Tuesday, March 20, 2018

15 Years After: Remembering Shock and Awe

Remembering Shock and Awe

by Andy Worthington


March 20, 2018



Exactly 15 years ago, the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq began, with huge support from the British government led by Tony Blair, based on lies that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and constituted a direct threat to the West.

It was a day of profound shame and disgrace that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians (at the very minimum) and that has had lasting and horrendous repercussions - the destabilization of Iraq itself, the torture that first surfaced in the Abu Ghraib scandal in April 2004, massacres like those at Fallujah (also in April 2004) and the prisons - Camp Bucca and Camp Cropper, as well as Abu Ghraib, which "had an incendiary effect on the insurgency", as the Guardian explained in 2014 - leading eventually to the creation of Daesh (Islamic State).

Those responsible for this entire debacle, who, as a result of the war's clear illegality, are therefore guilty of war crimes, include George Bush and Tony Blair, and yet both men are still at liberty.

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