The number of civilians dead as a result of the war ranges from The Lancet Medical Journal’s 650,000 figure up to a million. By 16 February 2007, Antonio Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees said that the external refugee number fleeing the war reached 2 million and that within Iraq there are an estimated 1.7 million internally displaced people. It is now thought to be as much as double that number.
It is well known that the oil wells were secured and privatised. But the privatisation of Iraq doesn’t stop at oil and Halliburton. Even the seeds of Iraqi farmers were privatised and sold off to international agribusiness, disrupting a centuries-old farming method. [...]
The EU referendum offered an opportunity to strike a blow against the political establishment. The arguments were led by the radical right – but they fed upon the idea that Britain had to be made “great again” after a decade and a half of powerful forces ignoring the will of the people. [...]
Today you will hear from some quarters that after a decade and a half it is time to move on. This is an impossibility because it continues to shape the political terrain in profound ways. And how can we simply “move on” knowing that the crimes that have been visited on the Iraqi people have not been accounted for by their perpetrators?
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