In 1998, former President George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor during the Bush administration, collaborated on the book A World Transformed, a political history covering significant world events which occurred during the first three years of Bush's presidency (1989-1991): the collapse of the Soviet empire, the unification of Germany, Tiananmen Square, and the Gulf War.
In Chapter 19, which discusses the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War (also known as "Desert Storm," the military operation to liberate Kuwait from occupation by invading Iraqi forces), they wrote:
Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome.
Who Are the Iraqis?
1. Twelve-thousand years ago, they invented irrigated farming. They got to be so good at it that, today, they can still produce all the food they need even when "sanctions" are imposed.
2. They invented writing.
3. They figured out how to tell time.
4. They founded modern mathematics.
5. In the Code of Hammurabi, they invented the first legal system that protects the weak, the widow and the orphan.
6. Five-thousand years ago, they had philosophers who attempted to list every known thing in the world.
7. They were using Pythagoras' theorem 1,700 years before Pythagoras.
8. They invented artificial building materials, some kind of pre-fab-crete stuff used to construct high-rise towers.
9. Ur, in southeast Iraq, is assumed to be the place we're all descended from.
10. They were the first people to build cities and live in them.
11. For thousands of years, they wrote the greatest poetry, history and "sagas" in the world.
12. Because they were great horse breeders, they invented the cavalry in war.
13. The Iraq Museum in Baghdad contains some of the most outstanding stone, metal and clay sculptures and inscriptions created in the history of the world. Some of them are more than 7,000 years old.
14. The first school for astronomers was established by Iraqis.This is how the "wise men" got to be so wise. They knew how to follow the star.
15. Beginning around 800 A.D., the Iraqis founded universities that imported teachers from throughout the civilized world to teach medicine, mathematics, philosophy, theology, literature and poetry.
16. For the first 1,200 years of its existence, Baghdad was regarded as one of the most refined, civilized and festive cities in the world.
17. Abraham, the father of Israel, was from Iraq.
18. Abraham, the father of Islam, was from Iraq.
19. Abraham, the father and "model" of Christian faith, was from Iraq.
20. Iraq , is the second largest reserve of oil.
21. Before 1980, Iraq has the largest number of date palm trees in the world.
22. Iraqi wheat, rice, and meat are considered from the finest types in the world.
23. Iraq, has the biggest soft water/population ratio in the world , seven rivers.
24. Iraqis, once considered as the Germans of Arabs with highest percent of highly educated people.
25. Iraq, is one of the world's richest territories in historical sites and holy shrines.
Saddam Hussein doesn't regard himself as the heir of Abraham, or even as the heir of Muhammad. He regards himself, first and foremost, as the heir of Nebuchadnezzar. He identifies, in other words, with the enslaver, not the enslaved.
Everything we know about the rest of Iraq tells us that Saddam is the exception, not the Iraqis.
Ten Things
to Know About Terrorism Ten
Things
You Can Do to Prevent War
Ten Things You Should Know about U.S. Policy
in the Middle East
100 Questions & Answers about Arab-Americans
: A Journalist's Guide
Advice to Arab-American Parents : Helping Children
Cope
Advice to Educators : from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (UCCR) has established
a hotline for reports of hate crimes against Arab American,
Muslim and South Asian American victims of violent incidents
following the hijacking attacks on September 11.
The hotline number is 800-552-6843
|
Cost of Iraq War to Michigan
- Already appropriated: $ 13.9 billion
- Fiscal Year 08 request still pending: $ 2.2 billion
- Fiscal Year 09 projection: $ 3.7 billion
- Total: $ 19.8 billion
|
U.S Death Toll in Iraq: 4,000
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Four U.S. soldiers died Sunday night in a roadside bombing in Iraq, military officials reported, bringing the American toll in the 5-year-old war to 4,000 deaths. art.bomb.site.ap.jpg Iraqi soldiers Monday stand at the spot where a roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers a day earlier in Baghdad. Click to view previous image 1 of 3 Click to view next image The four were killed when a homemade bomb hit their vehicle as they patrolled in a southern Baghdad neighborhood, the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq said. A fifth soldier was wounded. The grim milestone comes less than a week after the fifth anniversary of the start of the war.
The Iraq War Is Killing Our Economy
There is no longer any doubt that the Iraq War is a moral and strategic disaster for the United States. But what has not yet been fully recognized is that it has also been an economic disaster. To date, the government has spent more than $522 billion on the war, with another $70 billion already allocated for 2008. With just the amount of the Iraq budget of 2007, $138 billion, the government could instead have provided Medicaid-level health insurance for all 45 million Americans who are uninsured. What's more, we could have added 30,000 elementary and secondary schoolteachers and built 400 schools in which they could teach. And we could have provided basic home weatherization for about 1.6 million existing homes, reducing energy consumption in these homes by 30 percent.
Why are these Strapping Lads Not Serving in Iraq?
In March of 2007, BuzzFlash ran a commentary about how not one member of the extended Bush family of fit and firm youth was serving or had served in Iraq, Afghanistan or combat anywhere, yet Bush remains an enthusiast for sacrificing the lives of other people's children -- mostly poor and rural. Here's the photo we ran, along with the commentary "Not ONE Member of the Bush Extended Family Has Served in Iraq! Not One! Take a Look":
The Price Tag to Michigan for the War On Iraq and Bush's Tax Cuts for the Wealthy PDF
As the economy falters, President Bush’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2009 would ignore the needs of Americans by cutting basic services, increasing tax cuts for the wealthy and pushing military spending to historical highs. It would allow billions more for the war in Iraq at the expense of investments in Michigan's future.
55% if Military family members feel Bush war on Iraq is wrong
Close family members of U.S. troops are split on whether the Iraq invasion was a mistake, and 55% disapprove of President Bush's job performance, according to USA TODAY/Gallup Polls focusing on immediate relatives of servicemembers. "They've maxed out on the troops. You've got guys who are over there on their fourth or fifth tours. It's ridiculous," says Jeanette Knowles, 40, of Mountain Home, Idaho, whose brother, Jeff, served a tour in Iraq with the Oregon National Guard.
Cheney in Response to the fact that Two-Thirds Of The American Public Oppose his War on Iraq: “So?”
This morning, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, ABC’s Good Morning America aired an interview with Vice President Cheney on the war. During the segment, Cheney flatly told White House correspondent Martha Raddatz that he doesn’t care about the American public’s views on the war... (Editor: It would have to happen on Easter Sunday, wouldn't it, that the 4,000th American soldier would die in Iraq. Unofficial estimates are that there may be up to 100,000 wounded, injured, or mentally ruined by this war. And there could be up to a million Iraqi dead. We will pay the consequences of this for a long, long time. God will keep blessing America. And where is Darth Vader in all this? A reporter from ABC News this week told Dick Cheney, in regards to Iraq, "two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting." Cheney cut her off with a one word answer: "So?" )
Water makes US troops in Iraq sick (Dick Cheney is still on the payroll of this former company owned by him )
WASHINGTON - Dozens of U.S. troops in Iraq fell sick at bases using "unmonitored and potentially unsafe" water supplied by the military and a contractor once owned by Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, the Pentagon's internal watchdog says. A report obtained by The Associated Press said soldiers experienced skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections, diarrhea and other illnesses after using discolored, smelly water for personal hygiene and laundry at five U.S. military sites in Iraq.
