US agenda in Iraq 'nothing but destruction'

    "There is no possible justification for a country to keep troops on the soil of another country against the wishes of its government and people," Dores told Press TV in an interview on Monday. "That's true in Iraq. That's true in Syria." In early 2003, the US invaded Iraq under the later debunked pretext that the regime of Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. "The US military has been systematically destroying Iraq for the past 30 years. It has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians with bullets, bombs, and sanctions. It has displaced millions," Dores noted. The US adventurism in Iraq and Syria also led to the rise of Daesh Takfiri terrorism, he further suggested. "In 2014, US troops returned to Iraq in force under the pretext of fighting Daesh. But US intervention has in fact aided and abetted the rise of ISIS (Daesh) and other terrorist organizations." The US even assassinated prominent anti-Daesh figures, namely Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top anti-terror commander, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi anti-terror force. "The US agenda in Iraq and the region is nothing but destruction so that US corporations can regain a stranglehold on the world's energy supply. This is a crime against the people of Iraq and the people in the United States," Dores added. He further alluded to a quote from African American activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in regard to the US war on Vietnam. "The same is true of Washington's endless war for plunder in the region they call the 'Middle East.' The United States should conform to the wishes of the Iraqi people and get all its troops out of their country immediately. It should end all overt and covert intervention in that part of the world that includes sanctions and arms to Israel," Dores concluded.