Top Articles on IRAQ
The following article summaries are listed chronologically with the most recent posted articles on the top of this page.
Each article heading is a link to the article itself. Most of these articles can also be found under the page headings
"Iraq" and "Downing Street Memo".
Obama And The Middle East
By Joshua Frank 18 January, 2006
Countercurrents.org
So I guess we know what the buzz is going to be for the next, ah, year or so. It looks like Barack Obama, the rookie Senator from Illinois, is going to run for president. He has received a plethora of accolades from key primary states in recent weeks...
Claiming the Prize: War Escalation Aimed at Securing
Iraqi Oil
By Chris Floyd, Information Clearing House
Posted on January 12, 2007, Printed on January 12, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46602/
I. The Twin Engines of Bush's War The reason that George W. Bush insists that "victory" is achievable in Iraq is not because he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it's that his definition of "victory" is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and on-line. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned "surge" of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand. At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new "hydrocarbon law" essentially drawn up by the Bush Administration and its U.K. lackey, the Independent on Sunday reports.
Pelosi On Opposing Iraq Escalation:
"We Will Not Be Swiftboated On These Issues"
By Bob Geiger Created Jan 10 2007 - 10:20am
In a media conference call Tuesday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) reinforced the tough stance that she and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) are taking against the Bush-McCain doctrine of escalating the Iraq war, denouncing Bush's historic "poor judgment" and warning that Democrats will not allow their loyalty to the troops to be questioned because of their stance.
Democrats Draw Battle Lines Against Bush's 'Surge'
By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet
Posted on January 10, 2007, Printed on January 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46492/
The balloons were still being inflated for the Democrats' inaugural bashes on the Hill last week when the bloody specter of Iraq appeared in the form of Cindy Sheehan. The direct-action peace mom showed up in the Cannon House Office Building last Wednesday with a handful of fellow activists, pamphlets, and no intention of letting the first news conference convened by House Democrats begin and end with yet another thumbs-up "100 Hours" boilerplate. As Rahm Emanuel finished talking up a bill to reduce student loan rates, Sheehan and her supporters made their trademark demands: "De-escalate! Investigate! Troops home now!"
Bush's Speech Is a Sad Attempt to Salvage His Name
By Robert Scheer, Truthdig
Posted on January 10, 2007, Printed on January 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46556/
To surge or not to surge, that is the question. As our prince proposes, once again, to take arms against a sea of troubles, he responds not to the disaster that he has visited upon Iraq, but rather embraces a desperate strategy for salvaging what remains of his reign.
By Robert Parry
January 8, 2007
George W. Bush has purged senior military and intelligence officials who were obstacles to a wider war in the Middle East, broadening his options for both escalating the conflict inside Iraq and expanding the fighting to Iran and Syria with Israel’s help.
Saddam: A Monster of Our Creation
By Robert Scheer, AlterNet
Posted on January 3, 2007, Printed on January 7, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46234/
Someone has to say it: The hanging of Saddam Hussein was an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of President Bush's claim it was "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy." Instead, the rushed, illegal and unruly execution of a former U.S. ally after his conviction in a kangaroo court blurred the line between terrorist and terrorized as effectively as Saddam's own evil propaganda ever did.
Bush and the Neocon's 'Surge' to Nowhere
By Robert Dreyfuss, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on January 6, 2007, Printed on January 6, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46277/
Every now and then, you have to take a lesson or two from history. In the case of George
Bush's Iraq, here's one: No matter what the President announces in his "new way forward"
speech on Iraq next week -- including belated calls for "sacrifice" from the man whose
answer to 9/11 was to urge Americans to surge into Disney World -- it won't work. Nothing
our President suggests in relation to Iraq, in fact, will have a ghost of a chance of success.
Worse than that, whatever it turns out to be, it is essentially guaranteed to make matters worse.
The Real Cost of the Iraq War: 50,000 U.S. Casualties
By Michael Munk, AlterNet
Posted on January 4, 2007, Printed on January 4, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46161/
To bring the human cost to Americans of the invasion and occupation of Iraq home, antiwar groups across the country are marking mark the 3,000th death of a member of its military components (at this writing the total is 3,004). But by focusing only on the number of dead Americans we are being manipulated along with the media and public by the administration's determination to minimize the cost in blood of establishing permanent military bases in the heart of the Middle East oil patch.
Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on October 16, 2006, Printed on December 30, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/43045/
Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part series. Go here to read the second installment. Iraq is sitting on a mother lode of some of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable crude oil on earth, and the rules that will determine who will control it and on what terms are about to be set. The Iraqi government faces a December deadline, imposed by the world's wealthiest countries, to complete its final oil law. Industry analysts expect that the result will be a radical departure from the laws governing the country's oil-rich neighbors, giving foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than with other major oil producers and locking in their control over what George Bush called Iraq's "patrimony" for decades, regardless of what kind of policies future elected governmentsmight want to pursue.
Military Escalation: Bush Can't Kick the Habit
By Robert Scheer, Truthdig
Posted on December 21, 2006, Printed on December 21, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/45764/
Here we go again: A new secretary of defense and yet another call for ending the war in Iraq by escalating it. What are they smoking in the Bush White House?
Robert Gates Lines Up with Bush
By Robert Parry
December 19, 2006
In early December, when Senate Democrats politely questioned Robert M. Gates and then voted unanimously to confirm him as Defense Secretary, they bought into the conventional wisdom that Gates was a closet dove who would help guide the United States out of George W. Bush's mess in Iraq.
Zinn: Iraq is Same Old Song and Dance [VIDEO]
Howard Zinn gave a speech to the University of Wisconsin (my alma mater,thank you) explaining the ultimately simple mechanism behind our repeated mistake of fighting wars both disastrous to our nation and to others. Bad History. Watch a clip, right.
Active Duty Soldiers Call for An End to the Occupation of Iraq
By Marc Cooper, TheNation.com
Posted on December 18, 2006, Printed on December 18, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/45646/
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.
