Through Saturday, Iraq Body Count counts 198 violent deaths in the month so far. That's just in the first 9 days alone. Over 7,500 violent deaths have taken place so far this year.
It's really depressing -- if not surprising.
As Nicholas J.S. Davies. explained to Russia Today :
The United States employed a classic divide-and-rule strategy, pitting people of different sects against each other, inciting violence that is completely unprecedented in that country. And now has instilled a sectarian-based government that only represents people of only one sect. It is still receiving huge amounts of so-called security assistance from the United States.
The United States built powerful organs of state terrorism in Iraq. The CIA sent a retired colonel by the name of James Steele to Iraq in 2004. He eventually recruited 27 brigades of special police commandos who then waged a reign of terror that killed tens of thousands of mostly Sunni men and boys in Baghdad and around the country. They have since been rebranded, first as the National Police, when one of their torture centers was discovered back during that period, and now as the Federal Police. They are still effectively run by Adnan Al-Asadi, who has been the deputy interior minister there since 2005.
So that regime of state repression and terror that the United States installed in Iraq is still functioning, and still conducting extrajudicial executions, in addition to one of the largest numbers of supposedly legal executions in the world.
You know, in Iraq, you can be sentenced to death for property crimes; you can be sentenced to death on accusations of terrorism, in trials that only last, at best, an hour or two, with very little legal representation. Human rights officials from the UN have absolutely condemned the justice system – so-called justice system – that the US has established in Iraq, and have demanded – the UN Human Rights Council has demanded – that Iraq immediately cease these hangings.
Sometimes they hang more than 40 people in one day, including women as well. This is just a reign of terror. And in that sense, some of the worst aspects of the US occupation are still continuing today.
Again, it's not surprising.
Probably what's taking place in England isn't surprising either.
The Iraq Inquiry held public hearings from November 2009 to February 2011. They were tasked with? As Inquiry Chair John Chilcot explained, "This is an Inquiry by a committee of Privy Counsellors. It will consider the period from the summer of 2001 to the end of July 2009, embracing the run-up to the conflict in Iraq, the military action and its aftermath. We will therefore be considering the UK's involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish, as accurately as possible, what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned. Those lessons will help ensure that, if we face similar situations in future, the government of the day is best equipped to respond to those situations in the most effective manner in the best interests of the country."
So where's the report?
Still not released. Jamie Doward (Guardian) explained yesterday:
Contents of key conversations between Tony Blair and a bellicose George W Bush, who declares he is ready to "kick ass", are thought to be among documents relating to the Iraq war that the government is withholding from publication.
It emerged this week that the Cabinet Office is resisting requests from the Iraq inquiry, the body set up to draw lessons from the conflict, for "more than 130 records of conversations" between Blair, his successor, Gordon Brown, and Bush to be made public. In a letter to David Cameron, published on the inquiry's website, the committee's chairman, Sir John Chilcot, disclosed that "25 notes from Mr Blair to President Bush" and "some 200 cabinet-level discussions" were also being withheld.
Chris Ames (Iraq Inquiry Digest) points out, "The Inquiry’s problem is not a lack of evidence on which to draw conclusions but that it does not believe it can convince the public of its conclusions without being able to put reliable evidence in front of us."
Whatever the problem, it really is unacceptable that even now there are roadblocks put in place to prevent the public from knowing what really happened when a team of War Criminals got together to plot the criminal attack on Iraq.