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18 Mar, 2013

Ten years on, Iraq still grapples with war’s legacy – The Hindu

It’s been more than six years since a bomb ripped away the eyes from Shams Karim, killed her mother and left the little girl, now seven, blind and disfigured for life. Psychiatric drugs help control her outbursts of crying and screaming.

Throughout Iraq, there are tens of thousands of victims like her whose lives are forever scarred by the violence. Their wounds and those of tens of thousands of U.S. and other foreign service members may never entirely heal.

The Bush administration had hoped the war, that began with airstrikes before dawn on March 20, 2003 — still the previous evening back in the States, would quickly rid Iraq of purported weapons of mass destruction; go after extremists; and replace a brutal dictatorship with the foundations of a pro-Western democracy in the heart of the Middle East.

Read the rest: Ten years on, Iraq still grapples with war’s legacy – The Hindu.