{"id":10998,"date":"2011-08-15T06:25:28","date_gmt":"2011-08-15T14:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=10998"},"modified":"2011-08-15T06:25:44","modified_gmt":"2011-08-15T14:25:44","slug":"iraqis-pay-americans-for-the-cost-of-committing-war-crimes-against-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/15\/iraqis-pay-americans-for-the-cost-of-committing-war-crimes-against-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraqis Pay Americans For the Cost of Committing War Crimes Against Them"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A while back <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/12\/imperial-hypocrisy-u-s-calls-iraq-criminals-and-seeks-reparations\/\">I blogged about a nutty congressman,\u00a0Dana Rohrabacher, who visited Iraq and suggested Iraqis ought to be the ones to pay Americans reparations.<\/a>\u00a0But that was just a kooky representative, right? He didn&#8217;t know what he was talking about. Jet lag, perhaps.<\/p>\n<p>Or, not.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/news\/opinion\/glenn_greenwald\/2011\/08\/12\/iraq_hussain\/index.html\">Murtaza Hussain writing at Salon<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Reparations payments&#8221;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/world\/2011-04-30-iraq-payment-americans_n.htm\" target=\"_blank\">are being made by Iraq<\/a>\u00a0to Americans\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/breaking-news\/ci_18566130?nclick_check=1&amp;forced=true\" target=\"_blank\">and others<\/a>\u00a0for the suffering which those parties experienced as a result of the past two decades of conflict with Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>Iraq today is a shattered society still picking up the pieces after decades of war and crippling sanctions. Prior to its conflict with the United States, the Iraqi healthcare and education systems\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcclatchydc.com\/2009\/05\/17\/68193\/iraqs-once-envied-health-care.html\" target=\"_blank\">were the envy of the Middle East<\/a>, and despite the brutalities and crimes of the Ba\u2019ath regime there still managed to exist\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/middle_east\/1949205.stm\" target=\"_blank\">a thriving middle class<\/a>\u00a0of ordinary Iraqis, something conspicuously absent from today\u2019s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2011\/02\/26\/AR2011022603345.html\" target=\"_blank\">free Iraq<\/a>.&#8221; In light of the continued suffering of Iraqi civilians, the agreement by the al-Maliki government to pay enormous sums of money to the people who destroyed the country is unconscionable and further discredits the absurd claim that the invasion was fought to &#8220;liberate&#8221; the Iraqi people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A while back I blogged about a nutty congressman,\u00a0Dana Rohrabacher, who visited Iraq and suggested Iraqis ought to be the ones to pay Americans reparations.\u00a0But that was just a kooky representative, right? He didn&#8217;t know what he was talking about. Jet lag, perhaps. Or, not.\u00a0Murtaza Hussain writing at Salon: &#8220;Reparations payments&#8221;\u00a0are being made by Iraq\u00a0to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[257,386],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-10998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-iraq-war","tag-reparations"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10998"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11000,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10998\/revisions\/11000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10998"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}