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By Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin $25.95
By David Bentley Hart $11.56
$18
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 inthesetimes.com
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Fifteen Iraqi women and children found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time Thursday when the U.S. launched a series of airstrikes to back up ground operations targeting suspected insurgents.
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According to a devastating new report from the House Oversight Committee, Blackwater USA employees engaged in at least 195 “escalation of force” incidents since 2005, with the private security firm firing 80 percent of the first shots (despite its purely defensive mandate). What’s worse, the State Department has provided little if any oversight, instead assisting the company as it carried out damage control.
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By Joe Conason — Following two days of carefully staged theatrics on Capitol Hill and cable television, the essential facts about Iraq remain unchanged. Despite the big charts and the blustering fanfare highlighted by Fox News, neither Gen. David H. Petraeus nor Ambassador Ryan Crocker could convincingly claim that the American military escalation in Iraq is achieving its original goals.
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Sen. Russ Feingold didn’t wait long after the obligatory declaration of respect to lay into Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker during Tuesday’s testimony before the Senate. One particularly contentious moment occurred after the senator asked, “When can we expect the troop deaths to decline in Iraq?”
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By Amy Goodman — U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Jeffrey Lucey is not counted among the Iraq war dead. But he did die, when he came home. He committed suicide.
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By Tom Engelhardt — Civilian deaths as a result of ground operations (see Haditha) often evoke cries of barbarism from the media, but the killing of innocents in airstrikes is routinely characterized as “collateral damage” and a cold fact of modern warfare. Tom Engelhardt of Tomdispatch proposes that we start to speak honestly about the devastation American military operations have rained down on Afghanistan and Iraq and see “collateral damage” for what it really is: carnage.
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 AP Photo / Karim Kadim
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By Chris Hedges — The veteran foreign correspondent writes that while physical courage is common on the battlefield, moral courage is not. When young men and women are sent to occupy a foreign land—whether Vietnam, Gaza or Iraq—and they encounter constant danger, a population hostile to their presence and a faceless but determined enemy, the value of human life inevitably becomes relative and killing all too quickly becomes murder.
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Dr. Dahlia Wasfi joins Robert Scheer and James Harris to discuss the past, present and future of the Iraq war. Wasfi (pictured), who has twice visited Iraq during the occupation, says it is only a matter of time and casualties before the U.S. leaves: “It’s really simple: You bring the troops home, they stop dying there.” Update: Full transcript now available.
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Dr. Dahlia Wasfi joins Robert Scheer and James Harris to discuss the past, present and future of the Iraq war. Wasfi, who has twice visited Iraq during the occupation, says it is only a matter of time and casualties before the U.S. leaves: “It’s really simple: You bring the troops home, they stop dying there.”
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Seven American troops were killed in half a dozen separate attacks around Iraq on Saturday. Roadside bombs, the biggest problem for U.S. troops, were responsible for most of the deaths. May was the deadliest month for U.S. troops since November 2004.
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Five Americans, a Canadian and a Briton died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on Wednesday, apparently shot down by a resurgent Taliban. The grim news from what some have called “the forgotten war” in Afghanistan comes amid mounting casualty reports from Iraq.
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Gen. Peter Pace, speaking to CBS’ Harry Smith on Memorial Day, said: “When you take a look at the life of a nation and all that’s required to keep us free, we had more than 3,000 Americans murdered on 11 September, 2001. The number who have died, sacrificed themselves since that time, is approaching that number.” In actuality, 3,455 U.S. military personnel had been killed in Iraq alone at the time of Pace’s blunder.
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 AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
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Nearly 1,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines have died in Iraq since last Memorial Day, and President Bush has said he expects the surge in casualties to continue through the summer: “It could be a bloody—it could be a very difficult August.”
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 news.bbc.co.uk
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An Iraqi police officer says six children were killed when a U.S. helicopter returned fire near an Iraqi school in Diyala province, near the Iranian border. The military was unable to confirm the report but said it was investigating.
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Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, in charge of southern and eastern areas of Baghdad, delivered the grim prediction Sunday that U.S. troop casualties will rise as American forces infiltrate the biggest danger zones in and around the capital. Lynch gave his forecast on a deadly day for Americans and Iraqis alike.
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 pensitoreview.com
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Twelve American soldiers were killed in Iraq over the weekend, six and a civilian journalist in one attack alone. Meanwhile, bombings in Baghdad and Samarra on Sunday killed at least 44 Iraqis, including a police chief and 11 of his officers.
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 irfwp.org
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Afghan President Hamid Karzai berated foreign military leaders after local police reported roughly 50 civilian deaths, including women and children, from a U.S.-led operation. He told the top brass his people’s patience was “wearing thin.” The U.S. says it is not aware of any civilian deaths, but a U.N. team investigated and found the report credible.
