What Do We Owe Iraq?

What do we owe Iraq for over a million dead, and ten times that number wounded or otherwise devastated in five years?

For 5,000,000 people who have been uprooted and displaced from their homes, half of them forced to flee their homeland, 65% of them women and children, 80% of the children less than 12 years of age?

What do we owe Iraq for having perverted governance into an aggregation of death squads? For leveling essential services, leaving the nation in the dark most days, contaminating the water supply, destroying the agricultural sector in the birthplace of agriculture, and aiding and abetting the looting of the cradle of civilization?

What do we owe this country "where the first letter was written, the first law put, the first university built, the first money issued, and the first poetry written?" asks Eman Kammas, a fearless Iraqi journalist now forced into exile.

The $3,000,000.000.000 USD Joseph Stiglitz calculates this illegal war will cost U.S. taxpayers will not compensate Iraq in per capita reparations.

What do we owe Iraq? The damage can never be quantified.

[Excerpt of an article by John Ross, Counterpunch]