Iraq Study Group Recommends Privatization
By Antonia Juhasz, AlterNet
Posted on December 7, 2006, Printed on December 11, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/45190/
In its heavily anticipated report released on Wednesday, the Iraq Study Group made at least four truly radical proposals. The report calls for the United States to assist in privatizing Iraq's national oil industry, opening Iraq to private foreign oil and energy companies, providing direct technical assistance for the "drafting" of a new national oil law for Iraq...
Iraq Study Group or Saudi Protection League?
The Baker Boys: Stay Half the Course
by Greg Palast
They're kidding, right?
James Baker III and the seven dwarfs of the "Iraq Study Group" have come up with some simply brilliant recommendations. Not.
The Surreal Politics of Premeditated War
by R.W. Behan
Published on Sunday, December 3, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
George W. Bush, who proudly claimed the mantle of “war president,” was keenly
rebuked in the recent mid-term election. The event was notable, but it merely continued
the surreal politics of premeditated war—a politics that has dominated the last six bizarre,
hideous years of our nation’s history.
Two elements of the repudiation seem unreal, indeed.
Iraq Study Group Offers No Real Plan for Withdrawal
By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on December 5, 2006, Printed on December 5, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/45091/
Finally, the President and the New York Times agree. In a news conference with
the Iraqi Prime Minister last week, George W. Bush insisted that there would be
no "graceful exit" or withdrawal from Iraq; that this was not "realism." The next
day the Times, in a front page piece (as well as "analysis" inside the paper) pointed
out that, "despite a Democratic election victory this month that was strongly based
on antiwar sentiment, the idea of a major and rapid withdrawal seems to be fading
as a viable option."
Barack Obama And The Winds Of War
By Glen Ford
01 December, 2006
Black Agenda Reprt
Barack Obama is a windblown politician. The junior Illinois senator avoids anchoring
himself to any principle, lest his political sails fail to catch the slightest breeze blowing
from the left or the right. His political direction is always tentative, although his ultimate
destination is never in doubt: he will be a formidable national presence--maybe even president.
Ten Fallacies About the Violence in Iraq
By John Tirman, AlterNet
Posted on November 28, 2006, Printed on November 29, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/44771/
The escalating violence in Iraq's civil war is
now earning considerable attention as we pass
yet another milestone -- U.S. occupation there,
in two weeks, will exceed the length of the
Second World War for America. While the news media
have finally started to grapple with
the colossal amount of killing, a number of misunderstandings
persist. Some are willful deceptions.
Let's look at a few of them:
Iraq Disaster Warning
By WILLIAM S. LIND
UPI Outside View Commentator
11/10/06 -- - WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 (UPI
-- The third and final act in the U.S. national tragedy that is the Bush administration may soon play itself out.
Sources indicate increasing indications of "something big" happening between the Nov. 7 congressional election and Christmas. That could be the long-planned attack on Iran.
An attack on Iran will not be an invasion with ground troops. We don't have enough of those left to invade Ruritania. It will be a "package" of air and missile strikes, by U.S. forces or Israel.
Why is NY Times Silent on Massive Iraq Death Toll?
A question for Bill Keller [ Post294992815 ] Published: October 16, 2006 Author: World Socialist Web Site
The corporate-controlled American media is deliberately suppressing
the results of a survey that demonstrates that the US invasion and occupation
of Iraq has caused more than 600,000 deaths in the past three years—a figure that in
and of itself refutes all the claims by the Bush administration that it carried out the invasion
of Iraq in order to foster democracy in the Middle East. What kind of "freedom" and "human
rights" can be the consequence of such a slaughter?
The major American media organizations—including the New York Times—published only brief reports on the study October 11. Taking their cue from President Bush, who declared the survey’s methodology faulty without offering any proof, the Times and other leading media outlets have dropped the subject. There have been no editorials in the Times, the Washington Post, or other major newspapers, nor any demands for a more serious response from the Bush administration.
How to Make Hundreds of Thousands of Dead Iraqis Disappear
By Eric Alterman, HuffingtonPost.com
Posted on October 20, 2006, Printed on October 20, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/43224/
According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, George Bush's lies
have killed not 30,000 innocent Iraqis, as the president not long ago estimated, but nearly
22 times that amount, or 655,000. Neither the Pentagon, nor much of the mainstream media
have made much attempt to make their own counts -- it's just not that important to anyone.
So how has the U.S. media reported on these shocking-albeit-necessarily-imprecise findings,
based on door-to-door surveys in 18 provinces, by the experts trained in this kind of thing?
The actual methods included obtaining data by eight Iraqi physicians during a survey of 1,849
Iraqi families -- 12,801 people -- in 47 neighborhoods of 18 regions across the country. The
researchers based the selection of geographical areas on population size, not on the level of
violence. How strict were their standards? They asked for death certificates to prove claims --
and got them in 92 percent of the cases. Even so, the authors say that the number could be
anywhere from 426,000 to 800,000.
Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on October 16, 2006, Printed on October 16, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/43045/
Editor's note: this is the first of a two-part series.
Iraq is sitting on a mother lode of some of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable
crude oil on earth, and the rules that will determine who will control it and on what
terms are about to be set.
The Iraqi government faces a December deadline, imposed by the world's wealthiest
countries, to complete its final Oil Law. Industry analysts expect that the result will
be a radical departure from the laws governing the country's oil-rich neighbors,
giving foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than with other major
oil producers, and locking in their control over what George Bush called Iraq's
"patrimony" for decades, regardless of what kind of policies future elected
governments might want to pursue.
Stephen Colbert with PNAC Founder, Bill Kristol
Stephen Colbert sliced and diced prominent neo-conservative Bill Kristol on the
Project For the New American Century, Iraq and Iran.
In this clip from Sunday night's 60 Minutes, Bob Woodward is welcomed
aboard the train that left the station about 3+ years ago.
