Summary of the War in Iraq
-The Unheard Truth-
By: Angel Shelafoe
Written in support of my soldiers in Iraq. I love you guys all and believe in everything you are doing and fighting for. God's Speed to You...
-The Unheard Truth-
By: Angel Shelafoe
Written in support of my soldiers in Iraq. I love you guys all and believe in everything you are doing and fighting for. God's Speed to You...
In some people’s opinion the war in Iraq is unjust and morally wrong. They cry that America should be ashamed of our government and our military. Those same people go to compare our president to the likes of Hitler, our military to the likes of Nazi‘s armies. They either chose to portray our American’s soldiers as pawns and victims or show them as evil rapist, murders and sadistic tortures. Whatever one suits their objective and views the best.
They will quote a thousand times over a single mistake of any soldier comparing it to an entire army of soldiers. Those same people will also quote to you the shame of so many dead American soldiers and how they “support them”. Yet by supporting them; are they not supporting the murders they are so against?
However, one should never tell them that. For they are only against the government that these brave men and woman have swore to answer to. Not because they had to but because of their choice to do so. Their beliefs, just like an every day America citizen, differ from each other. You will find soldiers against and for this war depending where you look. Those who want to sway you against the war, will only show like mind soldiers. The others, the ones who believe they are justifiably and morally doing the right thing, are ridiculed against or choose to remain quite,
“Dumb Americans” I believe that what a person like Michael Moore wishes to call us. “Dumb, greedy, rich aristocrat, war hungry Americans” Those people who say such things, who truly preach propaganda all over the internet, the news and in their everyday life, like to think of themselves as the silence voice. However, they are the one who are heard the loudest.
It is no lie that negativity sells news. No one wants to hear the good things. Though, one can not report the good with out the bad. So while writing this keep in mind. That above all else, I am a military wife. My background is of a military family and I am for this war. So I can not deny nor lie that there will be some slant to my views. For it is the only honorable thing to do that I make this fact known. Despite that, I have done my best to research the facts from creditable sources that are unbiased and have presented them in their purest forum possible, with out twisting nor slanting their meaning. I feel I do not have to twist these facts to make my point. I feel that in doing so I would be no better then those who do so.
With that being said it leaves us to ask a number of questions. What got us into this mess? Why are we at war with Iraq? Is it truly for oil? Well looking at the top ten oil reserve countries one is lead to believe that this war could be just for oil. Iraq ranks number 3 with 112.5 Billion Barrels of Reserve oil. The list lies below.
1. Saudi Arabia -261.8 billion
2. Canada - 180 billion
3. Iraq - 112.5 billion
4. U.A.E. - 97.8 billion
5. Kuwait - 96.5 billion
6. Iran - 89.7 billion
7. Venezuela - 77.8 billion
8. Russia - 60 billion
9. Libya - 29.5 billion
10 Nigeria - 24.0 billion
It is interesting to note that Saudi Arabia has 261.8 billions barrels of reserve oil. That is 149.3 Billion more barrels of oil then Iraq. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if we were truly after oil we would go after Saudi Arabia. Surely we could think of a good enough lie to invade them right? Just like we did with Iraq? Though some could argue that we are trying to get a grip on the whole middle east's oil by taking Iraq first.
However, lets take a look at how unrealistic that is. First of all you would have to believe that every president after Bush would only have in mind “oil” and would want to be funding Bush’s pockets. That the new president then would need to have some ties to the big American oil companies to get any gain for themselves. Then he/she would need to have identical or very similar views to Bush. In return that president would have about 48% of the American voter population against him/her, with about 3% minority that could be swayed to vote against them. That is an incredibly high risk for any presidential candidate to wish to take on.
After all Bush can only be in office for 8 years total or in other words two terms. We have only since invaded two country Afghanistan and Iraq. To go ahead and invade Kuwait, Iran, U.A.E and Saudi Arabia (all countries with in the middle east that boarder around Iraq), Bush would need to get elected a total of 16 years. That simply can not happen, since it is obvious that we are not taking oil out of the country at this moment in time and probably will be unable to do so with in the next four years. It leads one to believe that oil is an unrealistic term to go to war. Since the cost and the risk is much greater then simply continuing to purchases the oil the old fashion way.
It is easy to see where the advantages of having an oil producing country, such as Iraq, in a much more stable manner. This would not only benefit America but the surrounding world. However, a conspiracy theorist might say that we are only wishing to stabilize it so that the big American oil companies can go in and slowly take over the Iraqi oil industry.
That is simply a risk that America can not take. The whole world is watching our every detailed move. We can not jeopardize something such as that. If America did it could spell disaster and lead to possibility of a major war with countries who were once our allies.
Also one would have to take into account the Iraqi people. They are already distrusting of the Americans and we can not afford to lose anymore of their trust. They themselves would not want to watch the wealth of their country drain into the pockets of an American, like it did for Saddam Hussein. Thus they would continue to fight. Keeping the country unstable in never ending cycle of war. That is something neither the Iraqis want nor the Americans.