Bush, Maliki Break Iraqi Law to Renew Mandate for Occupation
On Tuesday, the Bush administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pushed a resolution through the U.N. Security Council extending the mandate that provides legal cover for foreign troops to operate in Iraq for another year. The move violated both the Iraqi constitution and a law passed earlier this year by the Iraqi parliament -- the only body directly elected by all those purple-finger-waving Iraqis in 2005 -- and it defied the will of around 80 percent of the Iraqi population. This move speaks to the degree to which Bush and Maliki run roughshod over the Iraqi legislature (not to mention the U.S. Congress), sacrificing opportunities for political reconciliation along the way, in order to maintain an almost universally despised American military presence in the country.
Iraq Death Toll Rivals Rwanda Genocide, Cambodian Killing Fields
A new study estimates that 1.2 million Iraqis have met violent deaths since Bush and Cheney chose to invade.
Kissinger: Oil Drives U.S. in Iraq, Iran
Alan Greenspan had acknowledged what is blindingly obvious to those who live in the reality-based world: The Iraq War was largely about oil. Meanwhile, Henry Kissinger says in an op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Post that control over oil is the key issue that should determine whether the U.S. undertakes military action against Iran. These statements would not be remarkable, but for the effort of a broad swath of the U.S. political establishment to deny the central role of oil in U.S. involvement in the Middle East. Greenspan’s remarks, appearing first in his just-published memoirs, are eyebrow-raising for their directness
The Great Iraq Swindle
How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.
Where is the National Guard (by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson)
The war in Iraq is a complete disaster and that we need to get our troops out now (www.getourtroopsout.com), I look at the natural disaster in California and feel compelled to also ask President Bush and every candidate who thinks it is okay for our troops to remain in Iraq until 2013 or longer - where is our National Guard? It is a sad irony that yesterday, the very day I sent fire crews to California, 300 more New Mexico National Guard members were sent to Iraq. Just when we need them most at home, more of our brave men and women, true public servants, are sent away to a war we cannot win.
Big Lies Surround the Iraq "Surge"
A Government Accounting Office report has found that the Iraqi government has not met 13 of 18 benchmarks set by the US Congress. The report was leaked before it could be doctored by the Bush administration, which promptly denounced it and pledged to . . . doctor it. Another thing that could be said is that of the 18 congressional benchmarks some are frankly trivial. The trivial ones are the only ones met.
Report Reveals Corruption in Iraqi Government
State Department investigators in Iraq have concluded that the government of Nouri al-Maliki is not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anti-corruption laws. The investigators also say that corrupt civil servants with connections to the government are seen as untouchable, and that employees of Iraq's watchdog Commission on Public Integrity have been murdered in the line of duty.
General Sir Mike Says U.S. Fouled Up in Iraq
Yet another general has added his voice to the crew who have taken the Cheney-Bush regime to task for botching postwar operations in Iraq? Yep. This time, it's not American generals like Wes Clark, Greg Newbold, Paul Eaton, John Riggs, Paul Van Riper, Charles Swannack or John Batiste doing the pounding. It's "Macho Jacko," General Sir Michael Jackson, who ran the British Army in March 2003 when Iraq was invaded.
U.S. Secret Air War Pulverizes Afghanistan and Iraq
The U.S. military is increasingly relying on deadly air strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan as the ground occupations fall apart, killing untold numbers of civilians.
Iraq War Worsens Terrorism
A highly classified report issued by all 16 US intelligence agencies has concluded that the Iraq War has increased the threat of international terrorism facing the American nation. Although the Bush White House has always hyped the Iraq War as vital to the international fight against extreme Islamic terrorism, critics have long disagreed. The Republicans in Congress and the Senate have largely repeated the false claims and talking points being pushed by the Bush White House. They are likely to pay a huge political price at the polls this November. The Iraq War is simply a failure of political leadership and political vision. Like Vietnam, the failure is not really a military one. Our military is almost always victorious in military terms. The real failure is that the Bush Republicans are inclined to use military force to solve problems where military force are not the most appropriate means.
Iraq Is the New Korea
President Bush's modeling America's presence in Iraq upon the 54-year-old stationing of U.S. troops in South Korea is as outlandish as it is alarming.
Iraq's displacement crisis PDF
The countries of the Middle East are now host to the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world. Violence has displaced two million inside Iraq and over two million have crossed its borders. Most refugees are in Syria and Jordan – which host the largest number of refugees per capita of any country on earth. The vast majority are surviving with little or no assistance from the international community. Few, if any, enjoy their rights as refugees.
Lincoln's Example for Iraq
In his only term in Congress, Abraham Lincoln was an ardent opponent of the Mexican War. He introduced a series of resolutions that challenged President James Polk to show the "spot" of American soil on which Mexicans had spilled American blood, and he voted for an amendment stating that the war was "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President." But when the question of funding for the troops fighting that war came, Lincoln voted their supplies without hesitation. Today, some of us are facing the same dilemma that Lincoln faced: Do you fund the troops fighting a war that you oppose
U.S. Arming Sunnis in Iraq
After months of criticizing Iran for arming Shiites in Iraq, U.S. commanders are turning to a strategy they acknowledge is risky: arming Sunni Arab groups that promise to fight militants linked to al Qaeda.
This War is Lost
"This is the message I took to the president," Reid told reporters in a press conference Thursday. "Now I believe myself ... that this war is lost, and that the surge is not accomplishing anything, as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday," Reid said, referring to Wednesday's bombings in Baghdad that killed close to 200 people. " I told him [Bush] what he needed to hear, not what he wanted to hear," he added. In Reid's view, the continuation of combat operations will not achieve success for US interests because "I believe the war at this stage can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically, and the president needs to come to that realization.”
Can You Believe This War Is Still Going On?
* 3,300 American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead.
* Rumsfeld said the Iraq attack would cost $50 billion. The tab so far exceeds $600 billion and ticking...
* Almost two million Iraqis have fled the country and only 30% of kids can go to school.
On Easter Morning, George W. made another of his periodic shows of Standing With The Troops. He attended church services in the chapel at Fort Hood in Kileen, Texas, after which he offered to the assembled media this pious little announcement: "I had a chance to reflect on the great sacrifice that our military and their families are making. I prayed for their safety. I prayed for their strength and comfort. And I pray for peace." He prayed for our troops' safety? How clueless is he? George, you have the troops stuck in another country's vicious civil war. They're under attack from every direction by every faction, every hour of every day, hit by car bombs, roadside bombs, chlorine bombs, IEDs, suicide bombs, rocket fire, mortar rounds, snipers, and assassins. There is no safety in Iraq.
