The 160,000 American troops in occupied Iraq today are 160,000 too many

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http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=76544

By By Kaleem Omar
10/21/2007

The United States has no business being in Iraq. Its invasion and occupation of Iraq in March/April 2003 was an unprovoked, unjustified and totally illegal act of aggression, in flagrant violation of every canon of international law and in contemptuous defiance of world public opinion. Back in 2004, even then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, a cautious man not usually given to making statements openly critical of the United States, declared that the US war against Iraq was “illegal.”

The allegation that Iraq “possessed” weapons of mass destruction that, in President George W. Bush’s words, “posed an imminent threat to the national security of the United States” was an outright lie cooked up by the Bush administration as an excuse to invade and occupy the country. In fact, Iraq possessed no such weapons and posed no threat whatsoever to the mighty United States.

The real reason for the US’s invasion and occupation of Iraq was to gain control over its oil reserves – which are the second largest in the world (after Saudi Arabia’s). Crude oil prices have been rising inexorably over the past three years. This week they hit an all-time high of over $ 90 per barrel. At that price, Iraq’s proven reserves of 115 billion barrels are worth more than $ 10,350 billion. If one includes Iraq’s estimated unproven reserves of 120 billion barrels, the value of its reserves, at current prices, goes up to $ 21,150 billion. This vast oil wealth is what the US’s invasion and occupation of Iraq is really about.

The 160,000 US troops in Iraq today (the post-surge number) are 160,000 too many. The sooner they get out of there the better it will be for all concerned – not only for the Iraqi people whose country has illegally occupied by foreign troops but also for the US itself, which has lost more than 3,000 soldiers in the fighting in Iraq since President George W Bush declared on May 1, 2003 that the US mission in Iraq had been “accomplished.”

According to a report published in the highly respected British medical journal The Lancet in October 2006, more than 600,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the US bombing campaign and missile strikes against Iraq since the beginning of the war in March 2003.

The US military occupation authorities in Iraq, for their part, say they keep no count of the numbers of Iraqi’s killed by American forces. It’s as if the Iraqis are mere canon fodder for the US and it doesn’t matter how many of them die.