The Ethnic Cleansing At The Heart Of The “Victory“… October 6, 2008
Posted by bensix in Iraq.trackback
Johann Hari has caught up with the UCLA study into satellite imagery over Baghdad:
“So what happened in Iraq? Before, during and after the surge, the areas that had always been Sunni and the areas that had always been Shia were brighter than ever. But in the vast mixed areas, half or more of the lights went out in the six months leading up to the surge. They then stabilised in half-darkness. By the time the US troops arrived, there were no more mixed areas left. The easy pickings – the Shia who lived next door, or the Sunni who lived up the road – had all been attacked already. Sunni and Shia weren’t killing each other any more because they had retreated into vast enclaves, cleansed and armed, surrounded by barriers manned by militias. Four million people had been driven from their homes.”
This outrageous conspiracy theory has since been substantiated by, er, the Pentagon and the Government Accountability Office.
In a hearing before the House Appropriations Committee, Joe Christoff of the GOA admitted that “we look at the attack data going down, but it’s not taking into consideration that there might be fewer attacks because you have ethnically cleansed neighborhoods“.
Indeed, the Pentagon Quarterly Report* has suggested that, while 73% of Iraqis described the security situation in their neighborhoods as calm, only 37% feel safe travelling outside of their own neighborhoods. I think I’m safe in saying that that’s not due to snobbery.
If Barack Obama had any balls, he’d call bullshit on McCain’s ignorant trumpeting of his “victory” and begin considering the withdrawal of the troops that under twenty-five percent of Iraqis have confidence in.
[...] with platitudes. He’s become starry eyed over the “surge”, for example, despite all information opposing that view. He’s consistently battered away with the old “al-Qaeda threat” mallet, and [...]
[...] pieces of evidence substantiated this proposition. Lazily, I’ll reproduce an extract from a summation that I wrote in October… “In a hearing before the House Appropriations Committee, Joe [...]