Marine sentenced over Iraq civilian killing
A US marine has been sentenced to 18 months' jail in a Californian military court over his role in the kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi man in April.
US soldier admits Iraq girl rape
A US Army soldier has pleaded guilty to raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and helping murder her and her family.
Our country has done everything wrong and nothing right when it comes to Iraq.
Our country believed Bush when he said Iraq had WMDs, a nuclear weapons program, and ties to al Qaeda and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We let Osama bin Laden get away so that we could attack Iraq.
We disbanded the Iraqi military which created thousands and thousands of angry, unemployed men with guns. We did not send enough of our own troops to secure the country. We allowed looting. We did not secure Iraqi Army weapons and ammunitions which were and are being used by insurgents to kill US soldiers and marines. We allowed looting.
We allowed Halliburton and Bechtel to rip us off by giving them no bid contracts and letting them do inadequte reconstruction. We allowed those companies to operate without congressional oversight which allowed war profiteering. We let those companies do the work of reconstruction rather then let Iraqi people do the work which led to more hostility and unemployment.
We gave everything to the Shiites and the Kurds and nothing to the Sunnis (because Saddam was a Sunni) which led to more sectarian strife and violence. We did not secure the borders of Iraq which led to foreign terrorists entering the country to commit acts of terrorism against US troops, UN organizations, and the Iraqi people.
We created an environment for criminal acts like the ones in the articles cited above and Abu Ghraib to occur.
We mismanaged reconstruction funds. We put young Republicans with no experience in charge of reconstruction simply because they were Bush loyalists. We hired companies who did disastrously poor or incomplete work on building medical clinics and municipal buildings.
You name it, we botched it.
They say that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. In this case, it seems we led the horse to water, and now we are drowning it. If we continue to "stay the course" in Iraq, we are going to end up with a dead horse, and you know what they say about beating one of those.
It is over for us in Iraq. By staying there, we can only make things worse, and when you hear the Bush administration say otherwise, just remember that all their other predictions turned out to be WRONG. There is no reason to believe that they would be right this time. In fact, we have every reason to believe that they are wrong about this. We need to stop following that broken compass.
If I only knew the answer-Martin L Gore, from Depeche Mode's Leave In Silence
Or I thought we had a chance
Or I could stop this
I would stop this thing
From spreading like a cancer
What can I say
I don't want to play anymore
What can I say
I'm heading for the door
I can't stand this emotional violence
Leave in silence
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