POLYCONUNDRUM - Democracy Now and MSNBC had one of the best TV coverages of the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war. Fox News? Not so much. You would think they would be proud of a war they almost single-handedly ginned up.

And just what did we get for the $1 trillion in direct military cost, $1 trillion in indirect costs, and $4 trillion yet to be paid in interest on that credit card debt. And of course we must not fail to mention the sums spent by the other countries coerced by the US and Britain.

And what is the dollar value of the 6,000+ coalition deaths, military and civilian, or the 150,000 Iraqis give or take a bunch? Oh, don't forget the lost oil revenue or the infrastructure destroyed. The bill has got to be $10,000,000,000,000 and maybe as much as $15 trillion. What did we get? A deposed dictator who kept peace in the Middle East when not encouraged to misbehave and now an even worse regime.

Bush and Cheney deserve all the "credit" for what has become of Iraq. Cheney for being the malevolent manipulative minister of war and Bush for being the one who let him be.

Watch this excellent coverage:

Dahr Jamail Returns to Iraq to Find Rampant Torture and a Failed State Living in "Utter Devastation"

DEMOCRACY NOW - Investigative journalist Dahr Jamail reported for Democracy Now! throughout the early stages of the U.S. invasion of Iraq 10 years ago. Now with Al Jazeera, Jamail has just returned from Iraq once again, finding what he calls a "failed state" living in "utter devastation." In part one of our interview, Jamail discusses the harrowing security situation for Iraqis living in fear of bombings, executions and kidnappings, the widespread torture in Iraq’s prisons, and the breakdown of security in what he calls a "lawless state." Jamail is the author of "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq" and "The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Ten Years Later, U.S. Has Left Iraq with Mass Displacement & Epidemic of Birth Defects, Cancers

DEMOCRACY NOW - In part two of our interview, Al Jazeera reporter Dahr Jamail discusses how the U.S. invasion of Iraq has left behind a legacy of cancer and birth defects suspected of being caused by the U.S. military’s extensive use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus. Noting the birth defects in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, Jamail says: "They’re extremely hard to bear witness to. But it’s something that we all need to pay attention to ... What this has generated is, from 2004 up to this day, we are seeing a rate of congenital malformations in the city of Fallujah that has surpassed even that in the wake of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that nuclear bombs were dropped on at the end of World War II." Jamail has also reported on the refugee crisis of more than one million displaced Iraqis still inside the country, who are struggling to survive without government aid, a majority of them living in Baghdad.