Large mixed neighborhoods were the norm in Baghdad. Sunni and Shia prayed in one another’s mosques. As the rest of the article makes clear, the reason it has changed is because the “Americans thought they would decrease the resistance attacks by separating the people of Iraq into sects and tribes”.

Large mixed neighborhoods were the norm in Baghdad. Sunni and Shia prayed in one another’s mosques. As the rest of the article makes clear, the reason it has changed is because the “Americans thought they would decrease the resistance attacks by separating the people of Iraq into sects and tribes”.

"Americans want to alter the shape of our cities, dividing Iraqis into ethnic and sectarian groups living separately from each other," Khali Sadiq, a researcher in statistics at Baghdad University, told IPS.

Here in the reality based community: Iraqis are intermarried, Iraq has never had a civil war and has no history of religious violence (hint: Muslims don’t hate mosques). The violence in Iraq stems from the guerrilla war against the occupation and the vicious attacks on the civilian population are widely blamed on the occupation.

In the Pentagon/Antiwar.com bizarro-world: Iraq was plagued by ‘constant ethno-sectarian strife’ that was only kept in check by Saddam and his people shredder. Muslims hate mosques and blow them up constantly and all the Arabs really want to live in homogeneous open-air prisons with limited access to food, water, and electricity. Kurdish Muslims are exempt from this because they support the occupation…well I’m sure there must be a reason! All the violence is “terrorism” and if the occupation were to end it would get much worse.

The Bandow article is complaining that Europe isn’t doing enough to help America. A stronger Europe and U.S. could then join in military action elsewhere when their interests coincide. That’s clearly devoted to the cause of non-interventionism!

"They [death squads] evicted many of our good Sunni neighbors and killed many others," Abu Riyad of the predominantly Shia Shula area told IPS. "We protected them for a while, but then we could not face the militias with all the support they had from the Iraqi government and the Americans. It is a terrible shame that we have to live with, but what can we do?"

Many such stories are told around Baghdad.

Afghanistan: It was in a Doug Bandow column. He was howling about the Europeans “subsidizing inefficient welfare states” despite “the growing need for troops in Afghanistan”.

And thanks to the Antiwar folks who work so hard to bring us the other side of the story every day.

If you’re still in the mood to celebrate the debunking of old war propaganda, here’s the Washington Post admitting that the “Zarqawi campaign” was created by the occupation:

It is difficult to determine how much has been spent on the Zarqawi campaign, which began two years ago and is believed to be ongoing. U.S. propaganda efforts in Iraq in 2004 cost $24 million, but that included extensive building of offices and residences for troops involved, as well as radio broadcasts and distribution of thousands of leaflets with Zarqawi's face on them, said the officer speaking on background.

One internal briefing, produced by the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, said that Kimmitt had concluded that, "The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date."

As for the Bandow column, are you really that obtuse? The column was about NATO, and Bandow was making the point that NATO is a failure even on its own terms, since the U.S. contributes almost all the troops to every mission.