Both Iraq and Iran have been and are being either sanctioned by or else constantly being threatened by the U.S. Government, though neither Iraq nor Iran ever invaded nor even threatened to invade the United States. This is pure aggression against both Iraq and Iran, and the millions of people who are suffering these constant aggressions are the peoples of Iraq and of Iran. Never does the U.S. Government apologize, and never do any of its allied governments (America’s vassal nations) so much as just suggest that the U.S. Government ought to apologize, for its constant wars of aggression against the peoples of those and of other countries that never threatened America. The U.S. is a constant international outlaw, launching wars of aggression routinely, and the rest of the world remains silent about this, decade after decade.

17 years after America’s conquest of Iraq, the “Gallup Global Emotions Report 2020”, which was just issued on November 19th, finds:

Iraq: The Most Negative Country in the World 

After years of posting some of the highest scores in the world on the Negative Experience Index, Iraq topped the list in 2019 with a score of 51. This figure represents a slight increase from its score of 49 in 2018. 
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The country’s 2019 score reflects the turmoil in Iraq amid some of the largest and bloodiest protests in years. In late 2019, Iraqis’ approval of their country’s leadership plummeted from an already low 22% to just 13%. Nine in 10 Iraqis said corruption was widespread throughout their government. ​

Baghdad buys gas and electricity from its neighbour Tehran to supply about a third of its power sector, worn down by years of conflict and poor maintenance.

​Washington has granted Iraq a shortened 45-day sanctions waiver to import Iranian gas that will expire days before US President Donald Trump's term ends, an Iraqi official said Saturday.

Baghdad buys gas and electricity from its neighbour Tehran to supply about a third of its power sector, worn down by years of conflict and poor maintenance.

The US blacklisted Iran's energy industry in late 2018 but granted Baghdad a series of temporary waivers, hoping Iraq would wean itself off Iranian energy by partnering with US firms.

There was little about the man walking through Heathrow Airport to show he held secrets that could bring down some of the most powerful men in Iraq.
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Moustached, olive skinned, hair receding, eyes sharp. His name was Basil Al Jarah. His British passport showed he lived in Hull, an unremarkable town in the north of England, but it bore the stamps of a frequent traveller: London, Baghdad, Basra, Amman, Paris, Istanbul, Kuwait.

Responding to the execution on Monday of 21 individuals in Iraq, including individuals allegedly affiliated to the Islamic State (IS) and convicted of terror-related charges, Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said:
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“It is high time the Iraqi authorities put an end to executing people. Retaliatory executions not only fail to deliver justice to the victims and to their families, they serve to reinforce perceptions of partial justice, at a time when the authorities are mum in regards to other serious violations such as torture and enforced disappearances that are still taking place across the country.

“At a time when the authorities are pressing ahead to close the chapter of the conflict with IS, they should ensure they are not doing so by perpetuating the sort of actions that have been highlighted as the seeds of previous cycles of violence – which yesterday’s tragic execution is a stark example of.”

Vast jet-black plumes of smoke curling upwards into the sky, blocking out the sun. Crude oil flowing through the streets.  These were some of the environmental footprints left by ISIL/Da’esh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in northern and western Iraq.
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Oil wells and mineral stockpiles were torched, particularly during the Mosul offensive in the spring of 2016. Water barrages were blown up. So thick were the clouds of smoke that for the inhabitants day became night.

This lasted for weeks. Locals dubbed it the “Da’esh winter” despite the sizzling mid-summer heat. Nowhere was this more visible than in Qayyarah, a town of about 25,000 beside the Tigris River, some 60 kilometres south of Mosul.

Four years later, residents continue to suffer. Slowly, however, life is on the mend again. A clean-up of these oil-polluted areas is under way with support from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and partners.

Mental health workers say suicide rates in some parts of Iraq are disproportionately affecting women

​A decision by Iraqi authorities to close camps sheltering up to 100,000 displaced people will worsen a mental health crisis in which spiking suicide rates are disproportionately affecting women, experts and NGOs have warned.

Three years after the Iraqi government declared victory over the Islamic State terrorist group, the Ministry of Migration and Displaced People is eager to close camps for those displaced by the war, announcing in October a programme for the “safe and voluntary return” for hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

But closing these camps will exacerbate a deepening mental health crisis, NGOs warn.

