edgecity

Here’s an Iraq IQ test, written in 2003, as the U.S. Government was preparing for the liberation invasion of Iraq. 

Take the War on Iraq IQ Test: Do you know enough to justify going to war with Iraq?

1. Q: What percentage of the world’s population does the U.S. have?
A: 6%

2. Q: What percentage of the world’s wealth does the U.S. have?
A: 50%

3. Q: Which country has the largest oil reserves?
A: Saudi Arabia

4. Q: Which country has the second largest oil reserves?
A: Iraq

5. Q: How much is spent on military budgets a year worldwide?
A: $900+ billion

6. Q: How much of this is spent by the U.S.?
A:50%

7. Q: What percent of US military spending would ensure the essentials of
life to everyone in the world, according the the UN?
A: 10% (that’s about$40 billion, the amount of funding initially requested to
fund our retaliatory attack on Afghanistan).

8. Q: How many people have died in wars since World War II?
A: 86 million

9. Q: How long has Iraq had chemical and biological weapons?
A: Since the early 1980’s.

10. Q: Did Iraq develop these chemical & biological weapons on their own?
A: No, the materials and technology were supplied by the US government,
along with Britan and private corporations.

11. Q: Did the US government condemn the Iraqi use of gas warfare against
Iran?
A: No

12. Q: How many people did Saddam Hussein kill using gas in the Kurdish town
of Halabja in 1988?
A: 5,000

13. Q: How many western countries condemned this action at the time?
A:0

14. Q: How many gallons of agent Orange did America use in Vietnam?
A: 17 million.

15. Q: Are there any proven links between Iraq and September 11th terrorist
attack?
A: No (in 2007, the answer is still NO)

16. Q: What is the estimated number of civilian casualties in the Gulf War?
A: 35,000

17. Q: How many casualties did the Iraqi military inflict on the western
forces during the Gulf War ?
A: 0

18. Q: How many retreating Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by U.S. tanks
with ploughs mounted on the front?
A: 6,000

19. Q: How many tons of depleted uranium were left in Iraq and Kuwait after
the Gulf War?
A: 40 tons

20. Q: What according to the UN was the increase in cancer rates in Iraq
between 1991 and 1994?
A: 700%

21. Q: How much of Iraq’s military capacity did America claim it had
destroyed in 1991?
A: 80%

22. Q: Is there any proof that Iraq plans to use its weapons for anything
other than deterrence and self defense?
A: No

23. Q: Does Iraq present more of a threat to world peace now than 10 years
ago?
A: No

24. Q: How many civilian deaths has the Pentagon predicted in the event of
an attack on Iraq in 2002/3?
A: 10,000

25. Q: What percentage of these will be children?
A:Over 50%

26. Q: How many years has the U.S. engaged in air strikes on Iraq?
A: 11 years

27. Q: Was the U.S and the UK at war with Iraq between December 1998 and
September 1999?
A: No

28. Q: How many pounds of explosives were dropped on Iraq between December
1998 and September 1999?
A: 20 million

29. Q: How many years ago was UN Resolution 661 introduced, imposing strict
sanctions on Iraq’s imports and exports?
A: 12 years

30. Q: What was the child death rate in Iraq in 1989 (per 1,000 births)?
A: 38

31. Q: What was the estimated child death rate in Iraq in 1999 (per 1,000
births)?
A: 131 (that’s an increase of 345%)

32. Q: How many Iraqis are estimated to have died by October 1999 as a
result of UN sanctions?
A: 1.5 million

33. Q: How many Iraqi children are estimated to have died due to sanctions
since 1997?
A: 750,000

34. Q: Did Saddam order the inspectors out of Iraq?
A:No

35. Q: How many inspections were there in November and December 1998?
A:300

36. Q: How many of these inspections had problems?
A:5

37. Q: Were the weapons inspectors allowed entry to the Ba’ath Party HQ?
A: Yes

38. Q: Who said that by December 1998, Iraq had in fact, been disarmed to a
level unprecedented in modern history.
A: Scott Ritter, UNSCOM chief.

