USA did not learn its lesson in Iraq, continues policy in Syria – top Russian MP

March 22, 2013 JRL Russia List Middle East, North Africa, Syria, United States, U.S.-Russian Relations

(Interfax – Moscow, March 20, 2013) The chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, Aleksey Pushkov, has said that the USA, which suffered a serious political defeat as a result of the war in Iraq initiated by it 10 years ago, was still carrying on a similar policy towards other Middle East countries, in particular Syria.

“The Americans’ decision to initiate the war in Iraq was nothing but an attempt to once and for all establish a unipolar world and this war in effect became a high point of the US doctrine of claim to unchallenged leadership in the world,” Pushkov said at a State Duma session during an hour of statements froPum parliamentary factions.

He said that, with the passage of time, the Americans and their allies had arrived at a “lukewarm assessment” of the initiation of the war in Iraq, saying that it had been a mistake. “But this is not a mistake. This war was supported by the whole of the US political elite and they should be held accountable for it,” Pushkov said.

He went on to say that Washington’s reassurances that Iraq allegedly possessed “huge reserves of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, bacteriological, chemical and so on” had not been proven.

“Back then the whole world was deceived, but nothing has changed in US policy as it continues to pursue it in the Middle East, in particular in Syria,” he said.

Pushkov noted that, in his opinion, it was “particularly cynical” on the part of the Americans not to mention the Iraqis who had died in the conflict. “According to experts’ estimates, from 150,000 to 250,000 Iraqis died in it (the war), with the Christians having suffered the most, before the war there were 1.4 million of them, and now there remain only 400,000. One million of Christians were either killed or had to leave Iraq,” he added.

Summing up, Pushkov highlighted Russia’s particular responsibility given that the USA had still not drawn proper conclusions from the war in Iraq initiated by it 10 years ago.