Great. That’s all we need. There is a cholera epidemic in Iraq caused by the “decrepit water supply system”. The outbreak started in northern Iraq, aka Kurdistan, the peaceful portion of the former nation-state of Iraq, now rendered a bloodbath thanks to “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. The outbreak has spread to Baghdad, where all hell happens without warning on a daily basis.

You break it, you own it. Washington is the occupying power. The government in Baghdad is a client, installed under a U.S. military occupation, ongoing and “enduring”. By invading the county, Washington has made itself responsible for the security and for the health of Iraqis. That is inherent in the “quaint” Geneva Conventions. So here we are toward the end of 2007, after pouring untold billions into Iraq since “mission accomplished” in 2003, with a cholera epidemic. Some cakewalk.

Please do not be so quick to blame that incomprehensible character, G.W. Bush, for this humanitarian tragedy. He is the front man defending a “misguided” policy, certainly, but at this point at least, he is almost irrelevant. For starters, do not overlook the Clinton-enforced economic embargo on Iraq which preceded the Cheney-Bush invasion of Iraq. Moreover, the invasion itself may be viewed as the logical extension of the Clinton-era 1998 “Iraq Liberation Act” which breezed through both houses of a pandering, grandstanding Congress.

About those genocidal economic sanctions, deemed to be “worth it” by Madeleine Albright, Bubba’s Secretary of State, you can read all about them in an informative book, The Scourging of Iraq by Geoff Simons. The infrastructure of Iraq was decimated. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians died as a result. After this softening-up process came the crucifixion of Iraq, to wit, the 2003 invasion and occupation. The latter has been a production of the Cheney-Bush team, the “neocons”, and their enablers on Capitol Hill. What all this amounts to is meddling by Washington on a monumental scale for decades. Under the Regency of Dick Cheney, our hijacked American government has simply taken the process to the next level. 

--Copyright 2007 Patrick Foy--