Scott Ritter: Calling Out Idiot America
The ongoing hand-wringing in Congress by the newly empowered Democrats over what to do about the war in Iraq speaks volumes about the level of concern (or lack thereof) these “representatives of the people” have toward the men and women who honor us all by serving in the armed forces of the United States of America. The inability to reach consensus concerning the level of funding required or how to exercise effective oversight of the war, both constitutionally mandated responsibilities, is more a reflection of congressional cowardice and impotence than a byproduct of any heartfelt introspection over troop welfare and national security. The issues that prompt the congressional collective to behave in such an egregious manner have more to do with a reflexive tendency to avoid any controversy that might disrupt the status quo ante regarding representative-constituent relations (i.e., re-election) than with any intellectual debate about doing the right thing.
Lily-Livered Democrats Lose Game of Chicken
The bill is the current version of the Iraq spending bill, which many Democrats, let alone those of us who voted for them, believed should include a timetable for withdrawal of the troops. It doesn't. Oh yes, there is some mush-headed language written by the Republicans that creates 18 "benchmarks" for political and legislative change in Iraq, and asks the president to report on progress beginning in late July. After all, why rush when things are going so well? And if the Iraqis fail to meet the benchmarks, what happens? How about nothing. Under the terms of the deal, the president is free to waive the benchmarks anyway, which means that the language might as well be sent over on toilet paper so it won't clog the plumbing when the president flushes it. Who made this deal? Who do you think? The Democrats who were elected to end the war did, because they were afraid to take on the President in a real showdown. I might also point out that the reason Congress has sunk below even the president in terms of public approval (although still above Dick Cheney, who is almost down to his immediate family) is because of the correct perception that they aren't doing what they were sent to Washington to accomplish.
Warnings Ignored by Bush/Cheney
An impending report from the Senate intelligence committee is likely to revive questions about whether President Bush was so consumed with invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein that he didn't care about the disastrous consequences that could -- and did -- ensue. Mr. President, a new Senate report . . . contends that your administration was warned before the war that by invading Iraq you would actually give Iran and al Qaeda a golden opportunity to expand their influence, the kind of influence you were talking about with al Qaeda yesterday, and with Iran this morning. Why did you ignore those warnings, sir?
Editorial: Two Wrongs Don't Make It Right
Recently the Democrats who ran on a platform of ending the U.S. war on the world, buckled under, as they played politics as usual. Unfortunately, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan have been essential to maintaining the status quo in gas and oil (as global oil companies continue to reap obscene record profits year after year). What has not been part of the public dialog however, is the fact that had we invested these same hundreds of Billions of your tax dollars in developing solar, wind and other "clean" energy resources in the United States, we would no longer need foreign oil. Of course the capitalists, politicians, and oil barons oppose this solution, but who's country is this anyway? In Michigan this year Taxpayers in Michigan will pay $3.7 billion for the cost of the Iraq War in FY 2007. Let's for a moment examine what else we could benefit with from these funds...
U.S. Cluster F*cks Iraqi Civilians
Since the major combat phase of the war ended in April 2003, the U.S. military has dropped at least 59,787 pounds of air-delivered cluster bombs in Iraq -- the very type of weapon that Marc Garlasco, the senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch (HRW) calls, "the single greatest risk civilians face with regard to a current weapon that is in use." We also know that, according to expert opinion, rockets and cannon fire from U.S. aircraft may account for most U.S. and coalition-attributed Iraqi civilian deaths and that the Pentagon has restocked hundreds of millions of dollars worth of these weapons in recent years.
U.S. Imperial Ambitions Thwart Iraqis' Peace Plans
Iraq's resistance groups have offered a series of peace plans that might put an end to the country's sectarian violence, but they've been ignored by the U.S.-led coalition because they're opposed to foreign occupation and privatization of oil. [Editor: And the Bush Administration continues to say it isn't about oil. It is. And it always has been! Over a million lives have been lost because the oilmen who rule the United States just now want to make obscene profits. ]
Hard to Deny: Iraq Is All About the Oil
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003, oil was seldom mentioned. Yes, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz did describe the country as afloat "on a sea of oil" (which might fund any American war and reconstruction program there); and, yes, on rare occasions, the President did speak reverentially of preserving "the patrimony of the people of Iraq" -- by which he meant not cuneiform tablets or ancient statues in the National Museum in Baghdad, but the country's vast oil reserves, known and suspected. The struggle over Iraqi oil has been going on for a long, long time. One could date it back to 1980 when President Jimmy Carter -- before his Habitat for Humanity days -- declared that Persian Gulf oil was "vital" to American national interests. So vital was it, he announced, that the U.S. would use "any means necessary, including military force" to sustain access to it.
Bush's new strategy
Mission accomplished. Wasn't that the refrain almost four years ago, on that lonely aircraft carrier off California, Bush striding the deck in his flying suit? And only a few months later, the President had a message for Osama bin Laden and the insurgents of Iraq. "Bring 'em on!" he shouted. And on they came. Few paid attention late last year when the Islamist leadership of this most ferocious of Arab rebellions proclaimed Bush a war criminal but asked him not to withdraw his troops. "We haven't yet killed enough of them," their videotaped statement announced. Well, they will have their chance now. How ironic that it was the ghastly Saddam, dignified amid his lynch mob, who dared on the scaffold to tell the truth which Bush and Blair would not utter: that Iraq has become "hell" .
The Madness of the War Profiteering in Iraq
"Iraq for Sale" director Robert Greenwald explains to Congress that the billions that defense contractors and war profiteers are making out of the Iraq war is a madhouse run amuck. Our taxpayer dollars are being spent, abused, mis-used, and wasted on profiteers. It is a true tragedy, and it is costing the lives of Americans and Iraqis. Please let me introduce you to a few of these people and their stories.
Majority of Iraqi Lawmakers Reject U.S. Occupation
More than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected for the first time on Tuesday the continuing occupation of their country. The U.S. media ignored the story. On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition. [Editor: The American people want their sons and daughters home. The Iraqi people want the American soldiers and mercenaries out. Why does pResident (oilman) Bush (oil) insist on the continued occupation that is killing our families? Perhaps we should be investing those hundreds of billions of dollars in new energy development, rather than propping up oil (a fuel with no future).]
Rebuilt Iraq Projects Found Crumbling
The United States has admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared a success — in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections — were no longer working properly. The inspections ranged geographically from northern to southern Iraq and covered projects as varied as a maternity hospital, barracks for an Iraqi special forces unit and a power station for Baghdad International Airport.
Self-deception proves itself to be more powerful than deception
The war in Iraq is now four years old. It has cost more than 3,000 American lives and has run up a tab of $200 million a day, or $73 billion a year, since it began. That's a substantial investment. No wonder most members of Congress from both parties, along with President George W. Bush, believe that we have to "stay the course" and not just "cut and run." As Bush explained in a speech delivered on July 4, 2006, at Fort Bragg, N.C.: "I'm not going to allow the sacrifice of 2,527 troops who have died in Iraq to be in vain by pulling out before the job is done." We all make similarly irrational arguments about decisions in our lives: we hang on to losing stocks, unprofitable investments, failing businesses and unsuccessful relationships. If we were rational, we would just compute the odds of succeeding from this point forward and then decide if the investment warrants the potential payoff. But we are not rational--not in love or war or business--and this particular irrationality is what economists call the "sunk-cost fallacy." For as a wise man once said, "An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it."
