by Matthew Abuelo

Created on: August 09, 2008

Iraq War In Focus

Here we are in the middle of another election cycle and once again, the issues surrounding the Iraq war are once again being whitewashed by the great PR firm, also known as the U.S. mainstream media. Unlike the 2004 elections when the decision was sold to us as a vital part of homeland security, however, the war has hardly been brought up at all this year. So called "Iraq fatigue" is pointed to as the main reason for the lack of coverage but according to poll numbers leading up to the primaries, the Iraq war was second only to the economy in importance for the majority of those who voted for Obama and in the same range of concerns for Hillary Clinton supporters. So the question has to be asked, if the American people are still so concerned with the war, why has it not been a major issue during the race? Perhaps the details behind current events in the war-torn country could provide some clues. Here's a hint: it has nothing to do with US troop build ups.

The most recent round of fallacies concerning the dip in violence over the past several months is that the surge of US troops has lead to many gains and suddenly the hit and run tactics of the Iraqi rebel fighters were no longer as successful in causing havoc. As George W Bush likes to point out, however, "the devil is in the details." For starters, several reports coming out of Iraq, show that one fifth of the country is currently living as refugees, all of whom were forced out of their neighborhoods due to violence or the threat of violence. More than a million of those refugees have fled to Syria, Turkey or Jordan until they were forced to close their borders when it became obvious they would not receive support from NATO countries. By comparison, only 466 Iraqis have been allowed into the United States.

According to the Lancet Report a million Iraqis have been killed since the beginning of the war five years ago. Unlike Iraq-Body-Count-Dot-Org, which uses the official Pentagon count and news wire reports, the Lancet report actually involved face to face interviews, along with patterns of violence in given regions and morgue records to come up with this much higher number. The Pentagon numbers include only those Iraqis killed by bombings, shootings and other forms of violence but ignore the deaths caused by the disease due to the lack of sanitation and clean drinking water.

In a move that can only be described as an act of genocide, several reports have surfaced which suggest U.S. forces deliberately

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