The mass killing and destruction of Iraq that began 17 years ago today, assessed by the most scientifically respected measures available, killed over 1.4 million Iraqis.

Join us now in demanding once and for all: U.S. troops out of Iraq!

While U.S. troops have been reduced in Iraq, they have never been removed. In January, the Iraqi Parliament voted that all U.S. troops should leave. The U.S. government has refused to leave, and has instead proposed installing ("defensive") missiles in Iraq targeting Iran. While Iran is depicted in U.S. media as an evil enemy, the U.S. military does not claim that Iran is a threat to the actual United States, only to U.S. troops near Iran and U.S. "interests." The refusal to leave and the decision to install missiles endanger Iraq, Iran, the entire region, and a world at risk of nuclear escalation and climate collapse that cannot afford any more wars.

The terrorist attack on Baghdad 17 years ago, which was intended to “shock and awe” people into terror and submission, followed months of pro-war propaganda in U.S. corporate media and from the U.S. government.

Senate Foreign Relations Chair Joe Biden promoted the White House’s lies about weapons of mass destruction, pushed hard for war, and orchestrated hearings that excluded dissenting voices.

Many were fooled or claimed to be. Donald Trump’s last public comment on the war before it started was that he supported it.

It is now popular in U.S. politics to deny having supported the war, even to claim to have ended it. But there is virtually no discussion of the moral and practical necessity of complying with the wishes of the Iraqi government – wishes that line up with a demand that many of us have been making for exactly 17 years – to withdraw all U.S. troops and mercenaries and bases and weapons from Iraqi soil.

Click here to join us in making that demand. We'll be able to do more with this petition if you've signed it and if you've asked others to sign it too.

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Background:
>> CNN: “Iraqi Parliament Votes for Plan to End U.S. Troop Presence in Iraq After Soleimani Killing”
>> Mideast Eye: “U.S. Offers Iraq Partial Pullback”
>> Newsweek: “U.S. Sending Missile Defense [sic] to Iraq”
>> David Swanson: “Ever More Shocked, Never Yet Awed”
>> Video: “Worth the Price: Joe Biden and the Launch of the Iraq War”
>> FactCheck.org: “Donald Trump and the Iraq War”

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