Still, it's significant that a man with such creed goes on TV and effectively
says that Bush lied.
Poll: Iraqis Back Attacks on U.S. Troops
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic WriterWed Sep 27, 6:28 PM ET
About six in 10 Iraqis say they approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces, and slightly more
than that want their government to ask U.S. troops to leave within a year, a poll finds.
The Iraqis also have negative views of Osama bin Laden, according to the early September
poll of 1,150.
The poll, done for University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, found:
_Almost four in five Iraqis say the U.S. military force in Iraq provokes more violence than it prevents.
Iraq Civilian Deaths Hit a Record
Sep 21, 8:47 AM (ET)
By NICK WADHAMS
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August
hit 6,599, a record-high number that is far greater than initial estimates suggested,
the United Nations said Wednesday.
US Defense And Oil Company Executives Reap Windfalls
From Iraq War
By Naomi Spencer
15 September 2006
World Socialist Web
Since September 11, 2001, and the Bush administration’s initiation of the
“war on terror,” inequality in the US has grown at a rapid rate and to grotesque
proportions. The criminal nature of war on Iraq is reflected in every facet of
American life, least surprisingly of all in the enormous fortunes of the ruling
elite. Indeed, the current war, the most privatized in history, is viewed by a wide
range of corporate executives and investors as an open-ended outsourcing opportunity.
________________________________________________________________
Interview of Senator John Rockefeller-3 Minute Streaming Video
head Democrat on the Intelligence Committee,
who says that Bush 'deliberately manipulated' the American public on Iraq intelligence and
because of Iraq 'we are much less safer today.'
9-11, Afghanistan and “The Survival of Civilization”
By Gabriele Zamparini
On 20 September 2001
US President Bush addressing the Congress stated: “The United States respects the people of Afghanistan -- after all, we are currently its largest source of humanitarian aid…”. On 7 October 2001 addressing the country Bush said: “At the same time, the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies. As we strike military targets, we'll also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering men and women and children of Afghanistan. The United States of America is a friend to the Afghan people…”.
Five years later the results of this respectful and generous friendship have been published by the Senlis Council, an international policy think tank with offices in
Kabul, London, Paris and Brussels. “Afghanistan Five Years Later: The Return
of the Taliban” reads: After five years of intensive international involvement in Afghanistan, the country remains ravaged by severe poverty and the spreading starvation of the rural and urban poor.
Bush and Saddam Should Both Stand Trial, Says Nuremberg Prosecutor
by Aaron Glantz Published on Friday, August 25, 2006 by OneWorld.net
A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferenccz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting "aggressive" wars--Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Seven Hair-Raising Realities About the Iraq War
By Michael Schwartz, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on August 22, 2006, Printed on August 22, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/40629/
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.
Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?
By Jan Frel, AlterNet
Posted on July 10, 2006, Printed on July 10, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/38604/
The extent to which American exceptionalism is embedded in the national psyche is awesome to behold.
While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more special than any others on
the planet, Americans still react with surprise at the suggestion that their country could be held responsible
for something as heinous as a war crime.
From the massacre of more than 100,000 people in the Philippines to the first nuclear attack ever at
Hiroshima to the unprovoked invasion of Baghdad, U.S.-sponsored violence doesn't feel as wrong and
worthy of prosecution in internationally sanctioned criminal courts as the gory, bload-soaked atrocities
of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, and most certainly not the Nazis -- most certainly not. Howard Zinn
recently described this as our "inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned
in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior."
Three Iraq Myths That Won't Quit
By Scott Ritter, AlterNet
Posted on June 26, 2006, Printed on June 26, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/38011/ It is hard sometimes to know what is real and what is fiction
when it comes to the news out of Iraq. America is in its "silly season," the summer months
leading up to a national election, and the media is going full speed ahead in exploiting
its primacy in the news arena by substituting responsible reporting with headline-grabbing
entertainment. So, as America closes in on the end of June and the celebration
of the 230th year of our nation's birth, I thought I would pen a short primer on three myths on
Iraq to keep an eye out for as we
"debate" the various issues pertaining to our third year of war in that country.
The myth of sovereignty Imagine the president of the United States flying to Russia, China,
England, France or just about any other nation on the planet, landing at an airport on supposedly
sovereign territory, being driven under heavy U.S. military protection to the U.S. Embassy, and
then with some five minutes notification, summoning the highest elected official of that nation to
the U.S. Embassy for a meeting. It would never happen, unless of course the nation in question is
Iraq, where Iraqi sovereignty continues to be hyped as a reality when in fact it is as fictitious as any
fairy tale ever penned by the Brothers Grimm. For all of the talk of a free Iraq, the fact is Iraq remains
very much an occupied nation where the United States (and its ever decreasing "coalition of the willing")
gets to call all the shots.
Montoya
The Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies has published many reports which
outline the horrendous costs of Bush’s war and occupation in Iraq. But there is a much
larger issue, even larger than America's invasion and occupation of Iraq since 2003: the IPS
reports fail to address long term systemic abuses and the intentional ‘scourging' of Iraq over
many years, ergo the West's willful destruction of Iraq and its people since 1969. This article
examines the lethal long term effects of Western meddling in Iraq, and how Iraq's destruction
began in 1969, when the United States undermined any nascent democratic processes in the
Qassim and al Bakr regimes, and moved to deny self-determination/self-government by the
Iraqi people. While the United States acted as the central villain in Iraq’s long demise, other
external powers actively participated, including the UN, which acted as a willing partner and
legitimizing agent for Iraq’s ongoing horrors.
___________________________________________________________
Keeping Iraq's Oil In the Ground
By Greg Palast, AlterNet
Posted on June 14, 2006, Printed on June 15, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/37371/
World oil production today stands at more than twice the 15-billion a-year maximum
projected by Shell Oil in 1956 -- and reserves are climbing at a faster clip yet. That leaves
the question, Why this war?