Another Worthless Bushism?
The hottest term in post-veto Washington is suddenly "benchmarks." If you had a dollar for every time it's been bandied about his week, you could outbid Rupert Murdoch for the Journal -- or, at least, pay for all the Valium being downed by Deborah Jean Palfrey's clients. But amidst all the benchmark babble, there has been precious little clarity on whether they represent an acceptable compromise position -- or are just another Bush mirage shimmering in the Iraqi desert.
Digging In
The omnipresence of the giant defense contractor KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown & Root), the shipments of concrete and other construction materials, and the transformation of decrepit Iraqi military bases into fortified American enclaves—complete with Pizza Huts and DVD stores—are just the most obvious signs that the United States has been digging in for the long haul. It's a far cry from administration assurances after the invasion that the troops could start withdrawing from Iraq as early as the fall of 2003. And it is hardly consistent with a prediction by Richard Perle, the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, that the troops would be out of Iraq within months, or with Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi's guess that the U.S. occupation would last two years.
Retired General: Bush should sign Iraq bill
President Bush should sign legislation starting the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq on Oct. 1, retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom said Saturday. "I hope the president seizes this moment for a basic change in course and signs the bill Congress has sent him," Odom said. Odom, an outspoken critic of the war who served as the Army's top intelligence officer and headed the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration, delivered the address at the request of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. He said he has never been a Democrat or a Republican.
Scott Ritter in Conversation With Robert Scheer [Movie]
The former U.N. weapons inspector, who was scorned for saying there were no WMD in Iraq, speaks with Robert Scheer about American ignorance, the lies that led us to war, Iran’s nuclear program and more.
A Soldiers Story from Iraq
George Bush keeps saying that he's the one who supports the troops and those of us who want to end the war don't. Listen to soldiers stories from 'real' soldiers who have fought in Iraq.
Who Will Get the Oil?
War and corruption have decimated Iraq's oil supply, and Western companies are angling for a cut of what's left. Iraq's postwar oil bonanza remains a mirage. The country has the second- or third-largest reserves in the world, making petroleum the heart and vast bulk of its economy. Thus in March 2003 did Paul Wolfowitz assure Congress that Iraq would "finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." American planners predicted that Iraq's oil production would triple to a feverish 6 million barrels per day by 2010. Instead war, corruption, sectarian slaughter and a massive crime wave have reduced the country's once mighty petroleum sector to an industrial zombie: still ambulatory, functional but essentially dead.
Saudi King Slams ‘Illegitimate Occupation’ of Iraq
Saudi King Abdullah, whose country is a close US ally, on Wednesday slammed the “illegitimate foreign occupation” of Iraq in an opening speech to the annual Arab summit in Riyadh. Abdullah said. He also said that Arab nations, which are planning to revive a five-year-old Middle East peace plan at the summit, would not allow any foreign force to decide the future of the region. [Editor: Well, there goes the Saudi's and the oil the U.S. covets.]
Building an Embassy Fit for an Empire
The United States is building a massive embassy complex in the heart of Baghdad that is already becoming a symbol of America's imperial ambitions in the Middle East.
How to Get Out of Iraq
Bush's ineptitude has made a regional war in the Middle East a real possibility. Can diplomacy find a way out?
Huge Protest in Iraq Demands U.S. Withdraw
Tens of thousands of protesters loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric, took to the streets of the holy city of Najaf on Monday in an extraordinarily disciplined rally to demand an end to the American military presence in Iraq, burning American flags and chanting “Death to America!”
Large anti-US rally held in Iraq
Iraqi protesters burn a US flag Iraqi protesters burn a US flag Large crowds of men, women and children, holding flags and anti-US banners, gathered in Najaf and the nearby twin city of Kufa for the protest which is also seen as a show of strength for the cleric who himself has been in self-exile for more than two months. A day earlier, the fundamentalist cleric issued a statement ordering his militiamen to redouble their battle to oust American forces and argued that Iraq's army and police should join him in defeating "your archenemy." [Editor: Everybody except for team Bush wants the United States out of Iraq. The most sensible solution is to remove Bush/Cheney and move the world closer to peace.]
How Analysts in the Arab World View the Occupation of Iraq
Policymakers and strategic analysts in the Arab world have little confidence that current US troop surge in Iraq will do much more than - at best - postpone a complete political-security breakdown in Iraq, which, they fear, could then spread across the Middle East. I heard a lot about how Iraq's collapse has been affecting Arab societies. If the U.S. would leave not, it would concentrate the minds of our countrymen on the need to find a workable reconciliation. "But if the Americans stay, we can expect the situation to remain bad,"... the broad deployment of US troops in Iraq has been transformed from an American asset in the region into a liability that erodes US power and standing.
Arabs Fear the U.S. and Israel, Not Iran
Despite Condi Rice's talk of a "Sunni Crescent," a large poll conducted across the Middle East shows that 80 percent of Arabs consider Israel and the U.S. the two biggest external threats to their security.
Misreading the 'Enemy'
President Bush's escalation of the Iraq War is premised on a profound misunderstanding of who the enemies are, how to deal with them and what the limits are of U.S. power. The president cannot seem to let go of his fixation on Al-Qaida, a minor actor in Iraq, and his determination to confront Iran and Syria. He still assumes that the insurgents are outsiders to their neighborhoods and that U.S. troops can chase away the miscreants and keep them out, acting as a sort of neighborhood watch in khaki. In fact, Iraq's Sunni Arab elite is playing the spoiler, and until a deal is negotiated with its members, no one will be allowed to enjoy the new Iraq. This oversight by the Bush administration will cause the death of thousands more American soldiers and innocent civilians.
A Hard Look at Iraq Sanctions
The humanitarian disaster resulting from sanctions against Iraq has been frequently cited as a factor that motivated the September 11 terrorist attacks. Osama bin Laden himself mentioned the Iraq sanctions in a recent tirade against the United States. Critics of US policy in Iraq claim that sanctions have killed more than a million people, many of them children. Saddam Hussein puts the death toll at one and a half million.
The Rats Are Jumping Ship from Iraq
In 2005, former U.S. Sen. John Edwards said about his vote for war in Iraq: "I was wrong [and] I take responsibility." This statement, so simple, has been all too rare from politicians and leading media voices. Instead, as the war rages on -- a war itself originally based on lies -- our political arena still teems with icons more interested in hiding the truth. That's no small matter. As the saying goes, the first step to recovery is admitting the problem. Sadly, though, the flip side is also true -- refusing to admit a problem will perpetuate that problem indefinitely.
No exit strategy, no vision — no reason to stay in Iraq
Someone frozen in time for the past two years could have listened to President Bush outline his new Iraq policy in the State of the Union address Tuesday and wondered what the fuss was about. That's because there is no "new” policy. Today, the road ahead looks just like the road behind — stay the course. Only this time there will be about 20,000 more American troops in harm's way. Before we know it, we'll be at 4,000 American dead and 30,000 wounded and nothing will have changed.
Active Duty Soldiers Call for An End to the Occupation of Iraq
For the first time since Vietnam, an organized, robust movement of active-duty US military personnel has publicly surfaced to oppose a war in which they are serving. Those involved plan to petition Congress to withdraw American troops from Iraq.
