Iraq Splinters Into Pieces, Al Qaeda in Control of Several Cities, Kurds Take Oil City Kirkuk; Thank George Bush and the Neocons; Iraq Before and After

"They will shower us with flowers."

Anyone recall that idiotic line from disgraced Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld?

Remember any of these lies...

• "Oil will flow freely."
• "The war will pay for itself."
• "We know where they [WOMDs] are."

And with blatant lies and complete ineptitude, the US set about "nation building" in Iraq. It was the neocon's number one wet dream at the time.

Today the results are in. A few articles will explain how it turned out.

Islamic Militants Take Mosul and Tikrit

Please consider Militants Step Up Iraq Attack.

Militants from an al-Qaeda splinter group stormed the Turkish consulate in Mosul, Iraq’s second city, on Wednesday and took 49 people hostage.

The jihadi group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (known as Isis), expanded its offensive just 24 hours after taking control of Mosul. The militants pushed south and appeared to have taken over Tikrit, the home town of Iraq’s executed former leader Saddam Hussein.

Turkey called for an emergency Nato meeting while Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister, discussed the issue with US Vice President Joe Biden, who told him that Washington was “prepared to support Turkey’s efforts to bring about the safe return of its citizens”, according to a White House summary of the conversation.

Isis’s seizure of Mosul on Tuesday and its continuing offensive underline how Iraq has again been driven to the brink of civil war by political tensions between the country’s Shia, Sunni and Kurdish communities, which have been exacerbated by the sectarian civil war in neighbouring Syria.

Kurds Take Oil City Kirkuk

The Financial Times reports Iraq Slides Further Into Turmoil as Kurds Take Oil City Kirkuk.

Iraq’s Shia-dominated government launched air strikes on Sunni insurgent positions in and around the city of Mosul on Thursday as Islamist forces hurtled toward the capital and Kurdish troops seized control of the key oil city of Kirkuk.

State television aired images of what it described as air strikes on insurgent positions in Mosul, seized on Tuesday after a days-long assault by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (known as Isis) and its allies, as Iraqi forces abandoned their posts and fled. Turkish media also reported the Turkish military was flying surveillance drones over Mosul in a co-ordinated move with Baghdad.

Iraqi media reported clashes between Islamist insurgents and Iraqi security forces in Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad, as Isis warned it would take its battle to the cities of Najaf and Karbala, shrine and seminary cities holy to the Shia faith.

“Go to Caliphate Baghdad. We have a score to settle,” Isis spokesman Abu Mohamed al-Adnani urged in an audio recording posted online. “We will settle our differences not in Samarra or Baghdad but in Karbala, the filth-ridden city, and in Najaf, the city of polytheism.”

Insurgents Surround Iraq's Largest Refinery in Baiji

Reuters reports Insurgents Surround Iraq's Largest Refinery in Baiji.

Insurgents surrounded Iraq's largest refinery in the northern town of Baiji on Thursday, police and an engineer inside said.

Sunni militants first moved into Baiji late on Tuesday, closing in on the refinery, but later withdrew to the surrounding villages after reaching a deal with local tribal chiefs.

A witness who lives in a house near the refinery said the militants arrived in more than 50 vehicles.

ZeroHedge provides still more details in Al Qaeda Insurgents Surround Iraq's Largest Refinery.

Iraq Before and After Bush's Nation Building Effort

Before: Iraq was a functioning country.
After: Iraq is in ruins, much of its infrastructure wiped out

Before: Iraq pumped oil
After: Iraq doesn't and we have paid for that at the pump ever since

Before: Iraq was ruled by a secular leader
After: The US installed a Shiite puppet while verbally fighting Shiites in Iran

Before: Religious freedom was the norm. Catholics, Sunnis, Shiites all got along, not perfectly but acceptably
After: People are killed every day for their religious beliefs. Catholics are persecuted.

Before: Women had relative freedom
After: Women are likely to be shot in some cities if they do not cover their faces

Before: Al Qaeda was not in Iraq. Hussein wanted nothing to do with religious zealots.
After. Al Qaeda is in control of several cities

Before: Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
After: Quite possibly they exist in Iraq now.

Before: Iraq military was in control.   
After: Iraq in open civil war, splintered into several pieces, each controlled by a different faction

Before: Iraq was no terrorist threat.
After: It sure is now.

Before: US has no embassy in Iraq.
After: US's largest embassy in the world is in Iraq

Details on that last point are rather amazing. Please consider Embassy of the United States, Baghdad.

At 440,000 square meters, it is the largest and most expensive embassy in the world and is nearly as large as Vatican City. It employs 15,000 people and cost $750 million to build. The Embassy opened in January 2009 following a series of construction delays. It replaced the previous embassy, which opened July 1, 2004 in Baghdad's Green Zone in a former Palace of Saddam Hussein.

Idiocy of Nation Building

Such is the idiocy of nation building.

Hussein was an evil man. But it cost over $1 trillion dollars to get rid of him. And it was none of our business to do so. We have ongoing expenses at the embassy. Oil prices are higher. The US could not afford any of this.

Iraq is in ruins. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were killed or injured. Millions more lost their livelihoods. And the US caused it.

So where is the apology?

Better yet where, are the criminal prosecutions? Are Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld any less of war criminals than Hussein?

Addendum: I nearly forgot one of the biggest one-liners of all "Mission Accomplished!"

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com