Stephen Lendman

Complicit with Israel, America’s plan to redraw the Middle East map bears full responsibility for raping and destroying Iraq.

From September 1980 to the present, Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama committed the highest of high crimes against peace.

Millions of Iraqis perished from war, conflict related violence, preventable diseases, starvation, overall deprivation and US-sponsored terrorism.

Millions today endure unspeakable misery - living in an endless war zone, security and stability entirely absent.

Puppet governance runs things, serving its US master, officials enriching themselves through massive corruption, ignoring humanitarian crisis conditions affecting millions of impoverished, unemployed and internally displaced Iraqis.

Protests demanding reform raged intermittently in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities since July 2015. They escalated in mid-March over parliament’s failure to act, ebbed after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi proposed new cabinet members, intensified when legislators rejected his choices.

When political insiders were then chosen, violent protests followed, voting on Abadi’s ministers postponed three times.

On Saturday, things came to a head. After lawmakers again failed to vote on government reforms, thousands took to the streets of Baghdad.

Hundreds stormed the heavily fortified, four-square-mile, fortress-like Green Zone - home to Iraq’s parliament and foreign embassies.

Some made it into the parliament building. MPs fled for safety. Embassy compounds were in lockdown. Reuters said hundreds of protesters “stormed into Baghdad’s Green Zone and entered parliament” after legislators “fail(ed) to reform a political quota system blamed for rampant corruption.”

They chanted “(t)he cowards ran away,” referring to lawmakers leaving the premises. No curfew was imposed. No clashes with security forces were reported.

Heavily armed security forces were deployed around sensitive sites. Entrances to Baghdad were shut. Earlier in the day, a car bomb killed 18 and wounded dozens more in suburban Nahrawan.

Reuters called Saturday’s Green Zone breach “unprecedented,” a heavily protected fortress, “symbolizing the isolation of Iraq’s leadership” and its US master from long-suffering people.

Thousands protested nonviolently. Shia clerical leader Moqtada al-Sadr threatened to bring down the entire government.

In a televised speech from Najaf, he announced a two-month withdrawal from public life while “waiting for the great popular uprising and the major revolution to stop the march of the corrupt.”

“If the nation lets me, I can end the current government and form a new one without any corruption,” he added.

So far things are largely nonviolent. They could explode any time if public sentiment is ignored.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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