here on the home front. and more bloodbath in syria as arab league monitors arrive in that war torn country today and hundreds more die and what human rights activists describe it as an organized massacre. and mixing a deadly cocktail of us have fought hard to keep capital punishment alive and kicking so to speak so it's lifeline to the legal lethal injection drugs may be coming to an end that is of the u.k. gets its way will explain. why it's thursday december twenty second eight pm in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching r.t. . well now that american troops are officially out of iraq a look now at the u.s. legacy left behind nearly

a decade later eight hundred billion dollars spent almost five thousand american military deaths in nearly one million iraqi civilians killed many say iraq is no better off today than it was before the u.s. invaded it a recent survey shows overall iraqis feel their country is in worse shape because of the war six in ten are rocky's fear a possible civil war increased foreign influence from neighbors terrorist threats and a bleak economic outlook who that benefited from the war will certainly not be iraqis according to the poll when asked who benefited fifty four percent of iraqis say the united states fifty eight percent say saudi arabia and fifty percent say iran only four percent say the iraqi people benefited most from the war but president obama is touting the pullout as a victory for filled promises he made during his campaign. one of the most extraordinary chapters in the history of the american military will come to an end

iraq's future will be in the hands of its people america's war in iraq will be over. but just today several bombs rocked baghdad killing at least sixty nine people the explosions appear to have hit mostly shiites sections of the city it's the worst violence iraq has seen and months no one has claimed responsibility yet but it's believed sunni insurgents are behind it here you are looking at scenes from the chaos today and the lenses and police rushing from scene to scene and smoke clouds billowed out of the various blast sites as many as twelve bombs exploded in what was clearly an organized attack well amid the increased violence what did the u.s. really accomplish in the war in iraq tell me analyze this earlier i was joined by brian bakker national coordinator of the answer coalition after a decade of fighting and hopes of bringing about a free and democratic country i asked him if the u.s.

has come even close to accomplishing that here is his take well i don't think those were the real objectives of the united states those are the slogans under which the bush administration carried out the invasion in march two thousand and three it was a prieto as an excuse can ever say well we're invading a country occupying a country bombing a country because we want to dominate the region dominate its vast oil resources in the case of iraq the united states has been at war against iraq not simply since march two thousand and three when u.s. invaded but since august one thousand nine hundred when the u.s. imposed economic sanctions on iraq and the identified regime change then and later as its primary goal during the period of the sink sions prior to the invasion emerged two thousand and three according to the u. one's own statistics a million people mainly babies in their grandparents the most vulnerable died because the united states government as a matter of policy deprived their country of food and medicine this is a twenty year long war and despite all of that president obama is handling this as a victory he promised to get the troops out before the end of the year he is

fulfilling that promise so this really be considered a victory or is it all part of a political game you know as the elections now. well it's not a big do for the united states the the goal was to impose. a pliable quiet regime in a country that had been pacified so the united states could not only dominate its world but have a main client in this oil rich region that's clearly not the case most importantly though it's been a great national tragedy for the people of iraq not only have maybe more than a million died hundreds of thousands certainly but five million people were made into refugees almost every family has somebody they lost there's tons of widows and orphans in iraq and the country's been shredded along ethno sectarian lines previously unified country is now fighting itself as a consequence of the u.s. strategy was which was to divide and conquer joseph biden the vice president

appointed by bush to be the point when he himself was the advocate of the partition of iraq the breaking up of the country. and that appears to be what we are seeing today and the bombings we're going to talk a little bit more about that in a little bit first i want to play a clip from you from senator john mccain and his reaction to the removal of troops there. it was pretty obvious that if we did not have a residual force there that things could unravel very quickly all of us knew that the president campaigned saying he would bring around the end of the war there's already good propaganda out there called promises kept and he made some very interesting comments about we're leaving behind a stable iraq which we knew is obviously not true we needed the residual force here it's not there no things are unraveling tragically. so senator mccain he's essentially saying that it was a mistake to bring all the troops home he's calling it a political strategy so this kind of implies that he he believes that troops should

still be there on the ground and iraq how do you feel about mccain advocating this indefinite occupation of iraq well it's the height of a. imperial arrogance the united states has no right to station its troops in a country that doesn't want them furthermore the united states wanted to keep military forces in iraq but the iraqi government refused to grant those troops immunity extraterritoriality immune from iraqi laws and so the pentagon as it did here as it always does when it fails to get immunity for its soldiers took them out but let's not forget that there are sixteen thousand staff members in the new state department embassy in downtown baghdad a compound larger than all other compounds in american diplomatic history it's the size of ninety four football fields as one and a half square miles half of those sixteen thousand staff people will be armed guards in other words a private army of mercenaries and contractors so the united states really hasn't left with a force that big in downtown baghdad