“Many of the people in these camps are widows and families that have been neglected and outcast by their families for their connection with ISIS,” said Ekhlas Mohammed Ali, a psychiatrist from Mosul.

When the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers meet in southern Iraq, they take on a new name. They become the Shatt al-Arab, the River of Arabs, a 200 kilometre long estuary which crosses Basra Governorate before emptying into the Persian Gulf. The Shatt al-Arab is the lifeline of southern Iraq; it irrigates agricultural land and is a major transport artery.
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It is also in ill health.

So when images appeared on social media this June showing oil spills on the Shatt al-Arab in Basra, Iraqis immediately responded, voicing concern about a public health crisis.

Or rather, yet another public health crisis. For decades, the Shatt al-Arab has suffered from serious pollution. By 2018, fresh water was so scarce that the people of Basra faced an environmental catastrophe. Over 110,000 people became ill from polluted water sources, prompting mass demonstrations across the region.

Iraqi Minister of Transport, Nasser Al-Shibli, said yesterday that Chinese companies have been providing services with regards to the implementation of the Al-Faw Grand Port project in the southern governorate of Basra.
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“The ministry is continuing to negotiate with the South Korean Daewoo company regarding Al-Faw Grand Port project,” Al-Shibli said in a statement, adding that Daewoo has two contracts with the port which expire in 2021.

He noted that Iraqi authorities and the Southern Korean company have disagreements regarding the depths, timescales and payments.

The Iraqi minister explained that if no agreement is reached with Daewoo Engineering and Construction (Daewoo E&C), other companies have offered their services, including Chinese companies.

Since the 2003 invasion, doctors in Fallujah have been reporting a sharp rise in birth defects among the city’s children—and to this day, no one knows why.

​Three years after American soldiers besieged her city, Iraqi pediatrician Samira Alani began to see a problem in the maternity ward. Women were bearing infants with organs spilling out of their abdomens or with their legs fused together like mermaids’ tails. Some looked as if they were covered in snakeskin. Others emerged gasping, unsuccessfully, for air. No one knew what was wrong with the babies, although almost no one was trying to find out, either. It was 2007, the height of the political and sectarian violence unleashed by the US invasion and occupation. Fallujah, where Alani lived and worked, was considered one of the most unstable and inaccessible cities on earth.
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The news about the babies spread from the hospital corridors to the inner courtyards of the city’s homes, whispered among female relatives and neighbors. Entisar Hussein, a housewife in Fallujah, learned about the deformities after a cousin returned from the maternity ward. “One woman, she had a child with a tail, and one, she had a child with a rabbit’s face,” Hussein recalled her cousin telling her. The sickness crept into Hussein’s family, too, she said: One of her sisters-in-law delivered an infant without skull bones to protect the brain tissue; the baby died at birth. Another sister-in-law had two miscarriages and then gave birth to a child with an enormous, bloated head. He died, too.

​Soon Fallujah’s children became a topic of concern at tribal meetings and in the provincial doctors’ union. Many residents suspected that the major American offensives against the city might have had something to do with the deformities. The second offensive, which began in early November 2004, was the deadliest battle of the entire US war in Iraq—a six-week siege that killed thousands of Iraqis and dozens of Americans and left much of the city in rubble. But these suspicions were kept quiet. Outside people’s homes, just beyond the iron front doors, US Marines patrolled the streets, and residents said they feared the United States wouldn’t respond kindly to insinuations of having sparked a public health crisis. Moreover, the Americans weren’t the only actors that Fallujans had to consider. The Shiite-led national government in Baghdad, which many viewed as a puppet of Washington and Tehran, was engaged in a campaign of arrests, torture, and political retribution against its critics, particularly in Sunni-majority areas like Fallujah. In Fallujah, various Iraqi parties and militias were jockeying for political power, and they, too, sought to control the spread of information for their own agendas.

Iraq’s Ministry of Agriculture yesterday warned of the emergence of Koi herpesvirus (KHV) in fish across a number of governorates.

“Over the current week, the monitoring and investigation teams for prevalent diseases in veterinary hospitals have discovered the emergence of Koi disease in the provinces of Anbar, Saladin, Babil and some areas in Baghdad,” a ministry statement said, according to Alsumaria.

The ministry added that authorities had called on fish breeders to refrain from “raising different ages of fish in the same aquariums.”

“Fish breeders should adhere to the ministry’s instructions to prevent the spread of the virus until a treatment is available.”