy would be dramatically different from what it currently is today.