Kurdistan Portal

Did the U.S. Create a Civil War in Iraq?

Ashley Smith, 18.01.2011

At he Fort Bragg ceremony honoring the return of U.S. troops from Iraq, President Barack Obama boasted that the U.S. had accomplished “an extraordinary achievement nine years in the making.”

“Everything that the American troops have done in Iraq–all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering–all of it has led to this moment of success,” Obama said. “[W]e’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.”

Such claims are a lie. None of this rhetoric can disguise the terrible waste of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq–as many as 1 million Iraqis dead, millions more driven from their homes, along with 4,500 U.S. soldiers killed, 32,000 wounded and nearly $1 trillion gone.

Obama’s claims about America’s “extraordinary achievement” in Iraq are Orwellian. In reality, the U.S. war and occupation further wrecked an already devastated country, left it in a shambles rather than rebuild it and stoked sectarianism between Iraq’s three main groups–Kurds, Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims. [...]

http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/01/did-the-u-s-create-a-civil-war-in-iraq/