“I’ll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.”
                                                          - George W Bush
                                                            Washington, D.C.
                                                             May 12, 2008 

The despots who ruled our nation for eight years would have us believe that, despite the lies over weapons of mass destruction, despite the ruse that the invasion of Iraq would be a quick and easy victory and despite the drain on the U.S. economy caused by astronomical funding of the invasion, our job in Iraq has been a resounding success.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney speaking with John King on CNN in May –

“I guess my general sense of where we are with respect to Iraq and at the end of now, what, nearly six years, is that we’ve accomplished nearly everything we set out to do….

“The defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq, the writing of that democratic constitution, a series of elections that involve power sharing among all the various groups, the end of sectarian violence.  I think a major defeat for the Iranians living next door to Iraq, who tried to influence events there.”

Former President George W. Bush, speaking at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington just prior to the elections in Iraq –

“The story of freedom has just begun in the Middle East…. America once again defended its own freedom by using liberty to transform nations from bitter foes to strong allies.”

And more Bush, following the Iraqi elections –

“Today, the people of Iraq have spoken to the world and the world has heard the voice of freedom from the center of the Middle East.”

“Men and women have taken rightful control of their country’s destiny and they have chosen freedom and peace.”

But what have we really accomplished in Iraq?

An estimated 4 million Iraqis, out of 27 million, have been displaced from their homes.  Some 2.7 million are internally displaced inside Iraq; a couple hundred thousand are cooling their heels in Jordan; and perhaps a million are quickly running out of money and often living in squalor in Syria.  The end result is that Bush’s war has left about 15% of Iraqis homeless inside the country or abroad.  In the U.S., this would be equivalent to having 45 million Americans thrown out of their homes.

No one knows for certain how many Iraqis have died as a result of the 2003 invasion and its aftermath; best estimates place the toll in the hundreds of thousands, with documented civilian deaths around 100,000.  Bush and Cheney did not kill them all, but the U.S. bears direct responsibility for a large number of all violent deaths since 2003.  As for the rest, we only set in motion the train that led to their deaths.

Baghdad has been turned from a mixed city with about half of its population Shi’a and the other half Sunni in 2003, into a Shi’a city where the Sunni population may be as little as ten to fifteen percent.  From a Sunni point of view, the Bush-Cheney war has resulted in a Shi’a (and Iranian) take-over of the Iraqi capital, long a symbol of pan-Arabism and anti-imperialism.

In the Iraqi elections, Shi’a fundamentalist parties closely allied with Iran came to power.  The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the leading party in parliament, was formed by Iraqi expatriates at the behest of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1982 in Tehran.  The Islamic Mission (Da’wa) Party is the oldest ideological Shi’a party working for an Islamic state.  It helped form Hezbollah in Beirut in the early 1980s and it has supplied both Lebanese prime ministers elected since 2005.  Fundamentalist Shi’as shaped the Iraqi constitution, which forbids the civil legislature from passing legislation that contravenes Islamic law.  Dissidents have accused the elected Iraqi government of being an Iranian puppet.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women have been widowed by the war, leaving most without a means of support.

The U.S. has wasted $32 billion on Iraq reconstruction, and much of it cannot even be traced.  Effectively, Bush-Cheney gave away $32 billion to anonymous cronies in such a way that we can’t even be sure who stole it.  Compare this to the anger we felt when AIG paid over the $400 million in bonuses then turned around and asked the American taxpayer for a bailout.

Political power is being fragmented in Iraq with big spikes in the murder rate in some provinces that may reflect faction-fighting and vendettas in which the Iraqi military is loathe to get involved.

The Iraqi economy is devastated, and the new government’s bureaucracy and infighting have made it difficult to attract investors.

The Bush-Cheney invasion helped further destabilize the Eastern Mediterranean, setting in play Kurdish nationalism and terrifying Turkey.

Robert Dreyfuss, writing in The Nation, describes the reality of the situation in Iraq:

“As we pull back, we’re leaving Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in charge.  Increasingly, Maliki is taking on the trappings of a dictator.  He’s established a network of security agencies that report directly to him.  He’s built a countrywide patronage system to bribe and pay off tribal allies, in anticipation of 2010 elections.  He’s shown no compunction against using the army, the police and the secret agencies he controls to eliminate rivals.  He’s used divide-and-conquer tactics to outflank the Sunni-led sahwa movement, known as the Awakening or the Sons of Iraq, driving some of them back into armed resistance and others into sullen resentment or fear for their lives.

“And Maliki, despite his protestations that he is a born-again ‘nationalist,’ has close ties to Iran.  With Iran now revealed as a fundamentalist-run, naked military dictatorship, I expect Iran to act ruthlessly vis-a-vis Iraq, and if he wants to stay in power Maliki will pretty much have to go along.

“A prominent Sunni activist from northern Iraq told me Tuesday that anyone who thinks about opposing Maliki in Iraq has to fear for his or her life.  The fact remains that despite the resurgence of secular nationalism in Iraq, as evidenced by the results of provincial elections last February, Maliki sits atop a conspiratorial little party called Al Dawa, a fundamentalist Islamist grouping, and he is reliant on a small, secretive clique that surrounds him.  During the February election, in order to appeal to Iraqi voters, Maliki posed as a nationalist of sorts, but in fact he is dependent on two outside powers.  First, he’s dependent on the United States, for despite his bravado about the US withdrawal from Iraq’s cities, Maliki desperately needs American backing to remain in power, to build up his armed forces.  And second, Maliki is dependent on the good will of Iran, which could topple him instantly if he crossed Tehran.”

Yet, in all his recent publicity-seeking appearances, Dick Cheney has avoided mentioning all the human suffering he and his cohorts caused.  Instead, he has continued to propagate the myth of “Iraqi democracy.”  He lies when he says that Iran’s influence in Iraq has been blocked, and he continues to lie when he insists the US was fighting Al-Qaeda in Iraq, rather than just Iraqis.  He and Bush even claim that they have made Iraqi women’s lives better.

The real truth is that we changed out one dictator for another.  We have displaced millions and ravaged an entire country while sacrificing the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.  The real question we need to answer is whether Bush and Cheney will ever be held accountable for their crimes against humanity.