Pentagon Office Produced 'Alternative' Intelligence on Iraq
A special unit run by former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's top policy aide inappropriately produced "alternative" intelligence reports that wrongly concluded that Saddam Hussein's regime had cooperated with al-Qaida, a Pentagon investigation has determined. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., requested an investigation, calling the findings "devastating" because senior administration officials, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, used deceptive work to help make their case for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Starve the Beast
With President Bush poised to announce a surge in US troops in Iraq this week, antiwar activists in the Democratic Party are stepping up demands that their party's leaders cut off funding for the war -- a dramatic step that would force the president to quickly end American involvement in the war. Antiwar activists held banners last week and set up paper lanterns in front of the White House with photographs and names of some of the US service members killed in Iraq. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Calls for Congress to use the power of the purse to shape war policy are coming from the party's base of vocal war opponents, as well as a growing number of rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers who view November's midterm congressional elections as a demand from the public for Democrats to force the president to end the war. Today, Representative Dennis Kucinich, a liberal Ohio Democrat, plans to outline a proposal for Congress to deny Bush any more funds for the war and have the United Nations lead a security force to stabilize Iraq.
How the World Will See the Surge
There has been much press commentary in recent days concerning the administration’s planned surge of American soldiers in Iraq. According to The New York Times, this “rapid influx of forces … could add as many as 20,000 American combat troops to Baghdad.” The domestic consequences of what some media are calling a military escalation have been widely analyzed. Any “superpower” that thinks it can “win” a universally condemned war with an additional 20,000 troops is certainly not a model to follow. Forget about the made-in-Hollywood American “dream.” America is now producing one nightmare after another. It’s become a mortal danger, not a universal hope.
The Surge to Nowhere: Traveling the Planet Neocon Road to Baghdad (Again)
Tom Donnelly, an American Enterprise Institute neocon, a co-chairman of the Project for a New American Century, telling a reporter sagely that the surge is in. "I think the debate is really coming down to: Surge large. Surge small. Surge short. Surge longer. I think the smart money would say that the range of options is fairly narrow." (Donnelly, of course, forgot: Surge out.) His colleague, Frederick Kagan of AEI, the chief architect of the Surge Theory for Iraq, has made it clear that the only kind of surge that would work is a big, fat one. Nearly pornographic in his fondling of the surge, Kagan, another of the neocon crew of armchair strategists and militarists, makes it clear that size does matter. "Of all the 'surge' options out there, short ones are the most dangerous," he wrote in the Washington Post last week, adding lasciviously, "The size of the surge matters as much as the length. … The only 'surge' option that makes sense is both long and large." Ooh - that is, indeed, a manly surge. For Kagan, a man-sized surge must involve at least 30,000 more troops funneled into the killing grounds of Baghdad and al-Anbar Province for at least 18 months. What's astonishing about the debate over Iraq is that the President - or anyone else, for that matter, including the media - is paying the slightest attention to the neoconservative strategists who got us into this mess in the first place. Having been egregiously wrong about every single Iraqi thing for five consecutive years, by all rights the neocons ought to be consigned to some dusty basement exhibit hall in the American Museum of Natural History, where, like so many triceratops, their reassembled bones would stand mutely by to send a chill of fear through touring schoolchildren. Indeed, the neocons are the dodos of Washington, simply too dumb to know when they are extinct.
On Guantanamo Prison Camp's Fifth Birthday
An international delegation arrived in Cuba this week to call for the closure of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay. The protest is part of the January 11 International Day to Shut Down Guantanamo, during which many groups in the United States and abroad are expected to rally thousands of human rights activists. Detainees in orange jumpsuits sit in a holding area at Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2003. A total of 30 incidents of detainee mistreatment were reported by agents of the FBI in an internal 2004 poll on possible abuse witnessed at the US Navy prison facility at Guantanamo, Cuba. Photo:Shane T. McCoy/AFP January 11 is the 5-year anniversary of the first prisoners being sent to the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. "From the beginning this was a prison that was set up without any kind of due process," Medea Benjamin of the women-for-peace group Code Pink told OneWorld from Havana. "People in prison have no access to see their family members. It took a long time for them to even have lawyers and those lawyers don't even have access to their clients."
90% Iraqis say life was better before US/UK invasion
BAGHDAD, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- About 90 percent of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better before the U.S.-led invasion than it is today, according to a new ICRSS poll. The findings emerged after house-to-house interviews conducted by the ICRSS during the third week of November. About 2,000 people from Baghdad (82 percent), Anbar and Najaf (9 percent each) were randomly asked to express their opinion. Twenty-four percent of the respondents were women. Only five percent of those questioned said Iraq is better today than in 2003. While 89 percent of the people said the political situation had deteriorated, 79 percent saw a decline in the economic situation; 12 percent felt things had improved and 9 percent said there was no change. Predictably, 95 percent felt the security situation was worse than before. The results of the poll conducted by the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies and shared with the Gulf Research Center.
The real Iraq Study Group
Hawks gathered in the plush, carpeted suites of the conservative American Enterprise Institute on Friday to discuss a new course in Iraq they say should be spearheaded by tens of thousands of new troops camped out in Baghdad neighborhoods in active combat roles well into 2008. The plan is not to be dismissed. Unlike the much ballyhooed Iraq Study Group, these are the people President Bush listens to...
Launching the 2008 Presidential Campaign With Ethnic Cleansing in Iraq
Politically, the coming escalation by 20,000 U.S. troops in Iraq is best understood as the comeback strategy of the neoconservative Republicans rallying around Sen. John McCain's presidential banner. Sen. McCain was touring Baghdad with his potential running mate Sen. Joe Lieberman, promoting the plan to escalate, although supported by only 20 percent of Republicans, 11 percent of independent voters, and a statistically-insignificant 4 percent of Democrats (L.A. Times/Bloomberg, Dec. 11, 2006).
Stopping the surge
President Bush is expected to reveal a boldly controversial new plan for the war in Iraq as soon as next week. The much-anticipated announcement, which was postponed from before Christmas, comes after weeks of meetings among top White House advisors. Bush has said that all options are on the table, but by most reports he favors a "surge and accelerate" proposal that would send 20,000 to 40,000 more American soldiers to Baghdad. The so-called surge has earned serious consideration from some of the top U.S. commanders in Iraq, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff reportedly oppose it. The surge also pits the president against a majority of the American public; more troops in Iraq is presumably not what that public thought it was getting when it gave the Democrats control of both houses of Congress in November.
The real Iraq Study Group
The neocon hawks who sold the war, joined by John McCain and Joe Lieberman, unveiled their new plan for "victory": At least 25,000 new troops in combat roles well into 2008
Just how evil was Saddam Hussein?
In Hussein's 30 year hold on power he has launched two attacks on the neighbouring states of Iran and Kuwait. That, however, merely puts Iraq in the same category with Israel which has acted likewise in the '67 War and again in 1982 with the invasion of Lebanon. Despite the advertisements of the Israeli government, Israel was never seriously threatened in either case.
