A sign on a door labeled “Interrogation Booths” in both English and Arabic at Camp Honor military base in Baghdad’s Green Zone, taken before the government announced the prison was closed. (photo: Human Rights Watch) Rights Group: Iraq Torture Prison Still Open Human Rights Watch reports notorious Camp Honor prison still in use a year [...]
Colin Powell’s Tangled Web By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/content/colin-powells-tangled-web “I get mad when bloggers accuse me of lying — of knowing the information was false. I didn’t.” — Colin Powell. Can you imagine having an opportunity to address the United Nations Security Council about a matter of great global importance, with all the world’s [...]
Few men have spent more time at the intersection of nuclear weapons and international politics than Swedish diplomat Hans Blix. As the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and then chief United Nations weapons inspector, Blix was at the centre of events when he publicly contradicted claims from the administration of former US [...]
Iraq: Massacre of a Country By Felicity Arbuthnot‘How can you make a war on terror when you are actually the terrorist?’ – (Unknown.) America’s 2003 assault on Iraq, already devastated by thirteen years of sanctions, infrastructure destruction consequently unrepaired from the 1991 bombing was, in the ridiculous annals of names the [...]
Scott Nelson/ Focus/ DER SPIEGEL When the US toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, few people imagined that it would take another decade before the Iraqi oil industry was rebuilt. Now, progress is finally being made, and the country’s massive reserves could bring untold wealth. But before that happens, Baghdad needs to improve security and get corruption under [...]
Why Do They Hate George Galloway So Much? by PATRICK COCKBURN The ferocity of the attacks on George Galloway by the British commentariat is one of the most revealing outcomes of his victory in the Bradford West by-election. News presenters saw no problem in conducting interviews with the newly elected [...]
Memo: Bush Made Intel Fit Iraq Policy By WARREN P. STROBEL and JOHN WALCOTT 05/06/05 “Knight Ridder” - – WASHINGTON - A highly classified British memo, leaked in the midst of Britain’s just-concluded election campaign, indicates that President Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to [...]
(Photo: Reuters) Military Intervention in Syria is a Bad Idea by Stephen Zunes Although the impulse to try to end the ongoing repression by the Syrian regime against its own people through foreign military . intervention is understandable, it would be a very bad idea Empirical studies have repeatedly demonstrated that international military interventions in cases of [...]
War porn: The new safe sex By Pepe Escobar (This is the much-abridged version of a conference at the XII Seminar of Political Solidarity at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, March 27, 2012.) The early 21st century is addicted to war porn, a prime spectator sport consumed by global couch and digital potatoes. War porn [...]
ANATOMY OF WAR March 20, 2012 Posted by wmmbb in Modern History, Peace. trackback Chris Hedges article at Truthdig is summarized by the headline: “Murder is not an Anomaly in War”. The context of this article is the alleged murderous rampage of the “deranged” American soldier, Robert Bales. The facts of the case may not be as reported, but [...]
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran on February 11 2010, when he announced a ‘first stock’ of 20 percent-enriched uranium. Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Bomb Iran and it will surely decide to pursue nuclear arms If Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraqi nuclear facilities teaches us anything, it’s that the quickest way to help the Iranians make up their [...]
“A war is no picnic” … Israel‘s Defence Minister Ehud Barak. Photo: AFP Take a bite out of Iran at your peril Paul McGeough March 25, 2012OPINION You’d have thought the reality of Afghanistan and Iraq might act as a break on the instinctive lunge by hawks to compare apples with oranges as they try to [...]
Witnessing Our War and Its Consequences by Luke Wilcox Standing in front of 40 religious leaders in Najaf, Iraq last summer, I wondered how they would react to my presentation. I was an unarmed American spending five weeks in Iraq with the Muslim Peacemaker Teams (MPT). That night I was presenting at a [...]
“Expressing the sense of the PEOPLE regarding the importance of a peaceful resolution of differences and preventing the Governments of the United States and Israel from continuing/escalating the aggression/terrorism against the PEOPLE of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” I and other Veterans For Peace from Long Island will be lobbying members [...]
Nine Years Later: More Shocked, Less Awed By David Swanson, Remarks at the Left Forum http://warisacrime.org/content/nine-years-later-more-shocked-less-awed When I lived in New York 20 years ago, the United States was beginning a 20-year war on Iraq. We protested at the United Nations. The Miami Herald depicted Saddam Hussein as a giant fanged [...]
In March 2003, the news was full of talk of war with Iraq – a preemptive war to protect the west, particularly the U.S. and Israel, from the weapons of mass destruction then alleged to have been amassed by Saddam Hussein. When Rachel traveled to Gaza that year, the world was not [...]