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Despite a week of horrific violence in Iraq, President Bush reaffirmed on Friday his belief that the surge was working, while Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki insisted two days later that his country was not in a state of civil war. In the latest round of attacks Sunday, 70 people were killed, including 23 members of a religious minority.
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 thinkprogress.org
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It has now been four years since the United States invaded Iraq and, according to the latest CNN poll, only 30 percent of Americans are “proud” of the war—half the number recorded in 2003. Still—with thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed; hundreds of billions of dollars spent, stolen and wasted; millions of refugees created; terrorist recruitment thriving and a civil war that threatens to engulf the region—we just have to ask: What could anyone possibly be proud of?
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Documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald (“Outfoxed,” “Iraq for Sale”) and his team have worked tirelessly to collect these memories of fallen Iraq veterans from friends, family and colleagues. For more information, click here.
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By Amy Goodman — When Carlos Arredondo learned on his 44th birthday that his son Alex had been killed in Najaf, he lost his mind and nearly his life. But Carlos found a way forward, touring the country with a flag-draped coffin standing in for those “the government doesn’t want you to see.”
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 playboy.com
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Pvt. Jacob Burgoyne was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and ordered to a psychiatric facility, but the Army sent him home instead. Shortly thereafter, Burgoyne stabbed a fellow soldier 32 times and set his body aflame because, he said, “that’s how we disposed of bodies in Iraq.”
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 (c) Nina Berman/Redux Pictures
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From AlterNet: “Former Marine Sgt. Ty Ziegel, wounded in Iraq in December 2004 by a suicide car bomber, stands with his high school sweetheart, Renee Kline, at a photo studio on the morning of their wedding day, October 7, 2006.”
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 answers.com
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At least 334 U.S. soldiers died from combat in Iraq from October to the end of January, the most of any four-month period to date. Battles in Baghdad have grown more frequent and roadside bombs have gotten more sophisticated and powerful, yet the president is as determined as ever to send more Americans into what Chuck Hagel called “that grinder.”
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The Pentagon lists the number of soldiers wounded in combat in Iraq at more than 23,000, a tally often quoted by news agencies. But if one considers troops injured in “noncombat action,” a separate category that includes noncombat helicopter crash victims, the critically ill and others, the number doubles to about 50,000, leading critics to charge that the military is attempting to conceal the true human cost of the war.
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 komotv.com
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The first wave in Bush’s surge—3,200 troops—arrived in Baghdad as the United States experienced the most violent day for its forces in two years. Twenty-five American soldiers were killed on Saturday.
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 thewe.cc
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Former Truthdigger of the Week Linda Bilmes offers this scathing analysis of America’s treatment of its wounded. The Harvard public finance expert writes that for every fatality in Iraq, there are 16 injuries, and doctors and bureaucrats at home are struggling to keep up with the unprecedented—and underestimated—surge of wounded soldiers.
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 nytimes.com
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It turns out America is much better at creating refugees than taking care of them. While thousands of Iraqis flee their homeland every day, the U.S. had planned to accept only 500 this year.
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Officials from Iraq’s Health, Defense and Interior ministries on Monday said 16,273 Iraqi civilians, police and soldiers died from violence in 2006. The number is higher than tabulations by the Associated Press, which put the figure at 13,738, while the U.N. has estimated casualties in the neighborhood of 36,000. Whichever number is most accurate, too many people have been killed in this war.
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 knowmore.org
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According to a count by the Associated Press, the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq has exceeded the 2,973 victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The bleak milestone was reached on Christmas Day.
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 news.bbc.co.uk
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A year after 24 Iraqi civilians were killed in the town of Haditha, eight U.S. Marines have been charged in the crime—four with second-degree murder and four others with covering up the slaughter.
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If nothing else, a Democratic victory at the polls would mark a return to governance by people guided by facts, not emotions.
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 washingtonpost.com
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A survey team made up of Iraqi physicians and epidemiologists from Johns Hopkins University has determined that the U.S. invasion of Iraq caused the deaths of roughly 655,000 people. The estimate is more than 20 times higher than one Bush gave in December, but the researchers believe they have substantial evidence to back the claim.
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The number of American troops being wounded in Iraq is at a two-year high; the number wounded may be a better indicator of realities in Iraq than the number killed because, compared with previous wars, many more wounded troops survive.
Posted on Oct 9, 2006
READ MORE
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Civilian casualties in Iraq rose by 50% during the last three months, according to a report released by the Pentagon. The report on security and stability in Iraq examined the sectarian violence that grips the country, saying ?Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq? but that the fighting does not meet the ?strict? definition of a civil war.
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From the AP: “Lebanon’s government rejected a U.N. cease-fire plan backed by President Bush on Monday, demanding Israel immediately withdraw even before a peacekeeping force arrives and promising to send 15,000 troops to take control of the Hezbollah stronghold along the border.”
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Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, called for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah and announced that more than 300 people had been killed in his country during the week of attacks. Twenty-nine Israelis have been killed since the fighting began.
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