Did Dick Cheney send us in to seize the last dwindling supplies? Unlikely. Our world's petroleum
reserves have doubled in just twenty-five years -- and it is in Shell's and the rest of the industry's
interest that this doubling doesn't happen again. The neo-cons were hell-bent on raising Iraq's oil
production. Big Oil's interest was in suppressing production, that is, keeping Iraq to its OPEC quota
or less. This raises the question, did the petroleum industry, which had a direct, if hidden, hand, in
promoting invasion, cheerlead for a takeover of Iraq to prevent overproduction?
_______________________________________________________
Unreported-The Zarqawi Invitation to Visit Iraq
by Greg Palast
They got him -- the big, bad, beheading berserker in Iraq.
But, something's gone unreported
in all the glee over getting Zarqawi … who invited him into Iraq
in the first place?
If you prefer your fairy tales unsoiled by facts, read no further.
If you want the uncomfortable
truth, begin with this: A phone call to Baghdad to Saddam's Palace on the night of April 21, 2003.
It was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on a secure line
from Washington to General Jay Garner.
The General had arrives in Baghdad just hours before to take charge
of the newly occupied nation.
The message from Rumsfeld was not a heartwarming welcome. Rummy told Garner, Don't unpack,
Jack -- you're fired.
What had Garner done? The many-starred general had been sent
by the President himself to take
charge of a deeply dangerous mission. Iraq was tense but relatively peaceful. Garner's job was to keep
the peace and bring democracy.
Unfortunately for the general, he took the President at his word.
But the general was wrong.
"Peace" and "Democracy" were the slogans.
_______________________________________________________
The Great Iraq Oil Grab
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on May 22, 2006, Printed on May 22, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/36463/
There's a story, perhaps apocryphal, that Pentagon planners wanted to name the invasion
of Iraq, "Operation Iraqi Liberation." Only when someone realized that the acronym -- O.I.L.
-- might raise some uncomfortable questions, was "Operation Iraqi Freedom" born.
Supporters of the Iraq war airily dismiss chants of "no blood for oil" as a manifestation of the
antiwar crowd's naïveté. They point out that Iraq's government still controls its oil and argue
that we could have simply bought it on the open market.
Both of those claims are true on their face, but bringing Iraq's vast oil wealth under the control of
foreign multinationals -- with U.S. firms the best positioned to develop it -- was always central to U.S.
plans for Iraq. That Iraq's oil will continue to be "owned" by the "Iraqi people" is what differentiates
classical 19th-century colonialism practiced by British officers in pith helmets from the neocolonialism
the United States perfected in the second half of the 20th century. The newer brand can be summed
up like this: We'll respect your sovereignty and abide by your domestic laws -- as long as we can help
you write those laws to guarantee our firms' profits.
______________________________________________________________
By Robert Parry
May 8, 2006
Rebellion was in the air, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acting like a crafty minister
to an embattled king, fending off citizens outraged over government lies and the growing death toll
from a war built on deception.
As hecklers at a speech in Atlanta on May 4 accused the Bush administration of lying and then were
dragged away one by one, Rumsfeld appealed for civility and for renewed faith in George W. Bush’s honesty.
“You know, that charge [of lying] is frequently leveled against the President for one reason or another,
and it’s so wrong and so unfair and so destructive of a free system, where people need to trust each other
and government,” Rumsfeld told a crowd of international affairs experts.
Anyone who’s followed the twisted course of Iraq War rationales had to marvel at Rumsfeld’s chutzpah,
putting citizen accusers on the defensive and turning government deceivers into defenders of “a free system.”
How could he expect such a transparent ploy to work?
But the cagey Pentagon chief may have recognized that he could still score with two target audiences: die-hard
Bush loyalists and the Washington press corps. The word “lie” – when applied to Bush – sends Bush's backers
into a fury and thus is studiously avoided by the mainstream press.
_____________________________________________________________
The Military is in Iraq for Long Haul
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek
May 1, 2006 issue - Maj. Micah Morgan fondly pats the nose of his Predator drone, much
as a cavalry officer of old might have stroked the muzzle of his prized horse. "This is the future
of the Air Force," says Morgan, a former B-1 bomber pilot. It is a glorious day in the Sunni Triangle.
Outside the "wire" of Balad Air Base the insurgency still rages and sectarian war looms, but the sky
above is a deep azure and, no small thing, wholly American-owned. A relaxed Morgan watches from
the shade of Saddam Hussein's old hardened hangars as another Predator—an unmanned craft about
the size of a Cessna—approaches for a remote-control landing at the vast airfield after a recon mission.
Stepping into one of his modular "ground-control stations," which are encased in steel and shipped to Balad
as single units, Morgan flicks on a screen that shows his flock of drones (the exact number is classified,
but it's the largest fleet in the world) hovering over Baghdad, each carrying two Hellfire missiles and
searching with uncanny clarity for insurgents and other signs of trouble.
__________________________________________________________
By Robert Parry
April 3, 2006
During the three years of carnage in Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has
shifted away from her now-discredited warning about a “mushroom cloud” to assert
a strategic rationale for the invasion that puts her squarely in violation of the Nuremberg
principle against aggressive war.
On March 31 in remarks to a group of British foreign policy experts, Rice justified the
U.S.-led invasion by saying that otherwise Iraqi President Saddam Hussein “wasn’t going
anywhere” and “you were not going to have a different Middle East with Saddam Hussein
at the center of it.” [Washington Post, April 1, 2006]
By Robert Parry
March 28, 2006
In a world where might did not make right, George W. Bush, Tony Blair and their key
enablers would be in shackles before a war crimes tribunal at the Hague, rather than
sitting in the White House, 10 Downing Street or some other comfortable environs in
The latest evidence of their war crimes was revealed in secret British minutes of an Oval
Office meeting on Jan. 31, 2003, when Bush, Blair and their top aides chillingly discussed
their determination to invade Iraq, though still hoping to provoke the Iraqis into some violent
act that would serve as political cover.
