Ten Years After, The Stench Remains

The stench of bodies burned by white phosphorus, of stillborn children with depleted uranium-induced deformities so gross they are barely recognizable as human, of torture and rendition conducted by contracting firms such as Blackwater (now known as Academi), recently revealed as directly in the employ of the CIA and its taxpayers; the stench of burning oil fields, of hungry children shivering in the cold in North America, of the farts of fat, sleek war profiteers the mainstream media tells us to revere as "winners" in the vicious game of access to the dirty fuels that keep the light burning for capitalism.

Business, politics and war -- there you have it. Haliburton, the love of Dick Cheney's life, made billions off the Iraq war.  Bush will get a presidential lie-brary in Texas. Rice will continue with lucrative teaching and lecturing gigs. Et cetera, ad nauseum.

The people of Iraq will continue to suffer the effects of civil unrest, and of the destroyed infrastructure that was never repaired even though corporations billed the U.S. government billions to do the job.

The veterans who went to invade Iraq will continue to wrestle the demons of despair, many broken in body and spirit. Many will not make it back to their families or the lives they left behind. Many went into the military after the gigantic lie of 9/11 -- that it was the unaided work of Islamic terrorists -- and many more went, not out of idealism, but because there were no living wage jobs for kids with high school diplomas, and they wanted the money to go to college. They never studied true world history and current events, so they never really knew that the dictator they were supposed to be risking their lives to topple had been a close U.S. friend and ally for years.

Four million Iraqi refugees, one million of whom have yet to return home. At least hundreds of thousands, perhaps as many as a million civilian deaths in Iraq. A highly profitable war for the 1%. That's why Bush made a buffoon of himself very early in the occupation declaring "Mission Accomplished." The direct feed from the U.S. taxpayer to the corporations that kept him in office was firmly in place. And in 2013, the U.S. taxpayer is still bleeding dollars into those accounts faster than a human being could even count.