The High Cost of Order Out of Chaos in Iraq

By Kurt Nimmo

"Add to this the 1.5 million killed as a result of the United Nations imposed (at the behest of the United States and Britain) sanctions—more than 500,000 of them children—and you have a total working its way toward the 3,500,000 killed in Southeast Asia from 1960 to 1973 (see Matthew White’s well referenced Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century).

Even though, as Tommy Franks admitted, the Pentagon does not “do body counts,” a Department of Offense representative felt compelled to respond to this latest damning report. “The Department of Defense always regrets the loss of any innocent life in Iraq or anywhere else,” said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros. “The coalition takes enormous precautions to prevent civilian deaths and injuries,” and added “it would be difficult for the U.S. to precisely determine the number of civilian deaths in Iraq as a result of insurgent activity. The Iraqi Ministry of Health would be in a better position, with all of its records, to provide more accurate information on deaths in Iraq,” never mind that in 2003 Iraq’s Health Ministry “ordered a halt to a count of civilians killed during the war and told its statistics department not to release figures compiled so far,” according to USA Today.

How many Americans understand that well over three million people were systematically murdered in Southeast Asia? Moreover, it is assumed the United States fought the war with “one hand tied behind its back,” even though the Pentagon dropped 6.5 million tons of bombs and 400,000 tons of napalm on the people of Southeast Asia. “Short of nuclear weapons, it’s not clear what additional forms of violence we could have unleashed on the people of Vietnam,” writes Robert Jensen. “If people can convince themselves that we were restrained gentlemen during the war, it is easier to ignore the saturation bombing of civilian areas, counter-terrorism programs that included political assassination, routine killings of civilians, and 11.2 million gallons of Agent Orange to destroy crops and ground cover—all part of the U.S. terror war in not only Vietnam but Laos and Cambodia as well. All those are clear violations of international law—that is, war crimes.”

Indeed, they are war crimes and this brutal régime has continued unabated, even though “we” are now “losing” Iraq as well. In fact, “losing” Iraq is part of the “order out of chaos” plan—the neocons, of course, have no intention of delivering Bushian hyped upside-down, black-is-white democracy to Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, or any other country in the Middle East, but rather destroying the civilian infrastructure, instigating sectarian, tribal, ethnic, and religious violence in these countries, thus breaking the entire region into a haphazard patchwork of mutually antagonistic vassal states and fiefdoms ruled by thugs and dictators, all beholden to the United States and its client, Israel. Slaughtering 655,000 Iraqis in the period of three and a half years—an effort rivaling the genocide in Southeast Asia (including the depredations of Pol Pot in Cambodia, who received direct assistance from the United States; see John Pilger, The Friends of Pol Pot, the Nation magazine, May 11, 1998)—is an integral part of this plan, never mind crocodile tears issued for public consumption by the Pentagon."