Bush, who has publicly told Americans that it was Saddam Hussein who “chose war” by
refusing to disarm, was, in reality, set on invading Iraq regardless of Hussein’s cooperation
with United Nations weapons inspectors, according to the five-page memo described in detail
by the New York Times. [March 27, 2006]
______________________________________________________
Bush Says US Troops To Remain In Iraq Indefinitely
By Jerry White
22 March 2006
World Socialist Web
At a White House press conference Tuesday morning President George
W. Bush
suggested that the US would continue the occupation of Iraq for years, if not decades,
to come. Asked if there would be a day when there were no more American forces in
that country, Bush replied that that would be “decided by future presidents and future
governments of Iraq.”
Bush suggested that US troops would remain long after the end of his administration in
January 2009, making it clear that the country is to be reduced to the status of a semi-colonial
protectorate. Refusing to give a “timetable” for complete withdrawal, the president repeated
his oft-made statement that US military commanders would decide when force levels would be reduced.
____________________________________________________________
Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools
THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCCOMPLISHED
by Greg Palast
for The Guardian
20 March 2006
On the third anniversary of the tanks
rolling over Iraq's border,
most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons
who voted for Bush are
beginning to doubt if his mission
was accomplished.
But don't kid yourself -- Bush
and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney,
accomplished exactly what they
set out to do. In case you've
forgotten what their real mission
was, let me remind you of White
House spokesman Ari Fleisher's
original announcement, three years
ago, launching of what he called,
"Operation
Iraqi
Liberation."
Bush Signs Bill to Raise Debt Ceiling
Mon Mar 20, 2:43 PM ET With no fanfare, President Bush signed a bill Monday pushing the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $9 trillion.
"Biggest" Air Attack in Iraq Turns Out to be Bush PR Stunt
Buzzflash.com
Why bother spending billions of dollars on big corporate mainstream media reporters when they could just as easily have the Pentagon supply the stories and footage directly? They already do in most cases. Take the breathlessly "covered" air attack in Iraq. "Largest Air Attack in Iraq War Launched Against Insurgents," read one big city headline we saw. And television was right there, providing lead stories on the massive "air attack." Only, of course, it turned out to be a PR stunt to boost Bush's poll ratings at home and divert attention from the civil war in Iraq, as if the U.S. presence was accomplishing something.
Iraq & the Nuremberg Precedent
By Peter Dyer
March 16, 2006
Editor's Note: As the United States approaches the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion, much of the commentary is focusing on the Bush administration's "incompetence" in prosecuting the war -- the failure to commit enough troops, the decision to disband the old Iraqi army without adequate plans for training a new one, the highhandedness of the U.S. occupation.
But what about the legal and moral questions arising from the unprovoked invasion of Iraq? Should George W. Bush and his top aides be held accountable for violating the laws against aggressive war that the United States and other Western nations promulgated in punishing senior Nazis after World War II? Do the Nuremberg precedents that prohibit one nation from invading another apply to Bush and American officials -- or are they somehow immune? Put bluntly, should Bush and his inner circle face a war-crimes tribunal for the tens of thousands of deaths in Iraq?
Despite the present-day conventional wisdom in Washington that these are frivolous questions, they actually go to the heart of the American commitment to the rule of law and the concept that the law applies to everyone. In this guest essay, Peter Dyer looks at this larger issue:
By Dahr Jamail
14 March 2006
t r u
t h o u t
Why does the Bush Administration refuse to discuss withdrawing occupation
forces
from Iraq? Why is Halliburton, who landed the no-bid contracts to construct and maintain
US military bases in Iraq, posting higher profits than ever before in its 86-year history?
Why do these bases in Iraq resemble self-contained cities as much as military outposts?
Why are we hearing such ludicrous and outrageous statements from the highest ranking military
general in the United States, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace, who
when asked how things were going in Iraq on March 9th in an interview on "Meet the Press"
said, "I'd say they're going well. I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say
they're going very, very well from everything you look at."
Iraq: A Cluster Of Torture Prisons
By Ghali Hassan
13 March, 2006
Countercurrents.org
After the US's deliberate and unprovoked war on Iraq, “reconstruction”
becomes one
of the US's moral clichés to justify crimes against the Iraqi people and ongoing Occupation.
In reality, the “reconstruction” of Iraq is the continuation of the destruction of Iraq and
humiliation of Iraqi society.
Countless prisons have been built where the practice of humiliation, sadistic torture, sexual
abuse and rape of Iraqi men, women and children are used on daily basis to force the entire
Iraqi population into submission.
The $20 billion initially appropriated by the US administration to “reconstruct” Iraq were a
gift to US corporations and the Bush cronies. The only visible construction in Iraq today is
the rise in the construction of prisons. According to Reuters; “The U.S. State Department is
winding down its $20 billion reconstruction program in Iraq and the only new rebuilding money
in its latest budget request is for prisons . . . State Department Iraq coordinator James Jeffrey
told reporters he was asking Congress for $100 million for prisons but no other big building
projects were in the pipeline."
___________________________________________________________
U.S. Troops in Iraq: 72% Say End War in 2006
Released: February 28, 2006
-
Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay
-
“as long as they are needed”
-
While 58% say mission is clear, 42% say U.S. role is hazy
-
Plurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown
-
Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11, most don’t blame Iraqi
-
public for insurgent attacks
-
Majority of troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation
-
Plurality of troops pleased with their armor and equipment
______________________________________________________
Can You Say 'Permanent Bases? The American Press Can't
Posted on Saturday, February 18 @ 09:34:13 EST
bases, ranging from mega to micro in Iraq. Most of these were to be given back to the Iraqi
military, now being "stood up" as a far larger force than originally imagined by Pentagon
planners, leaving the U.S. with, Graham reported, just the number of bases -- 4 -- that the
Times first mentioned over two years earlier, including Balad Air Base and the base Poole
visited in western Anbar Province. This reduction was presented not as a fulfillment of original
Pentagon thinking, but as a "withdrawal plan." (A modest number of these bases have since
been turned over to the Iraqis, including one in Tikrit transferred to Iraqi military units which,
according to Poole, promptly stripped it to the bone.)
