US Training of Death Squads in Iraq? - War Is A Crime .org

Close to one million Iraqis, most of them from the vital, educated middle class, have left thecountry to avoid the violence and hardship brought on as a result of the U.S. invasion.Despite all this, a Harris poll at the end of December showed that a majority of Americansbelieve the Bush administration's claims that Iraqis are better off now than they were underSaddam Hussein. Most Iraqis polled say just the opposite.President Bush and his supporters still insist that Iraq is supposed to be a model for democracythat other countries in the region should try to emulate. In reality, the U.S. conquest andoccupation of Iraq have, in the eyes of many Muslims worldwide, given democracy a bad namein the same way that the Soviets gave socialism a bad name through their conquest andoccupation of Afghanistan. Democracy has become synonymous with war, chaos, domination bya foreign power, and massive human suffering. As a result, anti-American sentiment in Iraq isgrowing.Amazingly, supporters of Bush policy cannot quite understand why this is the case. For example,Bush administration adviser Daniel Pipes, a leading proponent of the invasion, expressed hisdisappointment at “the ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them” byinvading and occupying their country.The Costs to the United StatesOne of the major sources of growing anti-American sentiment has been the Pentagon's counterinsurgencyoffensives, which have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians.Though small-unit operations have been curtailed, air strikes have been increasing. From the useof heavy weaponry and phosphorous bombs against population centers in Fallujah to massivesweeps rounding up thousands of innocent men, many of which have been subjected to torture atthe hands of U.S. forces, the United States is increasingly seen as an occupier, not a liberator. InIraq's tribal society, where the ethic of vengeance is still widespread, every civilian casualty atthe hands of U.S. soldiers potentially adds to the recruitment pool of the insurgency, whosehighly mobile cadres can easily slip away and resume operations in another locale or afterAmerican troops move on.That the war has led to a growth of anti-American extremism throughout the Arab and Islamicworld is no longer seriously questioned, as reports by U.S. intelligence agencies and the StateDepartment have confirmed. Resentment also seethes from the disruption of Iraq's economy,primarily through policies that have resulted in record unemployment, leaving nearly half thepopulation without jobs. This economic devastation is a result not only of the commercial chaosstemming from the invasion but also of Washington's decisions to eliminate tens of thousands ofIraqi government jobs, privatize public enterprises, give preference to foreign nationals forreconstruction efforts, and open Iraq to foreign multinationals against which local enterprisescannot compete.The Iraq War has already cost the United States $500 billion, which is more in current dollarsthan the entire Vietnam War. Ongoing costs are close to $10 billion per month. With the vastmajority of this money going to support the war, little is left to nurture civil society institutions,143