by Stephen Lendman
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When the most powerful military force in the history of the universe throws up its hands and effectively cries uncle, it shows how bad things are in the Kafkaesque maelstrom of Iraq. It also shows how hopeless this adventure was that should have been brain-dead and stillborn from the start - but you'd never know it from the head-in-the-sand comments of the "stay-the-coursers" in Washington that includes the president, vice-president and Democrat leadership even when their language changes. They're willing to fine-tune the tactical management of the operation as they're now about to do but never willing to give up the prize they've already invested so much in and can't afford to give up because the cost of doing it is so great. It's what journalist Robert Fisk meant when he said "the US must get out (of Iraq), they will get out, and they can't get out."
Here's more evidence of how bad things are and how impossible it's becoming trying to deal with it. In his November 1 column in the London Independent, unembedded journalist Patrick Cockburn wrote that "Baghdad Is Under Siege." It follows his article days earlier called "From 'Mission Accomplished' to 'Mission Impossible' in Iraq." From his vantage point on the ground, Cockburn paints a grim picture of out-of-control chaos. "Sunni insurgents have cut the roads linking the city (Baghdad) to the rest of Iraq. The country is being partitioned as militiamen fight bloody battles for control of towns and villages north and south of the capital." He goes on to say food shortages in some neighborhoods are becoming severe, and the scale of daily killing is "massive" --
--1000 or more violent deaths weekly.
--Shia fighters controlling most of the city encircled by Sunnis.
--1.5 million Iraqis have fled their homes according to the Iraqi Red Crescent (a separate UNHCR estimate apart from Cockburn's article puts the number at 1.8 million Iraqis living in neighboring countries and another 1.6 million "internally displaced" within Iraq including those who left during the 1990s).
--Shia and Sunni militias control the country, not the US military, Iraqi army or police that are all impotent.
--the militias grow "stronger by the day because the Shia and Sunni communities feel threatened and do not trust the army and police to defend them."
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres confirmed through his chief spokesperson Ron Redmond on November 3 how bad things are in Iraq based on the number of refugees the conflict is generating. UNHCR says about 100,000 Iraqis now leave their homes each month in a desperate attempt to find safety. The UN agency estimates 2000 a day go to Syria, another 1000 a day cross into Jordan, some go to other countries and still others seek asylum in Europe. UNHCR also estimates an additional 50,000 Iraqis become "internally displaced" each month.
The immense refugee problem is the most visible sign of a failed US policy along with the out-of-control daily violence across most of the country killing 100 or more every day according to a UN estimate that's too low. It's the culmination of nearly 16 years of a US-directed reign of state-sponsored terrorism against the country and its people that slaughtered or caused the deaths of over two million Iraqi men, women and children and counting and left in its wake a surreal lawless armed camp wasteland with few or no essential services like electricity, clean water, vital sanitation, medical care, education, fuel and most everything else needed for sustenance and survival. Things aren't improving. They're getting worse as a brutal occupation grinds on and death squads roam freely including the US-directed "Salvador option" ones of the type National Intelligence Director John Negroponte once led in the 1980s when he was US Ambassador to Hondurus during the Reagan Contra wars when he directed the administration's terror war of that era against the Nicaraguans and Salvadorans fighting for their freedom.
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