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By Michael Dirda
By Gregory Wilpert
$17.79
$35
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irrezolut (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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By Greg Muttitt, TomDispatch —
Big Oil has replaced U.S. troops in Iraq, and the country’s oil output, crippled for decades, is growing again, with Iraq recently reclaiming the number two position in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Now there’s talk of a new world petroleum glut. So is this finally mission accomplished?
This piece originally appeared at TomDispatch.
Posted on Aug 23, 2012
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By William Pfaff — The specific inspiration for weapons proliferation among vulnerable Third World states is the desire to have a nuclear deterrent against invasion or attack by the United States (or in the Iran case, Israel), or by some other nation in the future.
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AP / Musa Sadulayev
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Call it reckless and/or call it propaganda: A Georgian newscast used footage of Russian troops crossing Georgia’s borders in 2008 to present a “simulation” of possible events, including Russian tanks en route to the capital and the killing of the nation’s president.
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Flickr / World Economic Forum
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No longer in public office, Tony Blair has acknowledged in a BBC interview that he would have invaded Iraq and disposed of Saddam Hussein with or without evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
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USAF / Staff Sgt. Samuel Rogers
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By William Pfaff — Barack Obama has no choice but to accept responsibility for America’s foreign policy crises. But why should he accept them on the distorted and even hysterical terms by which the Bush administration has defined world affairs since 2001?
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syracuse.com
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Want proof that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan has brought the democracy it promised? You won’t find it in this case. An appeals court resentenced Parwez Kambakhsh, a student arrested for distributing an article on women’s rights, to a mere 20 years in prison, overturning the controversial death sentence he was given last year.
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“Unfortunately, today we are looking evil directly in the eye,” an emotional Mikheil Saakashvili said Friday after he signed a cease-fire agreement to end his country’s eight-day showdown with Russia. The Georgian president declared that other European nations ignored clear signs of impending conflict last spring and he hinted that trouble could also be in store for other countries.
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John Stewart says it’s the “geopolitical equivalent of the fortune cookie [plus] ‘in bed’ ”: U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalizad (above) trashing Russia’s aggression but limiting comparison to the Iraq invasion by adding a qualifier that tells us we’re talking about someplace that matters to civilized people. Follow-up questions for extra credit: Is Georgia really in Europe? And how many Americans are worried right now the Russians will take Atlanta?
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DoD / R.D. Ward
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By Scott Ritter — As a critic of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, especially when unsubstantiated allegations of weapons of mass destruction are used to sell a war, I am no stranger to the concept of questioning authority. It’s too bad more journalists can’t say the same thing.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The problem with the debate over our future course in Iraq is that the two sides are not even talking about the same things.
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By Timothy Snyder — One of the great crimes of the 20th century—the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi-occupied Soviet territories—is all but forgotten. “The Unknown Black Book” helps us remember.
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The Mosaic Intelligence Report investigates France’s aggressive new push to involve itself in the Middle East. The French have signed a deal to set up a permanent military base in the Persian Gulf region, the first such facility controlled by a Western nation that isn’t led by George W. Bush.
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AP photo / Francois Mori
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By Barry Lando — For former “60 Minutes” producer Barry Lando, Moammar Gadhafi’s recent visit to France raised some important questions about the West’s attitudes toward tyrants. Just whom should we embrace and whom should we flatten with a bit of shock and awe?
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By Joe Conason — The Pentagon has launched a preventive strike against a target that military chiefs presumably regard as one of the most active current threats to U.S. and world security—namely, the office of the vice president of the United States.
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849 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq this year, the deadliest for U.S. troops so far. While it’s true that the last couple of months have seen lower casualties than has been typical this year, those numbers cannot satisfactorily be explained by a more stable Iraq or some newfound love for Americans, and it would be grotesque to call the deaths of only 38 troops in October “good news.”
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voltairenet.org
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Joe Conason tells the story revealed by recently released transcripts of a meeting held between Spain’s then-prime minister and President Bush prior to the war. As one might expect, Bush was arrogant and determined to invade, diplomacy be damned.
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By Joe Conason — The loud, angry and sterile debate over the Iranian president’s visit to Columbia University raises a more serious problem that has long confounded American policymakers: How to cope with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s real masters, the corrupt regime of mullahs who determine both foreign and domestic policy in Iran.
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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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Before the invasion of Iraq, Gen. Tommy Franks gathered with his top advisers to review their plans. The recently released slides from that meeting offer an insight into the startling optimism of the men who designed the war. Four years post-invasion, the commanders expected Iraq to have a fully representative government, a functioning army and as few as 5,000 U.S. troops. Whoops!