a country that's relatively small well today we saw the deadliest day in iraq in a long time i mean this is charlie after it the u.s. pulled out most of their troops is this a preview of things to come well you see them a week a government is already at war against different sunni political forces those that they say were linked to the resistance in iraq against the american occupation or have some ties to the old benefits government clearly the dawa party the ruling party in iraq has its own narrow political agenda it is a sectarian agenda it is discriminatory against the sunni muslims and against other sectors of the population including the kurds what we see now is the breakup of all formerly unified countries so that this kind of thing is predictable sadly for the iraqi people the division of the country along these lines could lead to a renewed kind of civil war something that was absent prior to the american

occupation to the extent that there's a civil war in iraq the blood that will flow from it is on the hands of george w. bush dick cheney and of course those who came after him including those from the obama administration that was. their policy and you know earlier we presented these statistics. portrays the way that the iraqis feel about the war after the u.s. has pulled out and a very very small percentage of the rockies feel that they benefited from the war who did benefit from this war well of course american military contractors hello burton those who go to the big contracts for the reconstruction during the occupation forces they made a lot of money the pentagon generally made a lot of money spent two trillion dollars i think that's the real budget then all that money goes to american contractors and corporations they profit but four thousand five hundred plus american soldiers died tens of thousands had life changing rooms you know as you'll report there are rising tide of american suicides

among some american military people who've been deployed over and over again and the big losers are of course the iraqi people they lived at peace they had a nationally unified country they had relative affluence for the region women had rights relative to the region a lot of that has been shattered and is gone and it may take generations to recover and that was brian becker national coordinator of the answer coalition. well the thousands of lives lost is perhaps the biggest cost of the war in iraq but it turns out the biggest enemy may not be insurgents may not be terrorists but u.s. soldiers themselves suicide rates among u.s. soldiers and veterans today are soaring for the second year in a row more soldiers killed themselves than were killed on the battlefield and many servicemen that become victims never even leave the u.s. soil it's leading some to argue that there is something going on in the military experience that is driving soldiers to commit suicide many come back with severe depression post-traumatic stress disorder and face challenges assimilating back

into civilian life i take a look at the suicide epidemic plaguing servicemen and women today and what may be behind it. being in this environment. it's killing us soldiers but surprisingly the biggest killers are not enemy combatants unfortunately and the demographic in the united states kills itself pretty much more than any other over there for the second year in a row more soldiers killed themselves than were killed in combat four hundred sixty eight soldiers took their own lives in two thousand and ten and even off the battlefield suicide rates continue to soar mathur sharon was an afghanistan war veteran turn anti-war activist we come home feeling terrible despicable about what we did and what we saw sure roe is one of thousands returning from deployment feeling the tach to and conflicted the laws of decency don't apply to soldiers in combat and when you go back to having to apply those last yourself all the time.

you know that for many you know. either to the grave or to jail an average of eighteen veterans per day commit suicide and many more attempt it last year twenty percent of the thirty thousand american suicides was a soldier or veteran kind of cumulated in. disaster. and that we really start to wonder if you're going to be who you were again dr jan kemp says many soldiers come back feeling disconnected from the world in which they once lived and then all of a sudden they're there back things happened in their families while they were gone the situation they can come back to is not often the same one that they left in fact many come back to bleak situations a quarter of the homeless in america are military veterans the unemployment rate among vets hovers over twelve percent meanwhile campaigns such as army strong

glorify life as a soldier and aim to entice america's young men and women. unless. that's the. root cause since retiring from the army sharon has been committed to showing students the other side of the army experience the side recruiters fail to show it's all part of the we are not your soldiers tour his message is clear don't don't become one of us. and he hopes that message will prevent students from turning into a statistic from washington liz wahl. and for more on this earlier i spoke to jason leopold he's the deputy managing editor of truthout dot org and with an average of eighteen veterans committing suicide each day according to the veterans administration i asked him why we are seeing skyrocketing suicide rates among

soldiers here's his take. well first of all that's actually a statistic that has been out there for quite some time it's been somewhat under the radar you know part of the problem here is that soldiers first of all. they the experience that they're having in iraq in afghanistan is traumatic obviously these are multiple deployments multiple deployments. returning to an environment in which they have difficulty adjusting in addition to that there is a stigma that is associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury and that stigma has has somewhat halted veterans from seeking the help that they that they need. you know one issue that i have tried to bring up in some of the reporting that i've done is that in the past nine years almost nearly nine