_________________________________________________________
Scott Ritter: 'Still Cherry-picking the Facts on Iraq'
One piece of information in particular caught my eye. The revelations made by retired
CIA officer Paul Pillar in an article published in the March-April issue of the journal
Foreign Affairs should come as a surprise to no one who has been following the disturbing
case of Iraq and the missing weapons of
mass destruction (WMD).
Mr. Pillar is a career intelligence officer
with the CIA who served as the deputy chief of the
Counterterrorist Center and, most recently, as the national intelligence officer for Near
East/Middle East affairs from 2000 to 2005. His essay offers sound analysis to back up
his claim that the Bush administration had made the decision to invade Iraq independent
of any viable intelligence analysis to sustain the allegation that Iraq possessed undeclared
and hidden WMD capability. This capability allegedly not only violated international law
but also constituted a threat to the United States and the international community that justified
the use of force.
Nowhere does Mr. Pillar mention the issue of regime change and the role played by
the CIA in carrying out covert action at the instruction of the White House (both
Democratic and Republican) to remove Saddam Hussein from power. I may not have
been the national intelligence officer, but I was plugged into the system well enough to know "Steve,"
who headed the CIA's Near East Division inside the Directorate of Operations, and helped plan
and implement several abortive coup attempts in Iraq. I also knew "Don," who helped run the
CIA's Counter Proliferation Center and was well aware of how the CIA interfered with and
undermined several investigations and operations run by U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq.
If these operations had reached fruition, the myth of a noncompliant Iraq might have been
undone, thereby putting at risk the CIA's
primary tasking vis-a-vis Iraq: regime change.
___________________________________________________________________________-
Intelligence, Policy and the
War in Iraq
By Paul R. Pillar
From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006
Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence
community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration
disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and
selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.
PAUL R. PILLAR is on the faculty of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown
University. Concluding a long career in the Central Intelligence Agency, he served
as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.
____________________________________________________
Former CIA Official Says Bush Misled Country to War
By Cam Simpson
Washington bureau
Published February 10, 2006, 8:29
PM CST
WASHINGTON -- The former CIA official
charged with
managing the U.S. government's secret
intelligence
assessments on Iraq says the Bush
administration chose
war first and then misleadingly
used raw data to
assemble a public case for its
decision to invade.
_____________________________________________________________
This powerful video portrays the impact of the Bush Doctrine on our
soldiers and the civilians of Iraq as this war goes on and on. It is worth
watching and then passing on to others, for the powerful way in which it
portrays painful truths of the illegal war on Iraq.
______________________________________________________________
THE LIE OF THE CENTURY www.whatreallyhappened.com There is nothing new in a government lying to their people to start a war. Indeed because most people prefer living in peace to bloody and horrific death in war, any government that desires to initiate a war usually lies to their people to create the illusion that support for the war is the only possible choice they can make.
Blair-Bush Deal before Iraq War Revealed in Secret Memo
Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday February 3, 2006
PM promised to be 'solidly behind' US invasion with or without UN
backing
Tony Blair told President George Bush that he was "solidly" behind US plans to
invade Iraq before he sought advice about the invasion's legality and despite the
absence of a second UN resolution, according to a new account of the build-up to
the war published today.
A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on
January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush
made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN
resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons
programme.
By Murray Waas, special
to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Feb. 2, 2006
Vice President Cheney and his then-Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter"
Libby were personally informed in June 2003 that the CIA no longer considered
credible the allegations that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium
from the African nation of Niger, according to government records and interviews
with current and former officials. The new CIA assessment came just as Libby and
other senior administration officials were embarking on an effort to discredit an
administration critic who had also been saying that the allegations were untrue.
Posted on Saturday, January 14 @ 09:49:37 EST
James Risen's State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, may hold bigger secrets than the disclosure that President George W. Bush authorized warrantless eavesdropping on Americans. Risen's book also confirms the most damning element of the British Cabinet Office memos popularly called the "Downing Street memos;" namely, that "the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy." The result is that it is no longer credible to maintain that the failures in the Iraqi intelligence were the product of a broken intelligence community. The Bush administration deliberately fabricated the case against Iraq, lying to Congress and the American people along the way.
So Iraq Was About the Oil
By Robert Parry November 8, 2005
When Colin Powell’s former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson publicly decried the Bush administration’s bungling of U.S. foreign policy, the focus of the press coverage was on Wilkerson’s depiction of a “cabal” headed by Vice President Dick Cheney that had hijacked the decision-making process. Largely overlooked were Wilkerson’s frank admissions about the importance of oil in justifying a long-term U.S. military intervention in Iraq. “The other thing that no one ever likes to talk about is SUVs and oil and consumption,” the retired Army colonel said in a speech on Oct. 19. While bemoaning the administration’s incompetence in implementing the war strategy, Wilkerson said the U.S. government now had no choice but to succeed in Iraq or face the necessity of conquering the Middle East within the next 10 years to ensure access to the region’s oil supplies.
Extra Armor Could Have Saved Many Lives, Study Shows
By MICHAEL MOSS
A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor. That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.
Pentagon propaganda program orders soldiers to promote
Iraq war while home on leave
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Dec 29, 2005, 05:44
Good soldiers follow orders and hundreds of American
military men and women returned to the United States
on holiday leave this month with orders to sell the
Iraq war to a skeptical public.
The program, coordinated through a Pentagon operation
dubbed “Operation Homefront,” ordered military
personnel to give interviews to their hometown
newspapers, television stations and other media
outlets and praise the American war effort in Iraq.