39. Q: In 1998 how much of Iraq’s post 1991 capacity to develop weapons of
mass destruction did the UN weapons inspectors claim to have discovered and
dismantled?
A: 90%

40. Q: Is Iraq willing to allow the weapons inspectors back in?
A:Yes

41. Q: How many UN resolutions did Israel violate by 1992?
A: Over 65

42. Q: How many UN resolutions on Israel did America veto between 1972 and
1990?
A: 30+

43. Q: How much does the U.S. fund Israel a year?
A:$5 billion

44. Q: How many countries are known to have nuclear weapons?
A: 8

45. Q:How many nuclear warheads has Iraq got?
A: 0

46. Q: How many nuclear warheads has US got?
A: over 10,000

47. Q: Which is the only country to use nuclear weapons?
A: the US

48. Q: How many nuclear warheads does Israel have?
A: Over 400

49. Q: Has Israel every allowed UN weapons inspections?
A: No

50. Q: What percentage of the Palestinian territories are controlled by
Israeli settlements?
A: 42%

51. Q: Is Israel illegally occupying Palestinian land?
A: Yes

52. Q: Which country do you think poses the greatest threat to global peace:
Iraq or the U.S.?
A: ????

53. Q: Who said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about
things that matter”?
A: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

Here’s a letter to America from American Soldiers in Iraq. Please pass this along to everyone you know. This letter verifies the prescient statements Vice President Dick Cheney made on April 15, 1994, when he said deposing Hussein and occupying Iraq would bring a quagmire and that we should definitely not spend American lives in such a pursuit. 

A quagmire we have.

Would Vice President Dick Cheney please explain how he forgot what he so clearly and eloquently said in 1994?

The popular answer is everything changed after 9/11. OK, you can say everything changed here in the U.S. perhaps, but in Iraq? Do these people mean to say that after 9/11, Kurds in northern Iraq sat around the camp fire eating roasted Yak while they reassured each other that the Turks would now love them and the Shiites and Sunnis would welcome them as brothers, all because the World Trade Center fell? Are these people trying to say the the Sunni and Shiities suddenly dropped centuries of differences, joined hands in the streets across Iraq and sang Kumbaya together on 9/12/2001?

Well, silly me. Then why did the Bush Adminstration talk about this length of this war in terms of weeks instead of years? Why did they not admit to America we would be entering a difficult, long term commitment?

You mean Dick just forgot?

Well, the Bush Administration officials do forget a lot these days, especially as they approach Capitol Hill for questioning.

Here’s the letter. It’s the clearest statement of the actualities of this conflict I have seen anywhere. Please pass this letter along to everyone you know. Please?

It’s by Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy, all members of the 82nd Airborne Division currently in Iraq and about to come home. 

Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a “time-sensitive target acquisition mission” on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

Make no mistake about it, securing oil reserves is the game of the millenium.

The Russians just planted a flag on the seabed near the North Pole to claim that territory as their own.

See http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/02/ap3982506.html

Think about this, Iran has the third largest oil reserves in the world. Isn’t it natural for them to get a bit itchy thinking about who might invade them to get control of their oil? It’s funny, I read today that it looks like our government may have sold millions of dollars of F-14 fighter jet parts to guess who? Iran. Oops. Iran aging fighter jet forces are made up of primarily F-14s. In my deepest paranoid nightmares, I imagine that our government did this intentionally. Why? So, Iran can have the equipment to confront us in an incident like the recent capture of British patrol boats, so we can justify an invasion when they do. I know, pure paranoia. Check back this time next year.

And how can we leave Iraq without first ensuring all that oil doesn’t fall into unfriendly or economically competetive hands?

The Bush Administration has made quite a mess and there are no easy answers.

Not many Iraqis like America. Most want us the hell out of there. Who in Iraq will treat us favorably when we leave?

So, knowing all this, the Bush Administration begins to talk about Iraq as if it were South Korea. A permanent “temporary” presence.