years since this war in iraq has been going on it's now supposedly coming to an end we've never truly seen or we've never seen what the true face of this conflict was what the true face of the war is we have never really seen any of these pictures we don't know what the stories are from some of these soldiers we don't know really what they've been experiencing we have been very removed from what has been happening on the ground in iraq what they've been experiencing and in battle i just put a story together yesterday. based on an interview that i've done with. with is an author and journalist who said that some soldiers actually some that he has both spoken to they've committed suicide due to their involvement in the abuse of detainees prisoners in iraq so that is just one area that no one has even looked at

but they've been so to. torn up and traumatized by what they've been involved in what they've experienced in and once they return home adjusting to life is incredibly difficult and if i may just add one more thing is that there's been the bureaucratic red tape that exists at the veterans administration that existed under bush that the obama administration tried to cut through but it's been a slow process a shortage of mental health care workers although there are there have been about three hundred recently hired you have to keep in mind there have been one point three million soldiers who have been deployed to iraq and afghanistan and i want to ask you because war's been going on for a long time and i'm sure it's always been a traumatizing experience is this a really two relatively new phenomenon that that more soldiers are committing

suicide or is it just that we are getting these statistics today or perhaps as something unique about the war experience today that is contributing to more suicides. it's a great question and it's it's definitely unique to iraq and afghanistan it's unique to the fact that there have been multiple deployments and keep in mind there is not a draft ok there has not been a draft in which people have been sent to war this is an all volunteer army that has been out there and they've been deployed three four different times. to both theaters iraq and afghanistan so it is it is absolutely unique and returning home is you know i have to tell you i've spoken to many many soldiers and the stories that they tell me of of what they've experienced have just been horrific they are fearful of speaking out publicly for a wide range of reasons but what they have communicated is

it's very sad to see the suffering that they're going through and how fearful they are about actually seeking help for what they've experienced because they feel that it will reflect negatively on them. they're embarrassed by it and also they also feel that if they were to talk about what they were involved in that they'd actually be brought up on charges you know another interesting thing about this that i wanted to bring up as that many of the victims . soldiers that become victims of suicide they never even leave u.s. soil so what is it about the military experience perhaps something beyond even being in combat that is contributing to that could be contributing to these suicide rates. i'm not quite sure i understand the question is are you that's really happy

because you know because a lot of the you were saying a lot of the times there that being in combat is traumatic and being exposed to those kinds of hostile situations but a lot of the soldiers that end up committing suicide they don't even end up leaving u.s. soil so something about the preparation or the training are being part of the military itself sill can leave a traumatizing imprint on a person yes you know and that's actually one. you know that is something that's been articulated to me by a number of different soldiers and i think that it's very difficult for civilians to truly. understand what the experience is like the camaraderie what it feels like for them to be surrounded by a group of brothers or sisters in a particular unit that they've been with for quite some time and and really it's about adjusting to civilian life. and. that's

something that they've been having a hard time doing. but you know there the majority of suicides that have happened have been from soldiers returning not just from the battlefield but returning from iraq and afghanistan and in fact you know there's i have spoken to several that were just several soldiers who were just you know they were working as engineers or mechanics and it's something about adjusting to the environment and you know you mentioned homelessness and unemployment. that is an ongoing problem you know one thing that we need to really understand is that this war may be over but the battle has just begun and the veterans administration is absolutely unprepared for what is going to be a. a huge increase in seoul jurors in veterans

seeking help for hopefully for p.t.s.d. and traumatic brain injury hopefully they'll seek out help but you know thus far there's been about two hundred thousand veterans who have sought help for post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury and. they're still unprepared in terms of dealing with that we don't have enough help mental health care workers there have been some programs that have been started but it's it's it's certainly going to become in in my opinion the legacy of this of the war jason thank you so much for weighing in on this that was jason leopold deputy managing editor of truthout dot org. well as u.s. troops wind down and iraq violence is escalating in syria although the arab league monitors have arrived there economic sanctions against syria remain as artie's sarah furthur reports as the ordinary people who are feeling the pain. if we nearly

