WHO ARE THE TERRORISTS?

“It may be that US administrations would have been no less willing to release their bombs and missiles on white noncombatant populations (as was the case with Germany in World War II); but it can at least be said that, for the past half-century-plus, air power has functionally acted as an armed form of racism, that the sense of "their lives" as cheaper, even if seldom spoken aloud, has made it easier to use the helicopter, the bomber, the Hellfire-missile-armed Predator drone. The fact is that air war always cheapens human life. After all, from the heights, if seen at all, people must have something of the appearance of scurrying insects.” – Tom Engelhardt

As you can see from the chart posted here – the number of US bombing runs are increasing in Iraq, and I can assure you, in Afghanistan too. This is causing a huge uproar in Afghanistan, particularly since the US and NATO bombing runs have killed more civilians than the Taliban have. That is murder, pure and simple. It is murder in Iraq also. It is amazing how, year after year, we keep hearing that the Iraqi forces are not able to “stand up” and protect their own country, yet the insurgents attacks continue and grow ever bolder. Those insurgents are Iraqis. They are defending their country.

I have often thought about what air strikes will do, beyond kill and injure people and destroy homes and businesses in the immediate area. I wonder about the underground water pipes and sewer pipes. It seems to me that these would be heavily damaged by bombing, and this would have an impact on areas far beyond the bombing range. This would result in serious public health issues also.

I just cannot imagine sitting in your home and hearing airplanes or drones dropping bombs around you. I think I would die from the stress and the fear, even if nothing hit me or my home. I cannot imagine digging through the rubble to see if anyone is still alive. I would like to be able to film the bombing raids and broadcast them to the world. I would like to make each and every person who ordered the bombing raid to sit and watch the aftermath of their work.

Some people here in the US think the insurgents and al Qaeda are BARBARIC because they will behead people and film it while they do their evil bloody deeds. And this is barbaric. But *IF I HAD A CHOICE* between being beheaded or having a bomb dropped on my neighborhood, I would choose the beheading. It would be less painful and frightening for me – and it damn sure would be better for the neighborhood.

The media here in the US, during the Iraq war and Afghanistan war, have long ignored the after effects of US bombings. This is not true of other media in other countries. They will often get film of the after effects of the bombings we have done and show them repeatedly. This is a huge moral and journalistic failure on the part of the US media not to show these events. It allows Americans to remain ignorant of the evil and the murder they are supporting. It allows Americans to somehow think they are less barbaric than other people, when the truth is exactly the opposite.

The so-called terrorists of this world have killed tens of thousands by now. But in Iraq alone, we have killed a million or more. We, of course, had help from the al Qaeda in Iraq terrorists and help from all the sectarian violence that we helped get started (on purpose, too, I might add). However, since we are the occupying power, we are the ones responsible for protecting the civilian population, so we are the ones responsible for all those deaths. So, the end result is this – we are the biggest terrorists in the world. We will end up having killed more Iraqis than Saddam did, and it is quite possible we will have killed more people than he did too.

Here is an article on Iraqi deaths since the US invasion:

Is the U.S. Responsible for the Death of Nearly a Million Iraqis?

In a scientific study published last fall in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, researchers from Johns Hopkins estimated that 650,000 Iraqis had died because of the US invasion and occupation of their country. The survey that produced that estimate was completed in July, 2006. Unfortunately, despite the calls of the Lancet authors for other studies, there has been no systematic effort to update these results. Just Foreign Policy has attempted to update the Lancet estimate in the best way we know. We have extrapolated from the Lancet estimate, using the trend provided by the tally of Iraqi deaths reported in Western media compiled by Iraq Body Count. Our current estimate is that 974,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion.

……The exact toll will never be known. But this is no reason not to attempt to know what the best estimate is. We also don't know many other key facts with certainty. We don't know how many people live in the U.S. The census department creates an estimate, and this estimate is the basis of policy. The Johns Hopkins researchers used the methods accepted all over the world to estimate deaths in the wake of war and natural disasters. The United Nations, for example, uses them to plan famine relief. Even the Bush administration relies on them when it accuses Sudan of genocide in Darfur. At present, this represents the best information we have.