We have an untenable moral dilemma on our hands, assuming you have a worldcentric perspective. On one hand, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, with more dying every day. Millions of Iraqi refugees, six million to be accurate- that’s roughly 15% of the population leaving the country to save their skins. That would be  equivalent to 45 million american refugees. And, the possibility of a flow of cheaper oil and gasoline for our Hummers, plastic for our water botttles, and a supposedly more certain and prosperous future for we americans–if we acheive the peace that we keep getting promised but never get delievered. On the other, if we walk away, who knows really. A full fledged civil war in Iraq? Al Qaeda strongholds and training camps? An anti-american theocratic government? A true chance for peace?

If your worldview is ethnocentric, the answer is easy; we take what we need for our survival, and, sorry about the mess, isn’t that what the bottom line is here?. Then for good measure throw in some slogans.  Fight ‘em over there, NIMBY! We fought for their freedom! Better with no Saddam!(even though he successfully kept Al Qaeda out of Iraq). They hate us for our freedom. You’ve heard all the propaganda.

No wonder some Bush supporters don’t want to open their eyes and look beyond their own ethnocentric perspective. I understand now.

If you had any doubt left about the lack of integrity of the Bush Administration, there’s a good late night read…

Let’s sell Iraq to US Sheep Citizens using high profile Madison Avenue marketing practices! You know. Think of a laundry detergent. Tide. Think of a soda. Coke.

Now. Think of a war. Iraq. Feels good don’t it? If President Bush has his way, you’ll hear it roll off your lips and it will feeeeell gooood! 

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2007/RAND_MG607.pdf

By the way, this study cost us sheep $400K. How does that feel?

More evidence pours in confirming the deceitful character of Alberto “I don’t recall” Gonzales, the slimiest public official since slime was first recognized as an effective social lubricant by fascists over 70 years ago.

Seems Alberto can’t keep his lies straight.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/05/19/alberto-gonzales-is-a-liar/#more-17483

 Just yesterday, Alberto was caught blatantly lying by Jon Stewart and company:

 http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/05/18/jon-stewart-catches-gonzales-lying-about-mcnulty/

Dear Senator McCain,

I saw your spech at VMI yesterday and am writing to let you know that you’ve lost a voter. As an Arizona citizen I’ve voted for you as a Senator, each and every election. Now that you’re running for President, I had hoped you would be a voice of rationality, strength and truth for America in a time when we have, in my opinion, a President guided apparently by agendas hidden from the people he fervently claims to serve.

After hearing your speech, I’ve lost that hope.

I understand that you need the support of your party to reach the White House. I can’t imagine your speech being anything but attempt to reel in support from any doubtful elements of the GOP.

We can win? For who, America? Did you forget Senator McCain, it is primarily the Iraqi people that are suffering and dying as a result of our decision to invade Iraq? Many tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi’s have died, and their blood is on the hands of we Americans as the result of what is at best an idiotic blunder, or at worst an imperialist geo-political chess move. Senator McCain, Iraq IS already a wild-west for terrorists, thanks to us.

The Iraqi invasion is not a just war as you claim. A country acting anti-dependently is not acting in it’s own highest interest. In other words, our President can’t act out like a rebellious teenager without consequence- even if he is  “The Decider”. Our “coalition of the willing” does not constitute even the slightest acknowledgment that we live together on a small planet(Remember the cold war?) and must find ways to coexist without destroying each other–that military force must be used judiciously and solely to protect our blessed country from direct harm.

Are you aware, Senator McCain, that there are many voters, like me, who no longer feel an affiliation to any political party? People like me realize whether Deomocrat or Republican, we live in a world completely unlike any time in history, a time when information is readily accessible to anyone that wants to look, a time when spinning truth only adds to the chaos. Today, we live a world when the ability to make clear observations about what is happening is vital to our survival, not just as a nation, but as a species.

I thought you were the man to lead us forward into a more rational, compassionate and safe world, but I was wrong. You may have gained some fence-sitting GOP votes, but you’ve definitely lost this one.

Sincerely,

Mark Schultz
Sedona, Arizona

P.S. I felt a deeply heartfelt support of our troops behind your words, and an acknowledgment of the pain so many soldiers must feel being eye-witnesses to the travesty in Iraq. I share that pain, and pray we can find a way through this debacle that will preserve life, stabilize that ravaged country, restore respect for the United States in the world, and strengthen the security and economic future of the United States.