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Nightmarish human depravation and suffering prove otherwise. Most Iraqis are unemployed or underemployed, impoverished, and without basic services. Under permanent occupation, the country is being strip-mined for profit, its resources stolen, its people exploited and abused, compounded by a poisoned environment, daily violence, major media suppressed crimes, thousands detained, tortured and ill-treated without charge under horrific conditions.
Obama's promise to withdraw all US forces by December 2011 will also be broken. As long as the region's oil rich and strategically important, America's there to stay, Iraqis to be used, abused, and cheated until they succeed in driving us out.
The hated occupation motivates them to resist, cleric Moqtada al-Sadr vowing to "rise up and fight to the death," Abu Mohammed (in charge of the Sadrist cemetery) saying if US forces aren't out by end of 2011, "we will fight and give our blood. This will be our solution," one they expect will be needed knowing Washington came to stay, a status millions of Iraqis won't tolerate nor should they.
Some Final Thoughts
Echoed by shameless major media trumpeting, Obama's bravado is brazenly bogus, the staged-managed Iraq pullout more retreat than success.
The occupation's now rebranded, yet US combat readiness remains, accompanied by daily violence, atrocities, and depravation. They plague Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and US-financed proxy wars in Somalia, Yemen, Colombia, and elsewhere, realities the major media suppress, as well as the war at home on human need, not addressed or discussed.
Since 2001 alone, trillions of dollars have been wasted on militarism and war making, badly needed funds domestically at a time of deepening depression.
As a result, growing millions of Americans are hemorrhaging - suffering from unemployment, lost savings, homelessness, ill health, hunger, hopelessness and despair, another unreported story, media stooges hailing a "recovery" for Wall Street, not Main Street.
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