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By Toni Morrison
$14.37
$21
$20
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gizmodo.com
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By Nick Turse —
Those who haven’t seen this summer’s biggest blockbuster (so far, at least—this weekend’s “Indiana Jones” sequel may well change that) “Iron Man” and are planning to hit the multiplex might want to take a gander at this review. The article points out how “Iron Man” is the latest in a string of “pro-military” movies served up for youngsters’ consumption—even as two disastrous wars rage on overseas.
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boston.com
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Gen. David Petraeus announced on Thursday the prospect of additional U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq beginning in the fall, a move that contradicts his recommendation last month to halt withdrawals due to security concerns. The turnaround suggests political motivations, as conditions in Iraq remain chaotic and the U.S. presidential race looms in the distance.
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By David Sirota — This movement could be more critical than even presidential elections. One example: ExxonMobil stock owners could generate major steps in the area of renewable and alternative energy.
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By Amy Goodman — Obama’s stated willingness to unilaterally strike nuclear-armed U.S. ally Pakistan, Clinton’s promise to Iran to “totally obliterate” the nation of 70 million (should it attack Israel), and McCain’s hard-line position on Russia, including the deployment of a missile defense in Eastern Europe, all point to a reliance on military solutions.
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By Marie Cocco — The comment was outrageous, but it was not the least bit surprising. A psychologist responsible for assessing returning war veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder—a psychological ailment that could entitle them to monthly disability payments—told staff members not to diagnose the illness because to do so would increase the government’s costs.
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AP photo / Tony Nicoletti / pool
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By Anna Badkhen — The war is over for now in Sahar al-Jawari’s Baghdad neighborhood, but life is still a struggle. An American soldier encourages her not to be pessimistic, but it’s hard to look on the bright side while supporting a family by selling off your jewelry.
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breitbart.tv
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On Thursday, a group of U.S. soldiers spoke before members of Congress about the failings of the Iraq war and the immeasurable toll it has taken on Iraqis and American troops. Afterward, Sgt. Matthis Chiroux announced that he is refusing to serve in Iraq.
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press.princeton.edu
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Sheldon Wolin’s new book offers a controversial but ultimately convincing diagnosis of how America’s democracy has succumbed to an unacknowledged totalitarian temptation.
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By Eugene Robinson — The Reagan era in American politics is about to end, and we have George W. Bush to thank for its demise.
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AP photo / Anja Niedringhaus
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By Anna Badkhen — Sectarian violence has driven millions of Iraqis from their homes. Now that the violence has abated in one formerly upscale Baghdad neighborhood, residents are returning to find squatters who refuse to leave and a government and occupying army unwilling to kick them out.
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By Amy Goodman — A veteran of Army intelligence has shed new light on the military’s 2003 shelling of the Palestine Hotel, a Baghdad home to many journalists, including two who were killed by that attack.
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AP photo / Dean Rutz
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John McCain pranced through a Washington forest with reporters Tuesday, speaking of his historical support for the environment and his plan to slow global warming. The move is seen as an effort to differentiate McCain’s brand of Republicanism from Bush, who ritually regarded global warming as a “theory.”
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By Patrick Cockburn — Mosul looks like a city of the dead. American and Iraqi troops have launched an attack aimed at crushing the last bastion of al-Qa’ida in Iraq and in doing so have turned the country’s northern capital into a ghost town.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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George W. Bush gave an interview to The Politico and Yahoo News on Tuesday, the result of which is a must-read study of obtuseness. Among other gems, the president insisted that a withdrawal from Iraq would lead to another terrorist attack against the U.S. He also revealed that in order to honor the soldiers his foreign policy has killed or maimed, he has given up golf.
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Wikimedia Commons / AllyUnion
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By Scott Ritter — The Chicago City Council is debating a resolution urging the Illinois congressional delegation to oppose a war with Iran. Scott Ritter, who has been called as an expert witness on the matter, explains why the resolution should be supported—and not just by the citizens of Chicago.
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Stephen Colbert is a feisty one, but he might have met his match in Huffington Post editrix Arianna Huffington, who came to his Thursday show sassy in lace and camera-ready with quips like, “You know what it’s like for John McCain to be endorsing torture? It’s like you becoming the president of the Grizzly Bear Fan Club.” In the nick of time, Colbert stole the show back from Huffington with his comeback to her best McCain zinger.
