Thread by @Americas_Crimes

On this day in 2003, the US committed the greatest crime of the 21st century thus far by invading Iraq. The war killed over 1 million people, displaced millions more, brought unknowable depths of suffering to the Iraqi people & gave birth to ISIS.

The invasion & occupation was sold to the American public through the close coordination of the corporate news, the pro-war DC think tanks and the US government. They all peddled the lies that Saddam Hussain had connections to Al Qaeda & had an active WMD program.

The occupation led to a major explosion of violence. In an effort get the insurgency to target each other instead of US troops, the US fueled Iraq's civil war by funding sectarian death squads. At its height, 3,000 Iraqis were dying a month in this sectarian fighting.

The US has decades of experience in financing and organizing death squads and during the occupation of Iraq, The US brought in Jim Steele, who had advised US-backed death squads in El Salvador in the 1980s.
theguardian.com/world/2013/mar…

During the course of the war, the US fired tens of thousands of rounds of radioactive depleted uranium (DU).
theguardian.com/world/2014/jun…
DU and other heavy metals used in US bombs have caused widespread birth defects in Iraq.
abcnews.go.com/Health/birth-d…

The Iraqi city of Fallujah repeatedly was a center of resistance to the US occupation as a result, in 2004, the US conducted the bloodiest battle of the war there, killing at least 800 civilians, damaging half of all structures in the city & destroying over 1/4 of its mosques.

The US attack on Fallujah used a devastating amount of depleted uranium & poisoned the city. One study found incidents of infant mortality & cancer in Fallujah exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
independent.co.uk/news/world/mid…

Throughout the war, the US routinely engaged in torture of Iraqi prisoners, most infamously at Abu Ghraib. The US troops at Abu Ghraib engaged in physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy, and murder.

The most chilling allegations to come out of Abu Ghraib were that US military personnel video taped Iraqi guards raping young boys, US soldiers sodomized a female Iraqi detainee & US troops “severely beat an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death." newyorker.com/magazine/2004/…

Despite the US rhetoric about bringing democracy, the US actually did everything it could to prevent elections in Iraq, preferring instead to put in place a reliable US puppet. However, mass protests forced the US to allow elections, theguardian.com/world/2004/jan…

US relied on vicious mercenaries like Blackwater, which routinely engaged in murder and earned millions to help the US brutal occupation. The most infamous of their crimes was the Nisour Square Massacre, which killed 17 Iraqi civilians & wounded dozens more.

The brutal US-run prisons in Iraq became "Jihadi Universities" where future terrorists would become radicalized & build a network. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, was radicalized in a US-run prison in Iraq.
theintercept.com/2016/08/25/u-s…

After the war, Iraq suffered major destruction of its rich cultural heritage, which included looting and burning of the Iraq National Museum & a large number of mosque bombings cemml.colostate.edu/cultural/09476…

US military members and government employees looted thousands of ancient artifacts from Iraq and have been attempting to sell them. chicagotribune.com/news/nationwor…

Not one of the architects of the war have faced justice for the horrendous crimes that they ordered and oversaw.