House Judiciary Democrats issue report alleging
gross misconduct by Bush over Iraq
In brief, we have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war with Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and other legal violations in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration. There is at least a prima facie case that these actions by the President, Vice-President and other members of the Bush Administration violate a number of federal laws, including (1) Committing a Fraud against the United States; (2) MakingFalse Statements to Congress; (3) The War Powers Resolution; (4) Misuse of Government
Funds; (5) federal laws and international treaties prohibiting torture and cruel, inhuman, and
degrading treatment; (6) federal laws concerning retaliating against witnesses and other individuals;
and (7) federal laws and regulations concerning leaking and other misuse of intelligence.
by Laurence M. Vance
The Bush administration, its accomplices in the news media, and
the conservative talk show hacks who do the bidding of the Republican
party have sold America a bill of goods. The invasion of Iraq was justified,
we have been led to believe, because Saddam Hussein was the reincarnation
of Adolph Hitler, Iraq was in the position of Germany on the eve of World
War II, and the "elite" Republican Guard was the equivalent of the German
Wehrmacht. According to the president himself: "We will end a brutal regime,
whose aggression and weapons of mass destruction make it a unique
threat to the world."
'Mission accomplished: Big Oil's occupation of Iraq'
Raw Story
Posted on Monday, December 05 @ 09:53:54 EST
Heather Wokusch
The Bush administration's covert plan to help energy companies steal
Iraq's
oil could be just weeks away from fruition, and the implications are staggering:
continued price-gouging by Big Oil, increased subjugation of the Iraqi people,
more US troops
in Iraq, and a greater likelihood for a US invasion of Iran.
That's just for starters.
The administration's challenge has been how to transfer Iraq's oil
assets to private
companies under
the cloak of legitimacy, yet simultaneously keep prices inflated.
But Bush & Co. and their Big Oil cronies might have found a simple
yet devious
solution: production sharing agreements (PSAs).
Senate Intelligence Committee stalling pre-war
intelligence report
12/02/2005 @ 11:54 am
Filed by Larisa AlexandrovnaPhase II, the follow-up to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation
into pre-war intelligence on Iraq, is still facing opposition from administration
officials and has seen little action from the committee’s chairman, Senator
Pat Roberts (R-KS), RAW STORY has learned.
Death squads, Devastation and the Corporate Media
The death squads and the intentional destruction of the Sunni heartland
comprise the first two parts of the three-pronged strategy to defeat the Iraqi
resistance. The final leg on the stool is the propaganda war that is being
directed against the American people to conceal the details of the military’s
war crimes.
Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel
By
Murray Waas, special to National
Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005
Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing
that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of
Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that
Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government
records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.
What I Knew
Before the Invasion
By Bob Graham
Sunday, November 20, 2005; B07
In the past week President Bush has twice attacked Democrats
for
being hypocrites on the Iraq war. "[M]ore than 100 Democrats in
the
House and Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted
to
support removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said.
The president's attacks are outrageous. Yes, more than 100
Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war. Most
of
them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the
legitimate belief that the president and his administration were
truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering
menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would
become a mushroom cloud.
The Man Who Sold the War
Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war
By JAMES BAMFORD
Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists.
Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had
secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries
with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is
a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating
information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result.
His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since
1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal
of Hussein from power."
Scott Ritter Tells the Complete Story Why We're in Iraq
It Begins with the CIA's Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow
Saddam Hussein
Cheney Claimed Iraq Was Providing WMD Training
To Al-Qaeda Months After Source Recanted
President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials
repeatedly claimed that Iraq was providing al-Qaeda with training in chemical
and biological weapons. The administration’s claims were based on the statements
of a known fabricator, al Qaeda senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. It gets
worse. The Washington Post reports that al-Libi formally retracted his claims in
early 2004:
VIDEOS PROVING U.S. MILITARY’S USE OF
CHEMICAL WEAPONS IN IRAQ
Carter: White House Manipulated Iraq Intel
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK (AP) - The Bush Administration's prewar claims that Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction were "manipulated, at least" to mislead
the American people, former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday.
Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Suspicions
New York Times
November 6, 2005
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 - A high Qaeda official in American custody was
identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to
use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda
members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified
portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.
Conyers’ Hearings on Downing St. Memo-June 17, 2005
VERY POWERFUL STREAMING VIDEO WITH 7-YEAR CIA ANALYST,
RAY MCGOVERN; CONSTITUTIONAL ATTY. JOHN BONIFAZ;
AMBASSADOR JOE WILSON
This hyperlink will bring you to the Home Page of Crooks and Liars Website.
You will have to locate this particular streaming video on this page.
Conyers Hearings on Downing Street Memo-June 17, 2005
Very Powerful Streaming Video of Cindy Sheehan of Gold Star Families for Peace
This hyperlink will bring you to the Home Page of Crooks and Liars Website.
You will have to locate this particular streaming video on this page.
Confessions of a Marine
By Jean-Paul Mari
Le Nouvel Observateur
Iraq: The story
no American publisher wanted.
In a just-published book, Master-Sergeant Jimmy Massey tells about
his
mission to recruit for, then fight in, the war in Iraq. He tells why he killed.
And cracked.
UK MP George Galloway Calls for Bush, Blair, Koizumi, and
Must See Video
IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED."
IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED."
Special to BuzzFlash
By Greg Palast
Posted June 6, 2005
Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has "IMPEACH HIM" written
all over it.
The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL,"
dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq , following a closed meeting
with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted
to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism
and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Video-Powell and Rice in 2001 State that Iraq Is No Threat
British Memo Reopens War Claim
By Stephen J. Hedges and Mark Silva
The Chicago Tribune
Tuesday 17 May 2005
Leaked briefing says US intelligence facts `fixed' around policy.
