Thread by @wretchardthecat

The War College history of Iraq noted:

“We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that,” observed Denis J. Halliday, UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, on the effect of the sanctions in 1998.

In retrospect, the sanctions appear to have increased Saddam’s power inside Iraq by making the population dependent on his distribution of increasingly limited basic services, as the standard of living of the Iraqi middle class collapsed.

Due to these underappreciated economic and social effects, the nation the U.S. military would occupy in 2003 was far more destitute and ravaged than was generally understood.

"On the political level, the confrontation with the Iraqi regime that culminated in Operation DESERT FOX changed U.S. policy toward Iraq from containment to regime change, a change Clinton announced on December 18, 1998.

The Clinton administration, however, showed little inclination to take direct action to implement the new policy. Rather than direct action, the act opened the way for official U.S. sponsorship of such groups as the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi,

the Iraqi National Accord of Ayad Allawi, and the Kurdish parties, with the U.S. side of the relationship eventually to be managed by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ryan Crocker."

Socialism has done a job on Venezuela, worse in some ways than an atomic bomb. Going concerns have stopped. Management is gone. Technicians are gone. It's not going to be solved by letting a few refugees become taxi drivers in the West.