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flickr.com
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Over the last year, Blackwater Worldwide has been under fire from critics at home and abroad, but that hasn’t stopped the private security firm. In fact, the State Department has just re-upped Blackwater’s Iraq contract, thanks in part to the magic of lobbying. Also, State Department officials don’t seem to think they have much choice.
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post-gazette.com
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More than a dozen American soldiers have died or received severe electrical shocks in Iraq, reportedly as a result of faulty electrical work often done by ill-trained Iraqis and Afghans under the supervision of Houston-based contractor KBR.
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In this first-ever biography of the religious leader many predict will take over Iraq after the Americans leave, Patrick Cockburn, one of the most respected correspondents in the Middle East, provides a dramatic look at a man Paul Bremer denounced as a “Bolshevik Islamist.”
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This corporate war is fictional. Any resemblance to a real privatized war, immoral or otherwise, is purely coincidental.
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By Amy Goodman — Sami al-Haj is a free man today, after having been imprisoned by the U.S. military for more than six years. His crime: journalism.
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nytimes.com / Michael Kamber
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After a seven week surge in violent street clashes and an estimated 1,000 civilian deaths in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad alone, U.S. and Iraqi forces are now preparing an overwhelming military offensive they hope will completely annihilate active Shia resistance movements and pacify the area, making it safe for occupation.
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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By Robert Scheer — In the increasingly unlikely event of a McCain-Clinton election, folks who care about the peace issue would have serious reason to worry. Both of these candidates are inveterate hawks, and what we would be up against is a choice between the neoconservatives and the neoliberals as to who could be more adventurous in getting us into unjustifiable foreign wars.
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AP photo / Maya Alleruzzo
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By John Cheney-Lippold — On the fifth anniversary of George W. Bush’s infamous stroll across the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, The New York Times asked a group of “experts” how they would accomplish the mission in Iraq. Unfortunately, the newspaper turned to some of the same geniuses who thought the war was a good idea in the first place.
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Author Stephen King made an appearance last month at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where he discussed, among other things, the importance of literacy. As King put it: “I don’t want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don’t, then you’ve got, the Army, Iraq, I don’t know, something like that.”
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DoD / U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley
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Former Marine and U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter has spoken out vehemently against the war, so it surprises some that he still embraces military service. In this article, Ritter explains why opposition to a war doesn’t mean lack of patriotism or a failure to “support the troops” and the services in which they serve.
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AP photo / Mary Altaffer
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In a bid to clarify his stance on the (current) Iraq war, as well as just how long he’d be “fine” with maintaining a U.S. military presence in the region, Sen. John McCain held one of those town hall meetings that are so de rigueur among campaigning politicians these days, this time in Denver, where he performed some semantic gymnastics for his audience at the Robert E. Loup Jewish Community Center.
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Flickr / Nrbelex
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If Hillary Clinton becomes the next president, her administration will have a hell of a time improving relations with Iran, a country that has a few cards to play when it comes to stability in Iraq and the price of oil. That’s because Clinton recently threatened Iran’s annihilation and it turns out that the Iranian government pays attention to these things.
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AP photo / Karim Kadim
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April was the cruelest month in seven months in terms of the numbers of both civilians and U.S. troops who lost their lives in Iraq. A spate of deadly bombings on Wednesday killed four U.S. soldiers, bringing the monthlong total of American dead to 50, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s crackdown on Shiite followers of Moqtada al-Sadr made for more intense violence, particularly in Basra and Sadr City, which contributed to a reported 969 Iraqi civilian deaths.
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By Marie Cocco — Republicans have had great success in convincing Americans that “voter fraud” is a grave and growing threat to the republic, but the exact crime that they speak of is almost nonexistent.
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The trial of nine Iraqis—including former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and Ali Hassan al-Majid (aka “Chemical Ali”)—who were allegedly involved in the killing of 42 merchants in 1992 was delayed for about three weeks for logistical reasons soon after it started Tuesday.
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AP photo / Chris Tomlinson
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Truthdig foreign correspondent Sarah Stillman reports from Iraq, where she finds parallels between America’s fast food fortresses and the general engorgement of the war.