Washington - A British official's report that the Bush
administration appeared intent on invading Iraq long before it
acknowledged as much or sought Congress' approval--and that
it "fixed" intelligence to fit its intention--has caused a stir in
Britain.
But the potentially explosive revelation has proven to be
something of a dud in the United States . The White House has denied
the premise of the memo, the American media have reacted slowly to
it and the public generally seems indifferent to the issue or
unwilling to rehash the bitter prewar debate over the reasons for
the war.
Galloway tongue-lashes Coleman; committee documents
show Bush political friends and family paid Oil-for-Food
kickbacks to Saddam Hussein
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Posted may 27, 2005
May 21, 2005—British Member of Parliament George Galloway presented
the U.S. Senate with the best tongue lashing since U.S. Army counsel
Joseph Welch excoriated Senator Joseph McCarthy over his witch hunt
directed at one of Welch's law firm associates who had been a member
of the Lawyer's Guild: "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency,
sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
The May 17 testimony by Galloway, the newly-elected Respect Party
member for East London's Bethnal Green and Bow constituency, was
in response to a report issued by Minnesota Republican Senator Norm
Coleman's Permanent Select Subcommittee on Investigations that charged
Galloway with personally profiting from Iraq 's United Nations Oil-for-Food
program.
Video Of The Full Testimony Of British MP George Galloway
This is a must watch Video!!
Depleted Uranium: A Scientific Perspective
An Interview With LEUREN MORET, Geoscientist
ICONOCLAST: Is there a danger of depleted uranium, being used in
weaponry over there, spreading by air over here?
MORET: The atmosphere globally is contaminated with it. It’s completely
mixed in one year. I’m an expert on atmospheric dust.
U.S. the New Saddam
by Eric Margolis
The most important news from Iraq last week was not the much ballyhooed
constitutional pact by Shias and Kurds, nor the tragic stampede deaths of
nearly 1,000 pilgrims in Baghdad .
The U.S. Air Force's senior officer, Gen. John Jumper, stated U.S. warplanes
would remain in Iraq to fight resistance forces and protect the
American-installed regime "more or less indefinitely." Jumper's bombshell
went largely unnoticed due to Hurricane Katrina.
Nearly 9,000 U.S. troops dead? A NATIONWIDE CALL
FOR INFO FROM SURVIVORS.
Has the Bush administration drastically understated the U.S. military death count by redefining "death"? The following article suggests that it has, and it calls for a nationwide campaign to honor deceased service members by naming and counting them.According to the article: "...DoD lists currently being very quietly circulated indicate almost 9,000 [ U.S. military] dead"; this far exceeds the "official" death count of 1,831. How can this be? It's largely because "U.S. Military
Personnel who died in German hospitals or en route to German hospitals have not previously been counted." In other words, "death" has been redefined.
The Other Bomb Drops
Jeremy Scahill Wed Jun 1, 6:29 PM ET Posted June 4, 2005
It was a huge air assault: Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi airspace. At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan . Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist. This was war. But there was a catch: The war hadn't started yet, at least not officially. This was September 2002--a month before Congress had voted to give President Bush the authority he used to invade Iraq , two months before the United Nations brought the matter to a vote and more than six months before "shock and awe" officially began. At the time, the Bush Administration publicly played down the extent of the air strikes, claiming the United States was just defending the so-called no-fly zones. But new information that has come out in response to the Downing Street memo reveals that, by this time, the war was already a foregone conclusion and attacks were no less than the undeclared beginning of the invasion of Iraq.
Administration's Offenses Impeachable
By Robert Shetterly
Bangor Daily News Posted June 5, 2005
Let's consider an item from the news of about two weeks ago: A British citizen leaked a memo to London's Sunday Times. The memo was of the written account of a meeting that a man named Richard Dearlove had with the Bush administration in July 2002. Dearlove was the head of the England's MI-6, the equivalent of the CIA. On July 23, 2002, Dearlove briefed Tony Blair about the meeting. He said that Bush was determined to attack Iraq. He said that Bush knew that US intelligence had no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no links to foreign terrorists, that there was no imminent danger to the US from Iraq. But, since Bush was determined to go to war, "Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy." "Fixed" means faked, manufactured, conjured, hyped - the product of whole cloth fabrication. So we got aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds imported from Niger, biological weapons labs in weather trucks, fear and trembling, the phony ultimatums to Saddam Hussein to turn over the weapons he didn't have and thus couldn't. We got the call to arms, the stifling of dissent, the parade of retired generals strategizing on the "news" shows, with us or against us, flags in the lapel, a craven media afraid to look for a truth that might disturb their corporate owners who would profit from the war. Shock and Awe. Fallujah. Abu Ghraib. It was all a lie. Many of us have said for a long time it was a lie. But here it is in black and white: Lies from a president who has taken a sacred trust to uphold the Constitution of the United States. So, what does it mean? It means that our president and all of his administration are war criminals. It's as simple as that. They lied to the American people, have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and poisoned its environment, squandered billions and billions of our tax dollars, made a mockery of American integrity in the world, changed the course of history, tortured Iraqi prisoners, and bound us intractably to an insane situation that they have no idea how to fix because they had no plan, but greed and empire, in the first place.
The Crime and the Cover-Up
By
William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective Monday 21 July 2003
The scandal axiom in Washington states that it is not the crime that destroys you, but the cover-up. Today in Washington you can hear terms like 'Iraqgate' and 'Weaponsgate' bandied about, but such obtuse labels do not provide an explanation for the profound movements that are taking place. Clearly, there is a scandal brewing over the Iraq war and the Bush administration claims of Iraqi weapons arsenals that led to the shooting. Clearly, there is a cover-up taking place. Yet this instance, the crimes that have led to the cover-up are worse by orders of magnitude than the cover-up itself. The simple fact is that America went to war in Iraq because George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and virtually every other public face within this administration vowed that Iraq had vast stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. America went to war because these people vowed that Iraq had direct connections to al Qaeda, and by inference to the attacks of September 11.