What followed was a series of lies, fabrications and outright deception of the both the international community as well as domestic audiences. The Bush administration began fabricating evidence regarding alleged weapons of mass destruction possessed by Iraq. In Britain, the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair falsified evidence in what became known as the “Dodgy Dossier” that alleged Saddam Hussein could deploy WMDs within 45 minutes, posing a threat to the West. In reality, there were no WMDs, despite the fact that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell openly lied to the United Nations prior to the invasion, and 13 years later called his deception a “blot” on his career. The only thing Powell appeared to be concerned with was the perception of his career, rather than the countless innocent Iraqi lives he helped to take.
Sheer human cost of invasion
The invasion itself was nothing short of being absolutely calamitous. The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, published a study in 2006 that showed that approximately 655,000 Iraqis had died as a direct result of the invasion. In other words, in less than three years, the United States, al-Qaeda and the sectarian Shia militias loyal to Iran managed to kill a third more people than the Syrian Baathist regime, Russia and more pro-Iran militants managed to kill in Syria in six years of war. To make matters worse for the architects of the illegal invasion, the British defense ministry’s chief scientific adviser said that the study published by The Lancet was “robust”.
The U.S. occupation lasted a further five years after the publication of that study, and violent Iran-backed sectarianism, Baghdad-sponsored torture programs and death squads, and Daesh (ISIS) terrorism have managed to claim many more lives since. We should not be surprised if millions of Iraqis have died as a direct result of the invasion, and we should be ashamed that the media has tended to ignore effective coverage of this humanitarian disaster in favor of covering more sensational stories such as Daesh executions and war crimes.
An entire generation of Iraqis has been lost because of the US-led invasion. This is unforgivable and, just as Germany was forced to pay reparations for the crimes of the Nazi regime following the Second World War, it would seem only fair that those countries that directly participated in the mass destruction and genocide of the Iraqi people support Iraqis in finally being free of the corrupt political process forced down their throats at gunpoint, and to compensate them so that they can rebuild their country and heal. Otherwise, we all know who to blame for probably the biggest crime of this millennium so far.