Joe Biden is F**king Awesome

it WAS a historic moment - but now it'll all be overshadowed by the fact that the second in command of the most powerful country in the world couldn't control his impulsiveness and language until he was in private...you know - you want to continue to be represented by this sort of thing, when the US already has the reputation all over the world of being immature and impulsive and impetuous and etc. and etc. FINE...I'm sort of sick of being the lone American over here trying to defend our government when they can't even control their mouths...we ELECT these people to represent us and show some couth for god's sake.

Our country has been a joke for a very long time...

Violations of Iraqi Children Rights Under the American Occupation

By Dr. Souad N. Al-Azzawi

01 March, 2010

For two decades, Iraqi children, along with all other elements of Iraqi society, have been subjected to grave human rights violations.

These violations began with the destruction of all civil services and Iraqi civil infrastructure by the US/UK aggression on Iraq during the Gulf War of 1991, and were followed by the brutal economical sanctions which deprived the people of Iraq of food, clean water, health care, education and security.

As a result more than half a million Iraqi children died during the nineties [1].The thirteen years of suffering under embargo ended with the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Another form of suffering was born in 2003 under the American occupation. As if the causalities of the excessive use of power during military operations were not enough, the invasion operations consisted of systematically burning and looting of civil services and infrastructure, health care centers, schools and universities, industrial compounds, etc [2]. As stated in UNAMI's report of November 2006, Iraq can be described as "a nation that has been plunged into barbarism since the US-invasion in 2003"[2].

Under the American occupation, lack of security, sectarian violence, deterioration of health care systems, poverty, massive imprisonments, clean water shortages, limited or no electrical power, environmental pollution and lack of sanitation all contributed to grave violations to children's rights and a drastic increase in the child mortality rate. It has been reported that one out of eight children in Iraq die before their fifth birthday [3].

The forces of the American occupation, and the occupation-assigned Iraqi government, grossly failed to fulfill their most basic duties towards the children of Iraq in accordance with the UN/CRC Convention on the Rights of the Child, Resolution 25/ Session 44, November 1989 [4]. The convention was ratified by 194 countries of the United Nations, except the USA and Somalia.

http://www.countercurrents.org/azzawi010310.htm