Margaret Thatcher and her husband, Denis, pose for another, later, Christmas card in 1988. Photograph: Rex Features Margaret Thatcher‘s 1981 Christmas card list gives an insight into the way Britain’s view of the world has changed over 30 years. Foreign heads of state who received seasonal greetings from Thatcher in 1981 included the Libyan dictator Muammar [...]
Iranian soldiers sing on February 1, 2012—the 33rd anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini‘s return from exile. (Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images) What Are Iran’s Intentions? As tensions flare between Iran and the West, 120 nonaligned nations agree: the country has the right to enrich uranium. BY NOAM CHOMSKY Concerns about ‘the imminent threat’ of Iran are often attributed [...]
Fifty years ago, John F Kennedy decided to invade South Vietnam – which would leave millions dead [GALLO/GETTY] Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated – Japan’s attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example. Others are ignored, and we can often learn valuable lessons from them about what is likely to lie [...]
William Astore, Confessions of a Recovering Weapons Addict Posted by William Astore at 8:55am, January 24, 2012. The twenty-first century hasn’t exactly been America’s greatest moment. Still, there remain winners, along with all the losers you might care to mention. If, in fact, you were to sum up the [...]
Unless regime brutality reaches even higher levels prior to the intervention, it will be counter-productive [REUTERS] Washington DC - After almost five decades, when the time came to publicly oppose authoritarian rule in Syria, one would have thought that it was the rational and decent thing to do. And it is. More than that, it is [...]
Yet another first rate article by the Roving Eye, Pepe Escobar. The advertisement for the Shah‘s program shows the expediency of capitalist democracy when dealing with mates. Iran is completely encircled by countries armed to the teeth, led of course [...]
Iraqi demonstrators hold pictures of missing relatives during a weekly protest against corruption. Photograph: Ali Al-Saadi/AFP/Getty Images Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports from Baghdad where families of innocent detainees face extortion from corrupt officials The walls of Um Hussein’s living room in Baghdad are hung with the portraits of her missing sons. There are four of them, and [...]
The Dismal Economic Outlook For The New Year By Paul Craig Roberts January 06, 2012 “Information Clearing House” - Jobs offshoring, financial deregulation, and ten years of wars have severely damaged the US economy and the economic prospects of 90% of the American population. The signs are everywhere in front of our eyes. [...]
Are We Witnessing the Final Disintegration of Iraq? by PATRICK COCKBURN Compared with many bombs in Iraq, it was not a big one. I had just arrived in the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad on November 28 when there was the an explosion a few hundred yards away in front of the [...]
A World in Denial of What It Knows By Geoffrey Wheatcroft January 01, 2011 “NYTimes” — COULD there be a single phrase that explains the woes of our time, this dismal age of political miscalculations and deceptions, of reckless and disastrous wars, of financial boom and bust and downright criminality? Maybe [...]
Understanding the US Torture State by Anthony Gregory, October 28, 2011 | Print This | Share This | Antiwar Forum The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse edited by Marjorie Cohn (New York University Press: 2011), 342 pages. When I was a child in Reagan’s America, a common theme in Cold War rhetoric was that the Soviets [...]
Lets Not Forget: Bush Planned Iraq ‘Regime Change’ Before Becoming President By Neil Mackay15 September 2002: A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure ‘regime change’ even before he took power in January 2001. The blueprint, uncovered by the [...]
Bloodied Iraq limps into treacherous quagmire Far from leading the way in the Arab world, the Iraq of 2012 will find itself way behind the nations of the Arab Spring By Abdel Bari Atwan, Special to Gulf News Published: 00:00 December 28, 2011 [...]
. A security cordon outside a government building in Baghdad bore the brunt of Monday’s suicide car bombing A suicide attack killed five people at the interior ministry in Baghdad as a key political bloc called for early elections in a worsening standoff that has stoked sectarian tensions. The blast, which left dozens wounded on Monday, [...]
The latest bombings in Baghdad killed 72. (Via Aljazeera) By Ismail Salami – TehranThere is a new fear emerging in Iraq that the country will plunge even more into turmoil and political disequilibrium as the US troops cased in their colors and left behind a country which they helped lay bare to waste and dereliction. [...]
AP / Keystone / Peter Schneider By Robert Scheer Few journalists have greater influence on U.S. foreign policy, particularly regarding the Middle East, than New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. But his tortured obit of a column this week on the official end of the neocolonialist disaster that has been the Iraq occupation reminds one that [...]
As the final contingents of U.S. troops withdraw from the Iraqi state that the U.S. created and imposed on the Iraqi people, a familiar narrative is re-emerging in the mainstream corporate press – the 21st century version of the “white man’s burden.” The notoriously anti-Muslim Peter King, whose agenda is to [...]
Sheikh Ali Hatem Sleiman al-Duleimi. Photograph: Martin Chulov Two leading members of Iraq‘s largest and most powerful Sunni tribe have warned of imminent sectarian chaos in the wake of the US withdrawal, claiming that the government of prime minister Nouri al-Malikiis promoting an anti-Sunni agenda. The sheikhs, leaders of the highly influential Duleimi tribe, both insist that [...]
