[Peace-discuss] ron paul on 5 years in Iraq - 23 March08

[E. Wayne Johnson]

On Five Years in Iraq

Five years ago last week, the US military's "shock and awe" campaign lit 
up the Baghdad sky. Five years later, with hundreds of thousands of 
Iraqis and nearly four thousand Americans dead, we should pause and 
reflect on just what has been gained and what has been lost.

 From the beginning, the march to war was paved with false assumptions 
and lies. Senior administration officials claimed repeatedly that Iraq 
was somehow responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001. They 
claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They manipulated the 
fear of the American people after 9/11 to further a war agenda that they 
had been planning years before that attack. The mainstream media was 
complicit in this war propaganda.

Nearly ten years ago, long before 9/11, I requested the time in 
opposition to the fateful Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, where I then 
stated on the Floor of the House of Representatives, "I see this piece 
of legislation as essentially being a declaration of virtual war. It is 
giving the President tremendous powers to pursue war efforts against a 
sovereign Nation." Less than five years later we were invading Iraq .

Five years into the invasion and occupation of Iraq , untold hundreds of 
thousands of Iraqis are dead; some two million Iraqis have fled the 
country as refugees; and the Iraqi Christian community – one of the 
oldest in the world – has been decimated more completely than even under 
the Ottoman occupation or the rule of Saddam Hussein.

On the US side, nearly four thousand Americans have lost their lives 
fighting in Iraq and many thousands more are horribly wounded. Our own 
senior military officers warn that our military is nearly broken by the 
strain of the Iraq occupation. The Veterans Administration is 
overwhelmed by the volume of disability claims from Iraq war veterans.

A study by Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz concludes that the cost 
of the war in Iraq could be at least $3 trillion. The economic 
consequences of our enormous expenditure in Iraq are beginning to make 
themselves known as we fall into recession and possibly worse.

Iraq war supporters claim that the "surge" of additional US troops into 
Iraq has been a resounding success. I am not so confident. Under the 
"surge" policy the United States military has trained and equipped with 
deadly weapons those Iraqi militia members against whom they were 
fighting just months ago. I fear by arming and equipping opposing 
militias we are just setting the stage for a more tragic and dangerous 
explosion of violence, possibly aimed at US troops in Iraq . There is no 
indication that the Iraqi government has made any political progress 
whatsoever.

The sooner we withdraw the better. The invasion and continued US 
occupation has strengthened both Iran and Al-Qaeda in the region. 
Continuing down the road of a failed policy will only cost more money we 
do not have and more lives that should not be sacrificed. 
Interventionism has produced one disaster after another. It is time we 
return to a non-interventionist foreign policy that emphasizes peaceful 
trade and travel and no entangling alliances. We can begin by 
withdrawing from Iraq immediately.