From time immemorial those that end up suffering the most in wars started by men are the women and children, it therefore comes as little surprise that their is no change in the status quo regarding Iraq.
The scale of the suffering is stupefying and given the conditions in the country there can be no hope that this suffering will not grow and escalate for years, if not decades to come.
The country is destroyed, shattered, and how anybody can put it back together I have really no idea. One thing for certain it won't be this ineffectual puppet government that hasn't a bit of former experience in government, that finds itself faced problems and threats of such proportions that even the most well established and functioning governments would cower before the enormity of the task set before them.
And I am afraid the rhetoric coming out of Washington regarding Iraqi progress and "benchmarks"has now become the equivalent of Nixon's "Peace with Honour."
What the answer is, I don't know, and the frightening thing is I don't think anybody else does.
As many as 260,000 children have died since the March 2003 invasion, according to one estimate reported by the British daily The Independent in January.For those children who do live to see their fifth birthday, Iraq has become a hostile and often deadly environment.
Less than a third of Iraq’s children now attend school, compared to 100 percent attendance before the March 2003 invasion. The principal reason students are staying out of the classrooms is fear of the endemic violence that makes a trip to school a deadly risk their families are unwilling to take.
"honor killings" of women
Awena reported last January that in this governorate there were 289 burning cases resulting in 46 deaths of women in 2005, and 366 burning cases resulting in 66 deaths in 2006. Meanwhile, the Emergency Management Center in Erbil cited 576 burning cases resulting in 358 deaths in that governorate since 2003.
It is not just the international medical community. The state of the Iraqi healthcare system constitutes a US war crime. The Fourth Geneva Convention demands that an occupying power "[e]nsure the effective operation of medical services,
The above taken from part two. Part one here, but it is not imperative that they be read in sequence.
The above taken from part two. Part one here, but it is not imperative that they be read in sequence.
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