Saddam Execution Will Destabilise Iraq Further
The execution of former dictator Saddam Hussein Saturday could bring more instability in an increasingly violent and chaotic occupation. Video from Iraqi state television showed a noose being placed around Saddam Hussein’s neck before his hanging early Saturday. (Iraqi Television, via Associated Press) The execution followed a decision by a court of appeal Dec. 26 to uphold the death sentence for Saddam. Chief judge Aref Shahin said following confirmation of the death sentence: "From tomorrow, any day could be the day of implementation." Saddam was executed on the morning of the Muslim festival Eid.
A dictator created then destroyed by America
Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world. Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability. And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our "victory" - our "mission accomplished" - who will be found guilty of this?
The questions that will live on
So why did George Bush decide to invade Iraq? Nearly four years and hundreds of thousands of casualties later, the reasons appear both as obvious and as elusive as they were in the spring of 2003.
The Consequences of Killing Saddam
Since the US invasion of Iraq, by one widely reported estimate, as many as 655,000 Iraqis have been killed, in air strikes, by bombs, in death-squad executions and generalized civil strife. Now, add one by hanging: the kangaroo-court trial and execution of Saddam Hussein. In life, even in prison, he inspired many loyalists to fight for his legacy; but his death is certain to spark even fiercer violence, not just from his remaining lieutenants and senior Baath party officials but throughout the broader Sunni Arab community in Iraq. It pushes any hope of Sunni-Shiite reconciliation farther away, inflames passions on both sides and solidifies the image of the United States in Iraq as a bloodthirsty occupier. Convicted of war crimes by a puppet Iraqi regime that dispensed with niceties such as evidence and rebuttal, Saddam Hussein was blamed by his fiercest critics--such as Kanan Makiya, author of Republic of Fear, and others with strong motive to inflate the scale of Saddam's crimes--of killing 300,000 Iraqis during his thirty-five-year rule (1968-2003). In less than four years, George W. Bush has more than doubled that, with no end in sight. As war criminals go, Bush wins hands down. The 655,000 US victims in Iraq do not include the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly children, who died during a twelve-year era of US-imposed sanctions on Iraq from 1991 to 2003, but those deaths, at least, were obscured by a fig leaf of legality, since the sanctions had been approved by the UN Security Council. Bush's Iraq War had no such cover: It was deemed "illegal" by Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general.
ACTION: The 3,000th U.S. Fatality in Iraq
The American Friends Service Committee is joining with local peace and justice groups worldwide to commemorate the lives lost in Iraq on the occasion of the 3,000th U.S. military fatality in Iraq. On the day after the 3,000th death is announced, we will hold local events in communities worldwide, mourning all the lives lost in this war and calling for U.S. troops to come home. The AFSC has designed an online event system to help you find and list events near you. For local organizers, the AFSC offers web tools to invite your neighbors and build an opt-in mailing list for your grassroots efforts. For those looking to join a nearby event, this web site offers you a private and secure way to find and register to attend an event. AFSC is suggesting that vigils and other events to start between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on the day after the 3,000th death is announced. If your community picks a different date/time, the AFSC is flexible to your needs. Please see the ideas and resources page for event ideas, or come up with something creative in your hometown.
Negotiation is the Very Best Way Out of Iraq
What deserves far greater attention in the Iraq Study Group report is its conclusion that there is no military solution to the American dilemma in Iraq, and that the only way out is negotiation.
Diplomat's Suppressed Document Lays Bare the Lies behind Iraq War
The Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart. In the testimony revealed today it is clear that Mr Blair knew Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. He said that during his posting to the UN, "at no time did HMG [Her Majesty's Government] assess that Iraq's WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests." Mr Ross revealed it was a commonly held view among British officials dealing with Iraq that any threat by Saddam Hussein had been "effectively contained". His hitherto secret evidence threatens to reopen the row over the legality of the conflict, putting U.S. president George Bush in a very bad light. Impeach the Bush Administration Now!
Bush and Blair have forfeited the moral authority to hang Saddam
The verdict on the former Iraqi dictator is just, but everything stinks about the process by which it has been reached. There can be no doubt about the moral justice of yesterday's Baghdad tribunal judgment on Saddam Hussein. He was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, chiefly Kurds and Shias, and arguably for many more killed in the Iran-Iraq war. Yet it is quite another matter whether it is right or politically prudent to execute him, after the shambles of a trial that he has undergone. George Bush's handling of this issue restores one's respect for Pontius Pilate. The president has achieved the almost impossible feat of generating some sympathy for Saddam, at least in Muslim societies. The Iraqi judicial system is incapable of conducting a plausible hearing. Instead it staged a farce: judges changed, defence lawyers murdered, interminable rambling orations from prosecutors and defendants. Bush should have got some old Soviets to advise the locals about how to run a proper show trial.
American Robber Baron Corporations Create the Next Big Casualty in Iraq
"Iraq got the foreign investment rules long sought by U.S. corporations," says Antonia Juhasz, a visiting scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. Juhasz said the new laws, which were a part of the 100 'Bremer Orders' instituted by former U.S. administrator Paul Bremer when he headed the Coalition Provisional Authority during the first year of the occupation, provided a flood of benefits for U.S. companies. These included "100 percent repatriation of profits earned in Iraq by foreign companies; 100 percent foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses, including banks; privatisation of Iraq's state owned enterprises; 100 percent immunity for U.S. contractors and soldiers from Iraq's laws; and 'national treatment' which allowed for Iraqis to be all but excluded from the reconstruction for years while the U.S. government paid 50 billion dollars to some 150 U.S. corporations for work in Iraq."
Bush and Blair have forfeited the moral authority to hang Saddam
The verdict on the former Iraqi dictator is just, but everything stinks about the process by which it has been reached. There can be no doubt about the moral justice of yesterday's Baghdad tribunal judgment on Saddam Hussein. He was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, chiefly Kurds and Shias, and arguably for many more killed in the Iran-Iraq war. Yet it is quite another matter whether it is right or politically prudent to execute him, after the shambles of a trial that he has undergone. George Bush's handling of this issue restores one's respect for Pontius Pilate. The president has achieved the almost impossible feat of generating some sympathy for Saddam, at least in Muslim societies. The Iraqi judicial system is incapable of conducting a plausible hearing. Instead it staged a farce: judges changed, defence lawyers murdered, interminable rambling orations from prosecutors and defendants. Bush should have got some old Soviets to advise the locals about how to run a proper show trial.
This was a guilty verdict on America as well
So America's one-time ally has been sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas - along with the British, of course - yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003. And now we're going to string him up, and it's another great day. Of course, it couldn't happen to a better man. Nor a worse. It couldn't be a more just verdict - nor a more hypocritical one.
The Uncovered War: Salvaging American "Dignity"
So far, what have the American invasion and occupation of Iraq led to -- other than a staggering bloodbath, killing fields galore, and a secret landscape of detention centers and torture chambers? As a start, an already badly battered Iraqi economy was turned into a looting ground for Bush administration crony corporations and thoroughly wrecked. (Tall Afar, for instance, is considered an American "success" story when it comes to security, though part of the city is now a "ghost town" of rubble and unemployment there is estimated at almost 70%.) The Iraqi education system is in tatters; the medical system in ruins; basic social and urban services almost undeliverable; oil production barely up to pathetic prewar levels (if present-day figures are even real, which is in doubt); the position of women now disastrous; child malnutrition on the rise; and well over a million Iraqis have fled their homes in a country of only 26 million people.