So why did the American government chose to go to war with Iraq? On February 5th, 2003 Colin Powell Reported to the UN of unaccountable weapons that Saddam Hussein was known to have in the late nineties. He listed them as 550 artillery shells with mustard Gas, 30,000 empty munitions and 500 tons of Chemical agents, with the ability to increase it 500 more tons. Looking at just one category of missing weapons, 6500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq war, it comes to 1000 tons of Chemical agents. That is missing and unaccountable for in the hands of someone like Hussein, who is a known terrorist to his own people.
1995 Iraq declared that they had 8,500 liters of anthrax. The UN then estimated that Saddam Hussein could have produced somewhere around 16,500 liters more. Leading him to possibly have 25,000 liters of anthrax. Now, lets look at this in a bigger aspect. It was a single teaspoon that caused so much trouble in the post office on the east coast. He declared he had 8,500 liters of it, that’s an awful lot of teaspoons and who to say in the last 7 years he was not able to get his hands on more.
We have no reason to believe that he ever got rid of them. However, we have much reason to believe that he would use these weapons. If not on us then on his own people. In fact he already has. Perhaps our government should have acted then, when such reports came out, but they didn’t. A mistake on America’s part and even the worlds. Leaves one to wonder how we or anyone could ignore the attack of 1987 and 1988 on more then 250 Iraqi towns. Those attacks used a combination of chemical weapons. Including mixtures of mustard gas and VX gas. It is very difficult to know exactly what was all used in those attacks, but these attacks did happen.
If the above was not enough for us to go into Iraq, then maybe realize that 290,000 Iraqis have disappeared since Saddam took power over 34 years ago. That comes to be around 8,529 people a year or 23 people a day. That one person for just about every hour in a day for 34 years. Sadly that is not the end of the abuse. Young woman were tortured, raped, impressed, beaten, there family forced to watch. Men who were put under a submissive rule of either doing what they were told of or witnessing their whole family murdered.
These reports have come out in places such as a 20/20 interview, human right organization and other respectable and creditable sources. Not just now but way before Bush declared war on Iraq. It is almost unimaginable. It is no wonder that the Iraqi people are so fearful? Think of the psychological effects that 34 years of such terror would have on a group of people. That for some is a person whole life, so the only ruler they know is Saddam and what he has allowed them to see, speak and hear. Let alone having him control every aspect of their lives. That not saying the Iraqi people are unintelligent or not able to graps the concept of democracy. It is saying they are fearful of what may come back to haunt them if that democracy fails.
Looking at the overall picture of Iraq, we have since went in there and removed a madman from power. Saddam Hussein, there is no question that him, his sons and his whole regime were terrorist to their own people and a threat to surrounding countries. With removing him from power we stripped away the only government that Iraq had. We are taking a country already in massive chaos and stripping away it’s only structure and leaving the country vulnerable to fall, while only offering it support beams, pushing to pull out of there to hastily could cause a change of events that would not only hurt Iraq, but also neighboring country and pose a potential risk to the rest of the world.
So with on top of keeping our American troops safe we also have to try and keep the innocent Iraqi people safe. While trying to gather an understanding of Iraqi culture and putting into place a new government that not only will stabilize Iraq but also work for the Iraqi people. In order for that to work we have to undo the psychological effects of Saddam’s rules.
Next we need to help train the Iraqi army and better equip them. So that Iraq as a country has the means to protect themselves and their new formed government. Then we need to look at establishing some kind of Iraqi police to protect innocent Iraqi people. We have to establish a type of police rule that the Iraqi people will not only accept but respect. That alone is not an easy task. On top of that we have to clean the country up itself from being one massive garbage dump of old artillery shells, dead rockets and other such things. We need to clear their land of mines and their roads of IEDs. We need to find destroy and make accountable for all the live mortars, guns and anti-aircraft weapons that rest in the back of pickups trucks or in random holes dug in the ground of fields. To keep these out of the hands of innocent children or terrorist. If that is not enough obstacles at hand, we also need to work on rebuilding their countries structures, getting stable power to towns outside of just Baghdad and clean drinking water. We also need to work on fixing and equipping their hospitals and medical staff. List goes on. So I believe that our government is justify doing the right thing in stabilizing the country and putting it's people first, while still trying to look for these missing weapons.
Now with all that being said I know what someone maybe thinking upon reading this. We have not found any Weapons of Mass Destructions and we have lack of evident of their existence in Iraq. So there were no weapons of mass destructions, right? And to top that off weren’t those reports proven to come from un-creditable sources.
Yes, I can not lie and say that some of the reports we were using for events did not come from creditable sources. However the facts that I use when writing this did. Much of them came from the UN and their investigation in Iraq over the number of years along with human rights investigations and repots. So in return a lot of our information is very creditable and very justifiable in one’s opinion for going into Iraq.
Iraq is a massive country to search inch by inch to find such weapons. To only be looking for those weapons for 2 years, is an unrealistic deadline. Who to say at the start of the war Saddam Hussein did not make arrangement for those weapons to be taken out of the country or with another government. Who to say that in the time we did wait for UN approval, which we never got, was not enough time for Saddam to destroy the evident of the existence and to push them out of his country. It would have been very easy for him to do so, since at that moment America was very focused on the UN. We have ran across some small establishing evident that these weapons still existed in his country prior to the war, but that evident is debatable with not being enough for war. However, The question we should be asking is who has these weapons now?
