An Inquiry in Baghdad Is Clouded by Politics

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=an%20inquiry%20in%20%20baghdad%20is%20clouded&st=cse

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 11:14 AM
Subject: An Inquiry in Baghdad Is Clouded by Politics
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    Depending on the substance of the charges of "coup", the purges in the Iraqi government are either the first or the second blow in the new civil war. Despite the recent delusion that the Surge has "succeeded", Iraq will descend into open civil war when the Americans--troops and contractors--leave. That would be so at the end of fifty-year occupation as surely as it would had we left this year. The difference between the two scenarios can be measured in the American lives spent in the interim. Our adventure in Iraq hasn't been financed by Iraq's own oil, hasn't defeated terrorism, hasn't improved the lives of Iraqis and hasn't made America safer. Where is the benefit to be weighed against the price in lives?

Barry Levine