ten months there is uprising began the capital of damascus has remained largely sheltered from the conflict in fact in the bustling sense so it seems like it's business as usual but as one says so and the winds of change have begun to flow the little stronger the arab league's imposed tough economic sanctions the effects of which have been felt even hid in a poor area in the snow going to damascus and her family struggling to make ends meet because of learning to. the beans for a living that he barely makes a hundred and fifty three and the day three dollars to support him and he's really . now the fuel for his vending cart has become harder to get hold of it's the economic sanctions. there are less products available and the prices are pushed higher and there's been fights over gas that we've been trying to manage by

cutting back as much as we can but sometimes when we can't afford it which is don't eat the economic situation in syria was one of the areas president happy to be making. the for a population that it started seeing the results of economic opportunity say. financial transactions. back out the economy. the out there this which of our electricity every day for roughly two hours if it's business is when this happens we have to stop our. capital people are feeling the pain of the sanctions by. economic sanctions. taking. the one hit. has become part of the daily life of many people here in the area. because of the economic sanctions people. with gas just. people are

a little bit afraid of the fact that water or gas. this is what you see these. this in place by the arab league at the state the sanction from the government hands when it came to end violence in the country was inside syria at the moment many feel it every day people are looking for. they could be even financially. share prices in the stock market secure things to change. down affected by. for example. the capital of. banks in syria. could he use. his theory of the bank and effect it in directly on the decision of the investors it goes ping from the arab league will be paving the way you can observe the mission to at the end of the month which opposition they remain skeptical about whether

that to bring about any change these coups up in the west of the conflict areas change can come in the tesing is imperative to families like. finding life under the sanctions increasingly desperate. she tells us that although his situation seems bad area there are many more people they think and worse she worries what will happen to her son and young family things they. say. haven't succeeded in convincing the regime to hold the complex thanks in the last few days. and. he should question now is whether the arrival of the observer great and most of the sites is that who holds the violence as to whether that will be the case the telly being outside and inside the country. in the.

damascus. what we've turned out to some health related fears in europe they are opinion has imposed tough new restrictions on the sale of drugs used to execute prisoners in the us a move which is likely to squeeze an already short supply across the atlantic as aimed at fighting capital punishment and its controversial methods artie's ivor bene reports on why human rights groups say the export controls are a step in the right direction. they've tried hanging electrocution and most recently a drug used to euthanize animals but now american jails will find it much harder to kill prisoners on death row the main supply line for its lethal injections has been cut off after the e.u. slaps new restrictions on drug exports i really think this will make a difference and we will see the effects of this this control order in the coming

months that the the u.s. relies on european drugs for use in executions and without them they're going to be stuck and lives will be saved specific execution drugs aren't made in the e.u. but several american states have been importing sedatives instead drugs designed to help being used to hurt. exports of drugs like sodium thiopental will now be controlled to stop their use in a three part lethal cocktail the end of it was being used to put the condemned inmate to sleep as another drug paralyzed before the final heart stopper was administered without that initial numbing stage lethal injections are unconstitutional under u.s. law the usual supply for these drugs has been dwindling since the only u.s. manufacturer ceased production last year american prisons though found an alternative source right here in west london at this fairly unassuming driving school the buildings also shared by dream farmer

a british firm exporting british drugs the u.s. prisons to kill people the u.k. government soon found out and banned its use so american prisons searched elsewhere r.t. reported in may now some states have begun using pen to baba told a drug normally used to put pets to sleep that's never been tested for human executions its primary use for humans is to treat epilepsy but it has no pain killing properties many feel its use on death throes tantamount to torture this can cause excruciating pain if something goes wrong and because we have no tests we can't guarantee that nothing will get around to people at risk of not just being killed being tortured to death. following a report danish manufacturer imposed their own restrictions to prevent misuse the new e.u. embargo covers eight barbiturates in total including. us stop poles will eventually run dry but many fear it's only

a matter of time before prisons try again with something else unfortunately the death merchants in the us can sometimes be creative in terms of what they put to use in order to put people to death and so i think what we need is a clause which that if other drugs should appear on the market and we discover that the u.s. is misusing those we can quickly have a quick procedure to add those to the list without you know wait another year aside from lethal injection other methods like hanging and firing squad a still sanctioned in the u.s. but in now really used these new restrictions may not choke off the drug supply completely but it will certainly tighten the noose on america's controversial death penalty. by the bennett artsy london. well that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to r.t. dot com slash usa and you can also check out our youtube page it's youtube dot com slash r t america you can also follow me on twitter liz wall the big picture with

tom hartman is coming up in just a half hour on this week's edition of conversations with great minds tom we'll speak with an economist and political science professor who says it's time to usher in a new economy but that's going to do it for the news tonight i'll see you right back here tomorrow have a great night. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.