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Flickr / Joe Crimmings Photography
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By Chris Hedges — The corporate state is our shadow government. Candidates who aspire to higher office get corporate money if they promote corporate interests. Barack Obama’s campaign message, filled with lofty promises of change and hope, is also filled with repeated reassurances to the corporate elite.
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The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction has found a disturbing trend among Iraq rebuilding projects. Far too often, when work is incomplete, U.S. officials will revise or “descope” the terms of the contract to list the project as completed. One example: A $35-million children’s hospital in Basra that is marked completed despite the fact that it’s only 35 percent up and running.
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opendemocracy.net
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On Friday, a day after an American cargo ship fired warning shots at two small boats off the coast of Iran, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen said the Pentagon is considering various options, including military action, to deal with what he characterized as the Iranian government’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq.
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time.com
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It’s not going to be an easy campaign, but anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan has made good on her pledge to try to take over Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat this fall. Sheehan filed Friday to run for the House in Pelosi’s San Francisco district—but she has to collect over 10,000 signatures before she can make her bid official.
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DoD / Robert D. Ward
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates thinks Gen. David Petraeus should succeed Adm. William Fallon as head of U.S. Central Command. “I don’t know anybody in the United States military better qualified to lead that effort,” said Gates.
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ideologyofantiterrorism.blogtownhall.com
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Here’s a statement that should be preserved for posterity: Defense Secretary Robert Gates told an audience at West Point that, although he believes Iran is “hellbent” on developing nuclear weapons, the last thing the U.S. needs is to get into another war in the Middle East. Gates got misty toward the end of his speech, telling cadets he feels “personally responsible” for their lives.
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By Marie Cocco — Fittingly, and with dreadful predictability, John McCain used April 15—tax day—as the day to release his economic plan. Fittingly, and with dreadful predictability, it offers more of the same. But more of the same what?
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By Eugene Robinson — How on earth is the Republican Party going to sell John McCain? Once the Democrats stop doing the job, I mean.
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abcnews.go.com
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By Patrick Cockburn — The militia leader’s threat of an “open war” between his supporters and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government has ratcheted up tensions in Basra and Baghdad. [In this analysis, columnist Patrick Cockburn of The Independent looks into the current situation in light of Sadr’s history with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.]
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commons.wikimedia.org
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Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has asked his neighbors to forgive his nation’s debts: “Iraq cannot alone shoulder the debt arising from the military adventures of (Saddam Hussein’s) regime.” Hey, he might be onto something there. Maybe the U.S. should take the same approach with China after Bush is gone.
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AP photo/ Karim Kadim
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Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr issued a strong warning to the Iraqi government Saturday, claiming that he and his supporters will “declare a war until liberation” if a crackdown against his Mahdi Army continues.
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MCT / Hussein Ali
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Nothing says permanent U.S. occupation of Iraq more than the construction of the largest embassy in the world, a $474-million compound with 27 different buildings, 619 apartments and an Olympic-size swimming pool—all, of course, for a country with 26.7 million people and 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.
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A poll by The Washington Post-ABC News reports that nine in 10 Americans rate the economy negatively, with a majority of those polled believing it to be in “poor” shape. Support of the U.S. war in Iraq is also down, with six in 10 Americans rejecting the administration’s argument that the conflict is an effective defense against terrorism.
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By Joe Conason — It is hard to blame John McCain for mocking Barack Obama as an “elitist” following that silly remark about bitter folks who cling to guns and religion. Rarely does the Arizona senator—one of the wealthiest members of Washington’s most exclusive club—encounter such a tempting chance to masquerade as a populist.
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Flickr / Kevindooley
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By James Harris — Harvard scholar Linda Bilmes speaks about the book on the Iraq war’s costs that she wrote with Joseph Stiglitz. The two former Truthdiggers of the Week have been working hard to uncover even more hidden expenses for the war, which they estimate will cost the taxpayers and their children trillions of dollars.
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We’ve all heard of Publishers Clearing House, but this is a whole new ballgame, people. Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films team has come up with a game that offers each player the fictional (sigh) amount of $3 trillion, the same amount the Iraq war is projected to cost the U.S., and a whole virtual mall’s worth of fun “shopping” items to buy.
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Terracide and the Terrarists: Destroying the Planet for Record Profits
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