The following is an article that appeared today in
Al Jazeera
magazine which was original written by the Guardian. It seems to give a very
accurate portrayal of what is going on in Iraq and the reasoning for our being
there.

Not “liberation”- An occupation

The U.S. needs to put an immediate end to this quagmire in Iraq. It has
become clear that Iraq is not a liberated country, but an occupied country.

America freed Iraq of what it callsthe “dictator rule” of Saddam Hussein,
but not from its illegal occupation. This is exactly what happened in 1898;
the U.S. liberated Cuba from Spain, but not from the U.S. occupying forces-
the Spanish rule was overthrown, but the U.S. established a military base in
the country- same scenario we now see in Iraq.

Let’s compare what happened in Cuba to what the U.S. is now doing in Iraq.
The U.S. corporations moved into Cuba, just as Bechtel and Halliburton and
other oil corporations are moving into Iraq. The U.S. imposed, with the
support from local accomplices, the constitution that would govern Cuba, just
as it has drawn up a constitution for Iraq, and persuaded all parties to
accept it.

Not liberation. An occupation. And it is an ugly occupation.

The New York Times reported on August 7 2003 that General Sanchez in
Baghdad was worried about the Iraqi reaction to occupation. The Iraqi leaders
were giving him a message, as he put it:

“When you take a father in front of his family and put a bag over his head
and put him on the ground, you have had a significant adverse effect on his
dignity and respect in the eyes of his family.” (That’s very perceptive.) Back
to November 2004, when the U.S. forces bombarded the Iraqi town of Fallujah,
killing more than two thousands of its people; America said that the objective
of the operation was to rid the town of the “terrorist bands” acting as part
of a “Ba’athist conspiracy”.

But on June 16 2003, nearly six weeks after President Bush claimed victory
in Iraq, two reporters for the Knight Ridder newspaper group wrote this about
the Fallujah area:

“In dozens of interviews during the past five days, most residents across
the area said there was no Ba’athist or Sunni conspiracy against U.S.
soldiers,

“There were only people ready to fight because their relatives had been
hurt or killed, or they themselves had been humiliated by home searches and
road stops … One woman said, after her husband was taken from their home
because of empty wooden crates which they had bought for firewood, that the
U.S. is guilty of terrorism.”

The U.S. soldiers, who were told they would be welcomed as liberators, now
find they are surrounded by a hostile population.

Numerous reports talked about how angry the U.S. soldiers are at being kept
in Iraq. Such sentiments are becoming known to the U.S. public.

A Gallup poll conducted two years ago showed that only 13% of the U.S.
public thought the war was going badly. According to a poll published by The
New York Times and CBS News on June 17, 51% now think that Bush’s decision to
invade Iraq was wrong and that the U.S. should not have occupied Iraq. The
poll also showed that 59% disapprove of Bush’s handling of the situation.

The Americans feel they’re living in an occupied country that some alien
group has taken over. The U.S. is ruled by a president surrounded by a group
of politicians who care nothing about human life in the U.S. or abroad, who
care nothing about what happens to the earth, or what kind of world we are
leaving future generations.

The more the lies are being exposed the more Americans are beginning to
feel, like the soldiers in Iraq, that something is terribly wrong.

A strange phenomenon is occurring in national American papers, with many
editors beginning to condemn the war in Iraq, when previously many of them
“accepted” it.

Failing to capture the real perpetrators of 9/11 attacks, Bush’s admin
invaded Afghanistan, killing thousands of people and driving hundreds of
thousands from their homes. And still does not know where the criminals are.

Not knowing whether the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed
Weapons of Mass Destruction or not, the U.S. invaded Iraq, killing thousands
of civilians and terrorising the population.

Not knowing who was and was not a “terrorist”, the U.S. government held
hundreds of people in its detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The “war on terrorism” is not only a war on innocent people in other
countries; it is a war on American public: on its liberties and standard of
living. The lives of the young are being stolen like the country’s wealth is
being stolen and handed over to the super-rich.

The Iraq war won’t stop here; it will claim many more victims, in Iraq and
on U.S. territory.

The Bush repeatedly claimed that, unlike the Vietnam War, Iraq war is not
causing many casualties.

Fewer that 2,000 U.S. soldier have lost their lives in Iraq. But by the
time the war ends, the number of its indirect victims, through disease or
mental disorders, will be huge. After the Vietnam War, veterans reported
congenital malformations in their children, caused by Agent Orange.