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Olbermann put together a video package that compares Bush’s 2002 rhetoric about Iraq with his 2007 rhetoric about Iran. It’s not pretty.
Also, see this Vanity Fair article, which has more frightening news on the topic.
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Vanity Fair
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In the new issue of Vanity Fair, experts in and out of the government report that the groundwork for a war against Iran has already been set. “I’ve heard from sources at the Pentagon that their impression is that the White House has made a decision that war is going to happen,” a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist tells the mag.
Related: Check out a video of Bush’s disturbing Iraq-Iran parallels
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Seven in 10 Americans disapprove of Bush’s handling of the war, according to a new Washington Post/ABC poll. It’s the highest percentage since the March 2003 invasion. Six in 10 say the war is not worth fighting.
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Emboldened by Castros ailing health, Stephen Colbert has concocted a plan for the invasion of Cuba, featuring cruise liners filled with obese Americans and the ғregime-destroying power of the outlet mall. ԓMy proposal is controversial, but weve invaded for less,Ҕ the host said as he pitched his vision for a post-Castro world.
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Invasion of privacy is not just for the NSA anymore! Parents have always snooped, but as the SF Chronicle reveals, new tech toys are taking what was once standard parental prying to a whole new level of unacceptable surveillance and spying. Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned conversation? (Via boingboing.net)
Posted on Jul 10, 2006
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That’s according to Saudi Ambassador Prince Turki al Faisal.
Not that that should be the reason that dissuades America from invading Iran, but it’s at least worth noting.
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“The Colbert Report” host achieves what few traditional media interviewers can do: make neocon leader William Kristol stammer and sweat about his support for the Iraq invasion.
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Illustration by Blair Golson
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By Tom Hayden — The veteran social activist warns that an increasingly mainstream anti-war movement can become unwieldy, and prone to loss of focus: “We no longer are a huddling minority…. We are immersed in the gradual soul-searching currents of the mainstream, where loss of direction is a constant risk.”
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Annual war expenditures have risen from $48 billion in 2003 to an anticipated $94 billion in 2006, thanks to the expected largest emergency spending bill in history.
Posted on Apr 20, 2006
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Remember the uranium ore that Hussein supposedly purchased from Niger? A contract documenting the sale was used as evidence of the need to invade Iraq and was included in a 2002 U.S. State Department fact sheet on Iraq’s weapons program. Remember how the IAEA denounced the documents as fakes shortly before the invasion of Iraq? Well, according to the Times Online, the forgers have finally been named.
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The New York Times gets a closer look at a UK official’s memo that indicates Bush was set on an invasion of Iraq regardless of a U.N. resolution or the outcome of the WMD issue.
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The former secretary of state writes that the White House’s “penchant for painting its perceived adversaries” with a “sweeping brush has led to a series of unintended consequences” in the Middle East.
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From lowculture.com
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AP reports that Hussein and his inner circle were exasperated in their attempts during the 1990s to prove to the world that they’d given up banned weapons, according to transcripts of meetings found among documents seized after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “We don’t have anything hidden!” Saddam once interjected, documents show.
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From ThinkProgress.com
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The blog ThinkProgress has put together a stellar walk-through of the major events of the conflict. (Above: Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard an aircraft carrier.)
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Paul Szep
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A bomb in a vegetable market killed 36 people in Baghdad, prompting the government to announce a one-day ban on all vehicles in the city.
This comes on the heels of similarly deadly bombings Wednesday and the day before. The Washington Post put the death toll of this recent spate of violence at over 1,300.
What’s worse, America’s spy chief tells Congress that the violence could destabilize the entire region—which would completely upend one of Bush’s main reasons for invasion in the first place.
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America’s former top spy for the Middle East accuses the White House of “cherry-picking information” to justify a decision it had already made to go to war. | story
Who wants to bet on how long it will take the CIA to start swift-boating this guy?
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The new edition of a book by a London University professor claims that the prime minister was prepared to join the war even before the second U.N. resolution in January 2003. | story
We’re shocked, SHOCKED to learn that the U.N. gambit was apparently a ruse.
Posted on Jan 30, 2006
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How telling that the Nobel Peace Prize has been granted to the United Nations agency that Bush kicked out of Iraq after it failed to find weapons of mass destruction that he just knew were there. See BBC story. Meanwhile, there are some Democrats who have some explaining to do….
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By Juan Cole — Retracing the steps of Shiite religious leaders and parties who have come to dominate the post-invasion process.
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