Here is one “fact” we know for sure, thanks to research by McClatchy Newspapers – US troops have shot 429 civilians at checkpoints (or near patrols and convoys) during the past year. This is per statistics compiled by the US military. And, as our troops surged into Iraq, the number of shooting surged also.

And we have growing evidence of what has happened to Iraqis not only from their own blogs, but from the stories of the Iraq war veterans.

The number of Iraqis killed will never be known for sure, but from all my reading and blogging on Iraq, it seems quite likely that we have passed the million dead mark. On top of that, there are about 2 million refugees outside the country of Iraq – those who have voted with their feet to leave the hell-hole the bush/cheney administration and the rest of the US government has created there. And, there are an estimated two million internally displaced persons also. These are – again – people who fled their homes and communities in order to survive. Health care is in shambles in Iraq, electricity and drinkable water is in very short supply, children are dying in massive numbers from birth defects, diarrhea, and pneumonia. Unemployment is estimated to be 60 to 70%. The country has been destroyed, and the population is being subjected to genocide.

I do not have time to research the claims that I will be making in this paragraph – but all these claims have some evidence to support them. We know that historically, the US armed and supported bin Laden and his group when the Russians were occupying Afghanistan. Today, the US is running covert operations to destabilize Iran, this is likely true in Syria and Lebanon also. The US government is arming and funding Fatah in Palestine. After Negroponte showed up in Iraq, the Shi’ite death squads started operating. This was followed by retaliation by Sunni extremists via car bombs. In Basra in 2005, two Brits were detained by the Iraqi police and the police claimed that they had a car full of explosives when they were captured in a gunfight. The British military busted those Brits (in Arab dress) out of the Iraqi prison and confiscated the car. They never allowed anyone to look at the car to determine if there were explosives in the car. It is very likely that the US/UK were behind this car bomb attacks at some point.

So, in summary, there seems to be a lot going on in covert actions that are decidedly promoting violence and instability across the Middle East. They started up a huge game of “Let’s You and Him Fight” – which is, sadly, nothing new for our government. Here is an opinion piece that covers this subject:

Let’s Kill Them All

How many Americans would support our foreign policy if they knew that it was a plan to unleash genocide against civilians (without concern for the consequences to American soldiers)? How many of us would support Bush and Cheney if they knew that the plan was not to "win" the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, but to prolong and intensify them in order to use those countries as bases for exporting sectarian warfare to all of their oil-bearing neighbors. Instead of simply fighting the small force of a few thousand radical Islamists who actually attacked us on 9/11, the neocon war plan to remake the entire Middle East was enacted. The "mission" was turned into a monstrous plan aimed at all Islamists, even the non-radical ones. Religion was to be used as a weapon, by turning Islam upon itself. Islamic radicals were armed and trained to function as terrorist combat brigades and death squads in neighboring opponent nations. They carried out brutal attacks and political assassinations within civilian areas, as a method for igniting wars within all of Islam.

It is just an opinion that this is what they are doing – but it does seem to be supported, doesn’t it? Just like the claim that bush was lying about WMDs seems to be supported – after all, anyone who tried could have figured out there were no nuclear WMDs in Iraq, and if bush was just really, really dumb and just COULDN’T figure it out – wouldn’t he be angry that he was lied to? Yet, oddly, he did not seem to care that a war was started over a pack of lies and he was the one responsible for starting it. He even gave a medal to one of the main guy who got it wrong!

And while I like to think of Iraq as “George’s Genocide” in actually, all US taxpayers and citizens share some responsibility for this genocide. May mercy come and wash away WHAT WE’VE DONE.

More information on Iraq Today and News about Afghanistan.

It is impossible at this point to help Iraqis inside Iraq, but there are ways to help the Iraqi refugees.

Please help them if you can.