Torture in Iraq, Intimidation at Home
Dogged by serious allegations of human rights abuses in Iraq, a leading profiteer from the Iraq war engages in intimidation campaigns against journalists in America who seek to expose its practices.
Evidence suggests Iraq killings by U.S. troops deliberate
Evidence collected in the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha supports accusations U.S. Marines deliberately shot the civilians, including unarmed women and children, a Pentagon official said today.
"The Hell with Red/Blue; People Want Out of Iraq and Solutions"
Criss-crossing the country, I've learned most people are over the red-state/blue-state talk and are aching for politics that matter to them.
Blackwater Shot Down in Federal Court
A federal appeals court has ruled a wrongful death lawsuit can proceed against Blackwater USA: Families claim the firm cut corners in pursuit of profit in Iraq, leading to the brutal deaths of four employees in Fallujah in 2004.
 How Jesus Endorsed Bush's Invasion of Iraq
In the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, Bush needed the approval of religious leaders to shore up his religious base and a group of Catholic theoconservatives were happy to help him do just that.
Retired Officer Says Flawed Policy Turned Iraqis against US
Senior military leaders instituted such a flawed strategy from the outset of the Iraq war that there no longer are any circumstances under which U.S. troops can pull out without seeing the situation deteriorate more, a retired Army general said Monday. Retired Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard Jr. said the military turned Iraqis irreversibly against the U.S. because of policies that tolerated civilian casualties.
Has Iraq become the new Vietnam?
George W Bush has conceded for the first time that there are parallels between the fighting in Iraq and the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War. Amid a steep spike in US deaths in Iraq, Mr Bush recognised comparisons between the current bloodshed and the 1968 Tet Offensive, considered a key turning point in the US war in Vietnam. Do you agree that Iraq has become a second Vietnam – an unwinnable, costly and politically damaging conflict?
 Bush's newest deceptions and the tragedy of Iraq: A message from (former) Attorney General Ramsey Clark
If fear is the ultimate enemy of freedom, Iraq is the least free society on earth." First one thing, then another: weapons of mass destruction, ties to Al Qaeda, to rid the country of a tyrant, to establish democracy and freedom in the Middle East, to destroy international terrorism at center stage. All were fabricated and known to be false by the President and the principal “civil officers of the United States” whose purpose led us down this garden path to genocide and the enmity of friend and foe alike. Today, as the Congressional mid-term elections approach, the Bush Administration is desperate to lay blame elsewhere for its failure to stabilize the country
Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil
With 140,000 U.S. troops on the ground, the largest U.S. embassy in the world sequestered in Baghdad's fortified "Green Zone" and an economy designed by a consulting firm in McLean, Va., post-invasion Iraq was well on its way to becoming a bonanza for foreign investors. But Big Oil had its sights set on a specific arrangement -- the lucrative production sharing agreements that lock in multinationals' control for long terms and are virtually unheard of in countries as rich in easily accessible oil as Iraq.
Rumsfeld's Fake News Flop in Iraq
The Pentagon hired some amateurs to create the fake news operation in Iraq that they've dreamed of having in the United States. The danger of negative news, according to President Bush, is that it may undermine morale and support for the war, as Americans "look at the violence they see each night on their television screens and they wonder how I can remain so optimistic about the prospects of success in Iraq." But propaganda itself is a danger to the nation, as the United States has long recognized, both in theory and in law.
Seven Hair-Raising Realities About the Iraq War
With a tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon holding, the ever-hotter war in Iraq is once again creeping back onto newspaper front pages and towards the top of the evening news. Before being fully immersed in daily reports of bomb blasts, sectarian violence, and casualties, however, it might be worth considering some of the just-under-the-radar-screen realities of the situation in that country. Here, then, is a little guide to understanding what is likely to be a flood of new Iraqi developments -- a few enduring, but seldom commented upon, patterns central to the dynamics of the Iraq war, as well as to the fate of the American occupation and Iraqi society.
Iraq: the world's first Suicide State
Iraq looks like a country committing suicide rather than aspiring to independence and liberty. It is striking, for example, that the bombers seem always to lash out against Iraqi civilians, including civilians who have signed up for Iraq’s ragbag police force, rather than against America and Britain’s occupying armies. Iraq takes today’s ‘cult of the suicide bomber’ a stage further: we could say that Iraq is the world’s first Suicide State, responding to war and occupation not by mobilising the masses in opposition or organising resistance armies, but rather by destroying itself, by committing suicide in front of the world’s cameras. As strange and unsettling as this may seem, it requires an explanation. It strikes me that the new Suicide State of Iraq is not quite as foreign or ‘evil’ as commentators and officials would have us believe. Rather, it seems to have been shaped by some very contemporary political trends, and by the denigration of international politics over the past decade.
Bush's Church Urges Pull-out of US Troops from Iraq
President George W. Bush's own church has called for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and is urging direct action to end the war. Writes Mark Schoeff Jr: United Methodist Church leaders helped launch a week of protest and civil disobedience against the war in Iraq by signing a declaration of peace in the capital, urging President Bush to pull US troops out of the country. The Declaration of Peace, signed on 21 September 2006, is described as a call for nonviolent action to end the war in Iraq. The Washington DC event was one of 350 staged nationwide to promote the peace initiative. More than 500 groups, almost half of them faith organizations, are involved in the declaration of peace effort, which recently retired Bishop Susan Morrison said includes "acts of moral witness to seek a new course for our country."
Bush Ignored Urgent Warning on Iraq
The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war. The warning is described in “State of Denial,” scheduled for publication on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.
Opposition to Iraq War at All Time High
Almost two-thirds of Americans in each of three major polls say that they oppose the war, the highest totals since pollsters starting asking Americans the question three years ago.
Civilian Deaths Soar to Record High in Iraq
Nearly 7,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in the past two months, according to a UN report just released - a record high that is far greater than initial estimates had suggested. The report from the UN assistance mission in Iraq's human rights office reported evidence of torture, unlawful detentions, the growth of sectarian militias and death squads, and a rise in "honour killings" of women. ... "worse now than under Saddam Hussein." [Iraqis blame the U.S. occupation of their sovereign nation for much of the sectarian violence]
Iraq Government Wants U.S. Out
You might have seen polls showing that the majority of Iraqis and Americans want to see a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But did you know that when Bush visited Iraq on June 13, Iraq's President and Vice President asked him to set a timeline? Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffik Al-Rubaie admitted that Iraqis now see foreign troops as occupiers rather than the liberators; yet the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress refuse to set a timeline for withdrawal, saying U.S. troops need to stay to protect Iraqis until there is stability. But when the Iraqi people were asked who they trust to protect their personal safety, only 1 percent said the coalition forces!