Bacevich: After Iraq, War is U.S. Editor’s Note: Andrew J. Bacevich is Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University. This post is one of four from the Council on Foreign Relations in response to the question, Was the Iraq War worth it? By Andrew Bacevich As framed, the question invites a sober comparison of [...]
Staff Sergeant Prince House with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division smiles as his Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle nears the Kuwaiti border as part of the last US military convoy to leave Iraq December 18, 2011.(Reuters/Lucas Jackson) By Reuters It has always been almost impossible to accurately the loss of life in [...]
If you for some reason accept that a war can ever be anything but a criminal action you can as this article does go through an exercise in assessing roles and objectives. Once that has been done even painstakingly what is then left is some supposed evaluation of achievements as opposed to failures of whatever [...]
by Thalif Deen NEW YORK – As the United States withdraws the last of its 50,000 troops after a nearly nine-year military occupation of Iraq, visiting Iraqi President Nuri al-Maliki had one final request: billions of dollars worth of U.S. weapons for his ragtag armed forces. The U.S. assured Iraq Monday that it would sell [...]
dynamosquito (CC-BY-SA) A roaring lion taken from the palace of Darius the Great. By Barry Lando The downing of a sophisticated U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel drone over Iran is the latest ratcheting of tension among Washington, Tehran and Jerusalem. Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities have been crippled by sophisticated cyber attacks. Key Iranian scientists and officials have [...]
The U.S. Government Loved the Iraqi People to Death by Jacob G. Hornberger Now that the 9-year military occupation of Iraq is presumably coming to an end, it would be appropriate to reflect on the Iraqi people who died as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation of the country. [...]
Photo: AP Iraqi army soldiers stand guard near burned trailers at Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad, Iraq, April 2011 (file photo) The U.N.’s top envoy for Iraq is asking Baghdad not to close a camp for Iranian dissidents by the end of this year. Martin Kobler told the U.N. Security Council Tuesday [...]
A war crimes tribunal in Malaysia offers a devastating critique of international criminal law institutions today. In Kuala Lumpur, after two years of investigation by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC), a tribunal (the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, or KLWCT) consisting of five judges with judicial and academic backgrounds reached a [...]
Image via Wikipedia By Felicity Arbuthnot ‘If a man seeks to understand Rome’s casus reason for each foreign conquest, he needs only look into the Treasury.’ (Tacitus, AD 56 – AD 117.) As the US and UK lead towards more illegal overthrows, invasions and destruction in Iran and Syria, a political pattern of manipulation and disinformation [...]
Iranian Defense Minister General Ahmad Vahidi walks in parliament in Tehran. (Reuters/Raheb Homavandi) Nov. 1, 2011. BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Iran will take revenge for past Israeli massacres if Tel Aviv attacks the Islamic republic, Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said Sunday, Iranian media reported.Addressing a parade of 50,000 army volunteers, Vahidi said Iran would teach the [...]
As the troops come home, it’s time to count the cost. By Eric S. Margolis | November 21, 2011 In October, 2002 I wrote in the first issue of The American Conservative an analysis of the impending Iraq War entitled “The Road to Folly.” I observed, “A war that fails to achieve clear political objectives is [...]
British troops round up suspected Ba’ath party activists in Basra, south-eastern Iraq in 2003. Photograph: MoD/AP Iraqi prisoners move closer to inquiry into mistreatment claims UK military faces judge-led inquiry into detentions and interrogations after appeal court rules in favour of 140 Iraqis reddit this Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 November 2011 15.38 GMT [...]
The US posessed unprecedented economic and military might at the end of the second World War [GALLO/GETTY] In every aspect of human existence, change is constant. Yet change that actually matters occurs only rarely. Even then, except in retrospect, genuinely transformative change is difficult to identify. By attributing cosmic significance to every novelty [...]
The current head of the European Central Bank used to be a director at Goldman Sachs International [EPA] As soon as people start talking in public about the excesses of the financial sector, accusations of extremism begin to fly. MJ Rosenberg has written for Al Jazeera about how some critics of Occupy Wall Street have tried [...]
Bachmann Wants Iraqis To Pay ‘Several Million Dollars Per Life’ For Every American Who Died In Iraq By Ian Millhiser on Nov 13, 2011 at 12:05 pm In an interview this morning with Meet the Press’ David Gregory, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) repeated her claim that the Iraq should pay America for the privilege of [...]
Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, The Passing of the Postwar Era Posted by Andrew Bacevich at 5:32pm, November 13, 2011. [Note for TomDispatch Readers: Many thanks to those of you who sent in $75 contributions for a signed copy of my new book, The United States of Fear, or $140 for a signed two-pack, including my previous book, The [...]
