RSS Feed
April 9th, 2013 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Iraq is marking 10 years since the ousting of Saddam Hussein, in an overthrow triggered by a US invasion. In the last few months alone, 200 civilians have been killed and more than 800 injured as the country remains unstable and torn by violence.
The Iraq War – which since 2003 has caused well over 110,000
violent deaths according to several surveys – has also reverberated
throughout the country that led the invading coalition. About 4,500
US soldiers were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2012, but many
more suffered from post-war psychological trauma.
Recent research has revealed that nearly half of the 2.2 million
Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who served in the US Military have
experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and experienced
other mental, physical and financial problems as they struggle to
readjust to civilian life at home.
Iraq War veteran Edward Chin, who appears in the legendary video
of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue, has told RT that he is
still searching for reasons to justify the bloody conflict.
RT: Ten years have passed since you essentially became
a symbol of the US occupation and invasion in Iraq. You were 23 at
the time when you climbed that statue. What do you know about the
Iraq War now that you didn’t know then?
Edward Chin: What I know is that it’s lasted 10 years
longer than we expected, they’re still struggling to rebuild the
country, to have the stable government.
RT: You climbed that statue of Saddam Hussein and
wrapped its face in an American flag. Looking back on your actions:
Was that an appropriate thing to do for a foreigner coming in,
invading a country, climbing a statue of a man who was the leader
of that country and wrapping the face with an American
flag?
EC: I couldn’t understand how Iraqi civilians would see
it as a symbol of occupation. The reasons why we did, it was for
us: We’d been in Iraq for over a month, and finally got to Baghdad.
We were hoping that… it would mark the end of the war, we’d finally
go home back to our families, that was the point to us. And we
hadn’t seen an American flag for so long. It wasn’t something we
did just to show our occupation of the country. We were spurred by
the moment.
RT: What do you know about the US foreign policy now
that you didn’t know then?
EC: We aren’t going to be told the truth, you know, about
what happens. That sounds as hard to accept that you just come out
of the… war to be able to control oil in that region. Of course,
we’re not just going to come out and say that. We’re the military.
We do what we’re told. We hoped that the right decisions are made.
Once we dare, you know, we’re going to fight over honor.
RT: What do you think the war was for?
EC: I personally think it was to gain a foothold there,
to stabilize the region. I don’t believe, you told me, it was for
weapons of mass destruction. So a lot of lives lost, it was
definitely not worth it. As we’ve seen, today there are still no
weapons to be found. It would be worth it if it was to free a
country of a dictator. But then, if that was our reason, there are
lots of other dictators in the world that need to be taken out,
too. I hope that it was for the right reason, I look for the right
reasons. How can I not, in a way? It would be too sad for me if the
reasons weren’t justified.
Meanwhile, Iraq war veteran Emily Yates told RT that it is now
quite clear for her that Washington’s main reason for going into
the conflict was the Iraqi oil. But although the American public
was made to think the war was justified by the state and the media,
Yates believes the conflict’s financial cost alone could have paid
for a better alternative for the US.
RT: What do you know about the war in Iraq now that
you didn’t know then?
Emily Yates: I know now that it was entirely about oil,
at least for the most part, judging from the outcome, anyway… Big
oil has been proven to be the big winners in the Iraq war, and the
Iraqi people – and the American people – have turned out to be the
big losers.
RT: What do you think about the different role America
is playing in Iraq, than they were saying they were doing ten years
ago?
EY: It was really very clever, strategically speaking –
it was well-played to the American public. My job was a public
affairs specialist in the military, that’s their name for a
journalist… My role was to basically make the war sound really
wonderful to those of us who were fighting it. You keep the morale
up, of course.
But I knew that Saddam didn’t have weapons of mass destruction,
because I’ve been following the news coming out of that, following
the reports. And I knew it was not, you know, really, about
liberation, as soon as I saw the huge mess that we made of the
infrastructure in Iraq, and the fact that still to this day
corporations that received these ginormous, multibillion-dollar
contracts to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure still haven’t done that,
and they don’t even know where the money has gone.
So seeing the way I was being told to sell the war to the
soldiers, and the way the media narrative seemed to change – even
the regular mainstream media that wasn’t ostensibly pro-military
was still spouting the official line, contributing to all the
fear-mongering. And, you know, this whole mentality the Americans
still have that we were completely justified in going to Iraq. Even
though the estimated projected cost of the Iraq war would be $2.2
trillion, and that added to the interest on the debt that we took
out to pay for the war… [is] $3.6 trillion – that could have paid
for us to get about halfway to sustainable, renewable
resources.
Video:
/files/news/1e/a8/60/00/original_366065_emily.mxf.flv
Source Article from http://rt.com/news/iraq-war-us-veterans-574/
Views: 0
Posted in 
