Glenn Greenwald writes about a new report in the New York Times:
So, a recap of the Iraq war: there were never any WMDs. The proliferation of government death squads and militias in Iraq means that, compared to the Saddam era, human rights have worsened and torture has increased to record levels. Iranian influence has massively increased, as a result of a Shiite fundamentalist government loyal to Tehran replacing the former anti-Iranian regime. We’ve squandered hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives. And we have — according to the consensus of our own intelligence community — directly worsened the terrorist problem with our invasion, and continue to worsen it with our ongoing occupation.
It’s all bad. Every life lost, every person wounded, every destroyed dream, every sacrifice, every dollar wasted, every resource committed to Iraq that could not therefore help New Orleans, every thing that this war has cost us in our humanity…it made things worse. Not just in the sense of being an unequal trade, as if the cost were too high for the benefit obtained. The benefit itself, doesn’t exist. Your government is manufacturing terrorists with your money and your lives.
That’s not just my opinion. That’s what the government’s own National Intelligence Estimate said. That’s the consensus of the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Department, everyone in the intelligence-gathering arms of the United States.
Put that in your pipe, and smoke it.
Update: Maha has more.
September 26, 2006 at 10:23 am
[...] Let’s cut losses, for sure. We don’t have more men and women to spare, for God’s sake. Losses — human lives lost, misery and hatred and despair for millions of people — that haven’t made us safer. Losses that have made us more likely to be attacked, not less. That’s not just my opinion, that is what the United States intelligence services have reported. [...]