Raed Jarrar speaking at U.S. Wars of Aggression and Islamic Jihad: What is the Danger, and How Should the Anti-war Movement Respond?

Spring Rising held a six-part Teach-In last week in Washington.  Here is a dramatic talk by Raed Jarrar, who is of Iraqi and Palestinian descent, as he says, from Sunni and Shiite parents, making him a “Sushi.” Raed works for the American Friends Service Committee as Policy Impact Coordinator.

On Friday, Raed Jarrar told of being in Baghdad during “shock and awe,” and the heartbreak of seeing his mother, a civil engineer who knew the strength of reinforced concrete, cowering in terror under a sheet during the bombing — as if the sheet would protect them.

He showed us a study just released from Physicians for Social Responsibility called “Body Count” — a comprehensive account of the vast and continuing human toll of the various “Wars on Terror” conducted in the name of the American people since the events of September 11, 2001.

As a matter of policy, the Bush regime, and now the Obama administration, did not count the people they killed. The new report says:

The number of Iraqis killed during and since the 2003 U.S. invasion have been assessed at one million, which represents 5% of the total population of Iraq.  This does not include deaths among the three million refugees subjected to privations.3