https://twitter.com/Lowenaffchen/status/1626360135521107973?s=19
In 1776, all photos of Iraq were in black and white.
Today they are in color.
Checkmate.
Not to add another dunk, but weren't Iraq basically under siege during the 90s and the early 2000s prior to the invasion? So after the gulf war flattened the country, there was basically no way to rebuild it, since Iraq would need to import the technical parts (since their factories were blown up), however due to the sanctions, there was no way to realistically do that, since no country would risk getting on the American shitlist?
Iraqis can now buy funko pops and watch Mr. Beast on their phone. Communists will pretend this isn’t freedom
There was not a single iPhone in all of Iraq under Saddam's reign. Not. A. Single. One.
Let that sink in.
Ah yes, even the children born without thumbs due to depleted uranium exposure get to stare at the Dupe's Rectangle.
Wait a second let me fix that first line:
"In 2003
[after a decade of crippling US-led sanctions which which the world bank estimates saw Iraq's GDP plummet from $65.83 billion in 1989 to 29.8 billion in 2003].
In 2021 [following a brutal war and occupation, and after the country was finally fully under the thumb of foreign capital and after sanctions were lifted],
Iraq's GDP was [only] $208 billion [a number it probably would have reached anyway, had it kept its economic trajectory between 1974–1989 without sanctions or war]
To illustrate this. If Iraq's economy had not grown at all between 1989 and 2023, and not had the gulf war, it would be at $157 Billion. So, an annual growth rate over the last 30 years of (very conservatively) 1.8% would outperform the current GDP.
It is pretty dodgy math (I am not doing calculus today.) but a quick check makes it seem in the ballpark.
Hey, it's better than me just eye balling pre-gulf war GDP trajectory. In any event, we can all agree it's difficult to see how an oil rich country, assuming no sanctions and no US invasion, wouldn't have at least equalled the GDP being lauded in the original article.
they just killed everyone without a phone or they left as refugees
In 2003 I knew one person who had a cell phone.
Also, the fact they don't say what life expectancy was under Saddam means it had to have been like 71.4 or something. Fun little opinion writer trick there.
Hadn't we already bombed them once by 2001? Probably gonna affect that metric a little
Gulf War in the early 90s, as soon as the war started we destroyed a bunch of critical civilian infrastructure that we knew they'd need imports to fix and then sanctioned them afterward to prevent them from acquiring the goods needed for repairs.
500,000 kids died as a result in the years between the two wars. Madeleine Albright said it was worth it. :amerikkka:
EDIT: For more, listen to s1 of Blowback
in 1998 i had zero cell phones. in 2002, i had 1 cell phones. i'd like to take this moment to thank Al Qaeda for helping me to have cell phone by doing a 9-11 to my country, increasing my cell phone by infinity percent.
imagine writing this shit and then getting paid for it. What a grift
