DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHERE MESOPOTAMIA WAS?

DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHERE MESOPOTAMIA WAS?

(Ron Duncan Hart, Yasser Elsheshtawy, Luke Johnson)

(Huffington Post, Michael Beschloss, Harbutt J. Fraser, Alan Bullock)

(Zbigniew Brzezinski, Michael Klare, Owen Berg, Green Bay Press Gazette)

(Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Thomas Ricks, Frazer Chronicle)

 

Owen Berg of Algoma, Wisconsin in a Community Views article printed in the Green Bay Press Gazette raised an interesting question about what would be done with apparently hundreds of Army vehicles that are being stored at the Oshkosh Corporations, Wisconsin storage area. According to Berg, there are (over 2000 parked at the Oshkosh airport.)

 

Gee pal, I have absolutely no idea or clue what’s gonna happen to them, your guess about scraping them or selling them at a public auction is probably pretty damn accurate. However your actuation about the scrap sale being rigged seems a bit premature, those 2000 trucks will be piles of rust long before your targeted sales date of 2033.

 

There is a history of Iraq that needs to be understood…because the violence has not subsided, but has gotten worse. Iran, known in classical antiquity as Mesopotamia, was home to the oldest civilizations in the world, with a cultural history of more than 10,000 years, hence its common epithet…..the Cradle of Civilization. Mesopotamia as part of the larger Fertile Crescent was a significant part of Ancient Near East throughout the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

 

Successively ruled by the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Medo-Persian, Seleucid and Parthian empires during the Iron Age and Classical Antiquity, Iraq was conquered by the Arab Rashidun Caliphate in the 7^th century, and became a center of the Islamic Golden Age during the medieval Abbasid Caliphate. After a series of invasions and conquest by the Mongols and Turks, Iraq fell under Ottoman rule in the 16^th century, intermittently falling under Mamluk and Safavid control.

 

Ottoman rule ended with World War 1, and Iraq came to be administered by the British Empire until the establishment of the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932. The Republic of Iraq was established in 1958 following a coup d’état. Iraq was controlled by Saddam Hussein from 1979 until 2003, into which period falls the Iran-Iraq war and the Persian Gulf War.

 

Hussein was deposed following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of the country, and the situation deteriorated to the extent that by 2007 Iraq was on the brink of a civil war. Even with a U.S. surge of troops, and the war being officially declared over in December, 2011, and U.S. troops beginning a draw-down of forces, conditions have continued to spiral more or less out of control.

 

THE POINT HERE IS SIMPLE

When the Bush administration decided to go to war with Iraq, the Pentagon, the Vice President, and his cronies should have read a bit of the Middle Eastern history. For the entire region, war is a way of life; it’s not that the populous want war, it isn’t that there has been industrial or manufactures’ profiteering, far from it. Actually the Cradle of Civilization has suffered mightily, thousands of civilians have died, and hundreds of thousands have been injured, wounded and broken beyond repair.

 

With little exception, loss of life and the carnage that war brings has been endured by the locals of the country for what must seem like eons, because there’s always seems to somebody who wants to invade the country.  

 

Fast forward to 1990, the Gulf War, and President George H.W. Bush, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 661 which imposed economic sanctions on Iraq, providing for a full trade embargo, excluding medical supplies, food and other humanitarian necessity, these to be determined by the Security Council sanctions committee.

 

After the end of the Gulf War and after Iraq withdrew from Kuwait, the sanctions were linked to the removal of weapons of mass destruction by Resolution 687. From 1991 until 2003 the effects of government policy and sanctions regime led to hyperinflation, widespread poverty and malnutrition. During the 1990’s the U.N. considered relaxing the sanctions imposed because of the hardships suffered by ordinary Iraqis. (I’m not sure what is meant by ORDINARY IRAQIS,) but President Clinton devised an oil for food program in 1996 to ease the effects of the sanctions, however there is little evidence that the food got to where it was supposed to go.

 

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Iraq was squarely in the cross-hairs of the Bush administration, Cheney and the Pentagon. The Truman Doctrine of 1947, the Carter Doctrine of 1980, the 1990 George H.W. Bush’s Gulf War, and then the junior Bush’s Desert Storm in 2003 really sealed the deal for the United States…..or so the conventional thinking went.

 

TRUMAN, CARTER, CLINTON AND THE BUSHES

These dogs do hunt, Truman, Carter and both of the Bush presidencies all held one theme with regards to Iraq and really the entire Middle East…..everybody keep your fricken hands off Iraq…..it belongs to the United States, it’s in our best interests!  Since 1947, and the Truman Doctrine, it has been the United States stance that Iraq was ours…..you don’t think so, look it up like I did.

 

The presidents, the Congress, the Senate and the cop on the corner don’t really give a crap with John Q Public thinks, or wants…..it’s our way or the highway! It’s the old (we have information that you don’t; therefore we’ll call the shots and make the moves.

 

Sadly the shots called, and the moves that have been made over the past decade and more have almost all gone horribly wrong…..the consequence, thousands of Americans killed, hundreds of thousands wounded, and trillions of dollars wasted on a fool’s gold mentality.

 

It never ceases to amaze me how inter-locked the (interests of the United States) are linked, President Truman couldn’t have foresaw the millions and millions of cars that would one day clog our roadways. Jimmy Carter was a stinking wimp, and needed his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski to model a Carter speech with words from the Truman Doctrine.

 

Clinton did his food for oil deal with most of the food and money going to Hussein’s bank accounts, leaving the poor Iraqi civilian population almost in the same shape as before the Clinton band aid fix program.

 

Just for a minute let’s stop and take a look at what’s been going on in Iraq in 2013 with regards to the number of civilian casualty figures, based on the Lancet study, they are listed as follows;

January, 177

February, 136

March, 163

April, 205

May, 630

June, 240

July, 921

August, 356

September, 885

Total casualties thus far for 2013, 3713, meaning that Iraq should not be very high on the list of vacation spots to visit in the Middle East.

 

So, Mr. Berg, with regards to your statement about locking the former president and his running mate vice president up in solitary on bread and water…..you’d better go back and dig up President Truman’s bones, maybe even further back…..I’m not sure. Whatever you decide to do Owen, good luck, you’ll need it.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!