Facing Up to the Ground Truth in Iraq
"The biggest mythology in American culture about war is that if you sign up for the military, you'll be taken care of. And I think many soldiers believe that. Even as they've watched someone they know -- a brother or a father who was in Vietnam who came back messed up and never spoke about it, and never got help-- they think somehow it will be different. "
In Cold Blood: Iraqi Tells of Massacre at Farmhouse
A cousin describes finding the shot and shattered bodies. A U.S. soldier is in custody. "Never in my mind could I have imagined such a gruesome sight," Abu Firas Janabi said of the day in March when his cousin, Fakhriya Taha Muhsen; her husband, Kasim Hamza Rasheed; and their two daughters were slain and their farmhouse set ablaze. At least four American soldiers from a nearby checkpoint are the prime suspects. The case, which includes the alleged rape of the older daughter, has caused a firestorm in the United States and Iraq. And the soldiers, including one charged Monday with rape and murder, have become lurid symbols of the American military at its worst.
A Wave of Sexual Terrorism In Iraq
Behind the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and her family lies a far larger story of what's happened to women in Iraq since they were 'liberated' by the Bush administration.
Our Descent Into Hell Has Begun
Begin paying attention, to stories from Iraq like the very recent one about U.S. Marines killing a group of civilians near Baghdad. This is the next step in the Iraq war as frustration among our soldiers grows -- especially with multiple tours.
The Civil War in Iraq Has Begun
My God, what have we done? What have we unleashed? There is no way we, or anybody else, is going to get this genie back in the bottle. Through our arrogance, carelessness and even malice, we started a sectarian battle between the different ethnicities of Iraq. And that battle has now blossomed into an absolute war.
Rep. Murtha On Iraq: "It's Worse Than It Was Prewar"...
This morning, Jack Murtha appeared on CBS' The Early Show to talk about the Iraq war. Murtha offered a sobering assessment: [T]here's not only no progress, it's worse than it was prewar. this thing has been mishandled so badly. The American people needed to hear. we're spending $450 billion on this war by the end of the year, $9 billion a month, and so we need to change course.
The Great Iraq Oil Grab
War on Iraq: The official reasons the U.S. invaded Iraq don't hold water. So, as the man said, follow the money ... straight to the oil fields. People like Dick Cheney, George Schultz and Henry Kissinger (L. Paul Bremer was a protégé of Kissinger's) warned that American energy firms were at a competitive disadvantage as long as Saddam Hussein remained in power. While more than a third of Iraq's oil ended up in the United States during the years of sanctions against the Hussein regime, it mostly came through foreign middlemen -- Saddam gave few contracts directly to American firms, and that was intolerable to the U.S. business community. Saying that Iraq's vast oil reserves -- projected by some analysts to be the largest in the world, greater than Saudi Arabia's -- was the sole motivation for the U.S. invasion of Iraq simplifies a complex issue. Opening Iraq's economy has the potential to reward the Bush administration's corporate allies with enormous windfalls as the country rebuilds after 25 years of war. Oil is the cherry on the sundae.
Critics of the Iraq War Put Rumsfeld on the Defensive
When Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld goes on the road to deliver a speech, it's usually in front of a relatively respectful audience: U.S. troops stationed overseas, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation dinner have been among his appearances this year.
An audience in Atlanta on Thursday turned out to be a bit different. In a Q&A, a former CIA analyst calls him a liar.
The War in Iraq : A Mother's View on Why We Need to Set the Record Straight
Three years have passed since Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and proclaimed "Mission accomplished." We are now entering into our fourth year of war in Iraq and here at home the war of words and platitudes that justify this war continues for our consumption. What role can someone like me, a mother currently staying home to care for a small infant, do to end this war? The other day I had the opportunity to go to an event (sponsored by a multi-faith peace and justice group) that included a contingent of Iraqi women who are currently touring the U.S. presenting an alternative view on the war in Iraq from the one that dominates in the mainstream media. I wanted to hear an alternative view on this war— why not from an Iraqi woman?
Iraq, Afghanistan Among Top Ten Failed States
Despite receiving some eight billion dollars a month in economic aid and military support over the past year, Iraq and Afghanistan rank among the world's 10 weakest states, along with much of Central Africa, according to the "Failed States Index" for 2006 released here Tuesday. Iraq ranks number four -- the same rating it received in the 2005 index -- behind the top-ranked country, Sudan; the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); and Cote D'Ivoire, according to the new index, which was released by the Washington-based Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine.
Torture "Widespread" under U.S. Custody: Amnesty
Torture and inhumane treatment are "widespread" in U.S.-run detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba and elsewhere despite Washington's denials, Amnesty International said on Wednesday. Protesters from the organization "Clergy & Laity Concerned About Iraq," take part in a protest demanding the shutdown of the U.S. operated prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, in front of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, in New York, May 1, 2006. On May 3, Amnesty International said torture and inhumane treatment are "widespread" in U.S.-run detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba and elsewhere despite Washington's denials.
In a report for the United Nations' Committee against Torture, the London-based human rights group also alleged abuses within the U.S. domestic law enforcement system, including use of excessive force by police and degrading conditions of isolation for inmates in high security prisons.
Iraq: Worse Than Reports
Despite administration complaints about bad press, conditions in Iraq are even worse, not better, than the media reports. 'Bombings, executions, killings, kidnappings, shootings and intimidation are a daily occurrence throughout all regions and sectors of Iraqi society. An illustrative list of these attacks could scarcely reflect the broad dimension of the violence.' This is from Condoleezza Rice's State Department's March report on the condition of human rights in Iraq. It reflects a situation far more serious than the American media has reflected, because the media has not been able to leave the Green Zone to cover it. U.S. military statistics show that nearly eight times as many Iraqis died last month in execution-style sectarian killings as in terrorist bombings by insurgents, and tens of thousands of civilians have fled from their homes in mixed ethnic areas, while funds run out for medical clinics and other unfinished rebuilding projects. Meanwhile, another memo shows Bush had decided to invade Iraq early on.
Situation in Iraq Could Not be Worse
A cruel and bloody civil war has started in Iraq, a country that President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair promised to free from fear and establish democracy. I have been visiting Iraq since 1978, but for the first time, I am becoming convinced that the country will not survive. The savage attack, the worst in months, came almost exactly on the third anniversary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by American and British armies on April 9, 2003. The war was portrayed at the time as freeing Iraqis from fear, but Iraqi officials have told The Independent that at least 100 people are being killed in Baghdad every day.
US Firms Suspected of Bilking Iraq Funds
American contractors swindled hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraqi funds, but so far there is no way for Iraq's government to recoup the money, according to US investigators and civil attorneys tracking fraud claims against contractors. Courts in the United States are beginning to force contractors to repay reconstruction funds stolen from the American government. But legal roadblocks have prevented Iraq from recovering funds that were seized from the Iraqi government by the US-led coalition and then paid to contractors who failed to do the work.
Iraqi Women Under Siege PDF
From 1958 to the 1990s, Iraq provided more rights and freedoms for women and girls than most of its neighbors. Though Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial government and 12 years of severe sanctions reduced these opportunities, Iraqi women, before the occupation, were still active in many aspects of their society. Now that situation has dramatically changed. While women in Iraqi |
