(Illustration found here).

Ten years along and the recipients of “shock and awe” know it as a wide-awake nightmare — from the NY Times:

At the pet market, Karrar Habeeb, a 22-year-old carpenter, paused, surprised to be asked about what was surely the defining event of his youth.
“I didn’t know about it,” Mr. Habeeb said of the anniversary.
“Are we still talking about the Americans? I don’t think we need to do any kind of celebrating or make an effort to remember that day.
I think even the Americans wish they could forget it.”

If you’re a Republican absolutely no doubt you have developed a way-strong case of Iraqi-war amnesia — one pure item the GOP Does Not talk about is George Jr., his entire eight years as president and what happened during that time. Why don’t Democrats bring George Jr. up — maybe guilt.
Despite all the horror George Jr. created, Americans are still dumbfounded by the Iraqi war. In a Gallup Poll conducted earlier this month and the results released yesterday, a shitload of US peoples — 42 dumb-ass percent — still believe the war was not a mistake. Only 53 percent claimed otherwise.
The poll also showed age allowed the view that war ain’t good for nobody:

Older Americans are more likely than younger ones to say the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam were a mistake.
Nearly six in 10 Americans aged 65 or older and 57 percent of those aged 50 to 64 say it was a mistake to send troops to Iraq, compared with 50 percent each of 18-to-29-year-olds and 30-to-49-year-olds.
Majorities of those aged 65 or older — who over their lifetimes have seen various U.S. military operations — see all three wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam) as a mistake, the only age group to do so.
Young adults are the only age group in which a majority says the Vietnam War was not a mistake (51 percent) — perhaps because they have no personal memory of the conflict.

Memory, yes indeed.
Ten years ago, I was a writer/editor with a newspaper on California’s central coast — the Times-Press-Recorder — and was about the only person on staff who thought the Iraqi bullshit was a horrible piece of bullshit.
My intel came from the late, great retired Gen. Bill Odom: “The Iraq War may turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in American history. In a mere 18 months we went from unprecedented levels of support after 9-11..to being one of the most hated countries…”
Now a decade later, the war has been been seen as criminal.

Just yesterday came news that US and British intelligence ‘knew’ Iraq had no WMD, but lied about it.
Via the UK’s Guardian on the BBC report:

Fresh evidence has been revealed about how MI6 and the CIA were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction.
Tony Blair told parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was “active”, “growing” and “up and running.”
…
Lord Butler, the former cabinet secretary who led an inquiry into the use of intelligence in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, tells the programme that he was not told about Sabri’s comments, and that he should have been.
Butler says of the use of intelligence: “There were ways in which people were misled or misled themselves at all stages.”
When it was suggested to him that the body that probably felt most misled of all was the British public, Butler replied: “Yes, I think they’re, they’re, they got every reason think that.”
…
Panorama (the BBC program) says it asked for an interview with Blair but he said he was “too busy.”

Old news, in reality. In May 2008, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded the whole Iraqi operation was a pile of shit:

“Before taking the country to war, this Administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced.
Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence,” (Committee chairman Sen. John) Rockefeller said.
“In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.
As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”

And from Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, nearly four years ago: “Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion — its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.”
My underline for emphasis on no smoking gun, but spent bullets.

Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix adds this just yesterday to the mix:

On February 11 — less than five weeks before the invasion — I told U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice I wasn’t terribly impressed by the intelligence we had received from the U.S., and that there had been no weapons of mass destruction at any of the sites we had been recommended by American forces.
Her response was that it was Iraq, and not the intelligence, that was on trial.
And during a telephone chat with Tony Blair on February 20, I told the British prime minister that it would be paradoxical and absurd if a quarter of a million troops were to invade Iraq and find very little in the way of weapons.
He responded by telling me intelligence was clear that Saddam had reconstituted his weapons of mass destruction program.

What a crock. And the most-horrible part is Blair, George Jr., The Dick, all of these lying, warmongering assholes will never, ever be called to justice in this life. President Obama made that clear by “not looking back,” and the tell-tale allowance of George Jr. to paint body parts while in the bath tub.
WTF!

The photo above is the iconic horror of the Iraqi war. I’ve used this particular pic before on numerous occasions on Iraqi war posts — it epitomizes the horror of that war — this little girl is scared out of her disconcerted mind. The only info is that she and those others depicted are fleeing Basra in southern Iraq sometime in the early stages of the conflict.
And a decade later – is she still alive? And what does she think and feel?

Happy anniversary, sweet one.