Iraq: 5 years of occupation

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There is no longer any doubt that the Iraq War is a moral and strategic disaster for the United States. But what has not yet been fully recognized is that it has also been an economic disaster. To date, the government has spent more than $522 billion on the war, with another $70 billion already allocated for 2008. Recognizing these costs of the Iraq War is even more crucial now that the economy is facing recession.

According to the group Just Foreign Policy, more than a million Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion and occupation, now entering its sixth year.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than four million Iraqis are displaced from their homes, with roughly half of them outside of the country.
Baghdad has become the most dangerous city in the world, largely as a result of a U.S. policy of pitting various Iraqi ethnic and sectarian groups against one another. Ethnic and sectarian cleansing strategies, backed by occupation forces, have virtually eliminated all mixed areas of Baghdad.

War crimes: Iraq Veterans Against the War argues that well-publicized incidents of U.S. brutality like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of Haditha are not the isolated incidents perpetrated by "a few bad apples," as many politicians and military leaders have claimed. They are part of a pattern, the group says, of "an increasingly bloody occupation."

All this Cheney calls a "successful endeavor."

So why, exactly, did the U.S. invade Iraq five years ago?

The official reasons -- the threat posed to the U.S. and its allies by Saddam Hussein's alleged programs of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have long since been discarded by the lack of evidence that such a threat ever existed. Is the world safer place now without Saddam? There was no Al Quaeda in Iraq before invasion.

The Iraq war is largely about oil. After all, oil is an absolutely indispensable requirement for running modern economies and militaries. And the invasion was a forceful -- indeed, a shock- and awe-some -- demonstration to the rest of the world, especially potential strategic rivals like China, Russia, or even the European Union, of Washington's ability to quickly and effectively conquer and control an oil-rich nation in the heart of the energy-rich Middle East. Indeed, a demonstration of such power could well be the fastest way to formalize a new international order based on the overwhelming military power of the United States. It would be a "unipolar world".

Bush made his comments in a speech at the Pentagon to mark the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion : "Because we acted the world is better and the United States of America is safer."

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