Shahidul Newshttp://shahidul.wordpress.com/current-news/Featured article by Rahnuma Ahmed: The ’soul-less’ war on terror http://shahidul.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/They could. And they did.The ’spurious reasons’ advanced by US President George W Bush and former British prime minister Tony Blair were, of course, different. It was ‘to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people’.Nearly five and a half years on, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has resulted in 1,255,026 Iraqi deaths (justforeignpolicy.org), 3.4 million internally displaced Iraqi refugees, 2.2 to 2.4 million Iraqi refugees living abroad. The number of Iraqi refugees admitted to the US is 3,222.US military casualties number 4,150. Other coalition troops 314. Iraqi Security Force deaths number 7,924. Contractor deaths have reached 444. Three hundred and twenty thousand American veterans of the Iraq war have brain injuries. According to internal e-mails written by Dr Ira Katz, the Department of Veteran Affair’s head of mental health, suicide attempts among Iraqi war vets are about a thousand per month.According to March 2008 estimates, the invasion and occupation has so far cost $526 billion. The estimated long-term bill is $3 trillion (Foreign Policy In Focus).And the damage done to imperialist souls? It is beyond reckoning. It continues unabated.———-First published in the New Age on the 1st September 2008***** Drik to celebrate it’s 19th Anniversary.We were 19 years old on the 4th September. Join us on the 11th September at 4:00 pm to celebrate:
– Shahidul Alamhttp://shahidul.wordpress.comwww.majorityworld.comwww.drik.net

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