Iraq

The war in Iraq should end promptly. It is a violation of international law that it is occurring, and the primary action is over. This can be done by inviting the United Nations to secure and keep peace in the nation using numerous fresh internationally intentioned soldiers and equipment, and involving charity and NGO organizations throughout the world. In combination with the Two Million Wells program, this should ease tensions in the state and help the Iraqi people feel safe enough to form a unity government. America can participate by stationing about 10,000 soldiers in Baghdad and on the Iraqi border to handle international security, while the UN and other forces handle national Iraqi security. The remainder of American forces in the region should return home.

We broke international law by invading Iraq as a sovereign nation without UN approval. Our reasons for attack were illegitimate. Iraq had no WMD that we know of, no pictures or evidence spoken of before the war has been produced. No WMD have been recovered, nor any WMD facilities. No plans for use or distribution of these weapons have been found.

It seems that the reasons to go to war were mostly made up by our government, as referenced in The Downing Street Memos. As terms of the new government and the reconstruction, only American, British, and participating countries are allowed to bid on contracts. 'Contracts' being the Iraqi oil fields, previously capped by the Oil For Food program. >50% of the oil illegally snuck out of Iraq went to a company in Texas. All of the oil sailed out of Iraq during this time were given clearance through a US Navy blockade. /_\ [therefore] We know precisely how much oil left the country. Halliburton received the contract to rebuild Iraq's oil fields and likely got quite a deal on owning them and the oil, along with other Coalition-only companies and industries. We only began putting meters on the oil pumps in 2005. No one reported how much oil was pumped from the fields from 2003-2005.

Note that peak oil is coming in 2007, and a prompt and courteous military invasion and restructuring program would have already been finished. George W Bush refused UN assistance in Iraq in Fall of 2003 for unknown reasons. Almost three years later we are still at a tactical standstill.

Before the invasion, the UN had been storing WMD in Iraq during the process of being dismantled. When Americans told the UN and internationals to leave Iraq before 19 March 2003, they were forced to abandon these facilities, which were subsequently looted. Our commanders did not devote forces to guard these sites, which were stripped. Ammo dumps and other poor tactical decisions introduced much military equipment to the area. Invading Iraq in this way introduced weapons and WMD to a less organized state.

Being the aggressor nation and having a much larger treasure chest and armed force, we could have gone to Iraq adequately equipped and manned. Instead we went to Iraq understrength based on top military and international advisors' assessments, and underequipped, with soldiers' families routinely having to provide body armor, drinking water, and other assorted goods. Soldiers were short on ammunition, vehicle armor, allies, and subsequently forced to work double duties without enough resources. Still, the conquest took two months of standing battle to win the area.

Later in the war Bush sent the American National Guard to Iraq, who have not been deployed out of country since 1776 when we got this land. They were untrained for front line combat and afforded some 5 bullets per week? The month after they were deployed, Florida was hit by four major hurricanes. The Army dug them out.

Once that victory was achieved, in June 2003, public preparations for civic elections should have replaced chaos ad war. Instead of elections and the formation of a new state, Coalition leaders waited over a year to begin new elections, during which time impoverished and powerless Iraqi authority came to rely on American supply and organization. American sargeants became defacto mayors of Iraqi towns and city regions. We have given two major funding stipends to the Iraq war to the tune of ~170 billion dollars, on top of the initial spending package.

This stripped the Iraqis of their national sovereignty and identity as people, and demolished their ability to function independently of American forces. With too few American soldiers in the country, these posts shifted from town to town, with no town being able to truly support itself, let alone independently and without state government, and fostering an anarchistic state which ground down Iraqi confidence in American forces and themselves. Given the horrible conditions, this fostered and continues to foster rebel sympathy and rebellion activity. This makes the Iraqi insurgency a rebellion and a statement of acted upon public opinion in a weapon-rich and low-organization environment. This lends the insurgency to being a popularizable grassroots movement, difficult to quash by military force without addressing national interests. This is a major reason we are losing in Iraq and facing such heavy resistance.

The Iraqi people have been antagonized of American presence by numerous atrocities and failures. We are dealing with a torture epidemic both at home and in Iraq. We currently break the Geneva Convention when we hold our POW's on a routine basis by exposing them to the elements as punishment. Marines have been accused of covering up massacres, and thousands of incidents of documented and undocumented abuses by soldiers have occured, such as saving glass bottles to throw from humvees at civilians and kicking children who ask for soda, in the presence of a commanding officer. The response was 'That won't be necessary.' This could be from troop exhaustion. Thousands of photos were taken of scenes of abuse, and our leaders have called for harsher interrogation practices and our legislature has refused to ban torture. We are guilty of rendition of prisoners, giving them to other nations so they can interrogate and torture them. We also have been accused of having secret prisons in Eastern Europe for blacklist prisoners based on flight records/musters through European nations. This is in addition to the war crime of unlawful invasion. Our invasion has also produced what approximates to over 100,000 civilian casualties as of 2005, as well as the horrors of war from lost wages to delayed families to mental aguish ad international disgrace to PTSD and destroyed trust and sense of security in mankind.

The Hague is the world's war crime tribunal center. Famous dictators and war criminals are tried there. Dick Cheney refused to acknowledge the World Court's authority because he would be tried by France for setting up a $100 million bribery slush fund in Algeria in the late 1990's while head of Halliburton. The Hague should be notified of all of the war crimes and Geneva Convention violations by the United States and Coalition have in and around Iraq, and be put to the test.

The Exit Plan for Iraq should be produced and stuck to. We are turning Iraq into a colony at this rate. They are unable to support themselves. We have completely decentralized them and they rely on the American military for the majority of their organization and support. When peak oil comes, they will be in no shape to run their country and the added economic and political pressures, combined with their weakly engineered constitution unique to the world allowing 100% of Iraqi companies to be foreign, America will be in Iraq, and American companies will still be in control of Iraq's oil, unless we call for international support in Iraq and change the way we are rebuilding the country.

Peace.