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By Sheldon S. Wolin
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By Orville Schell (Foreword), Wayne Miller
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AP Photo / Charlie Niebergall
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By Bill Boyarsky — If a Democrat wins the next presidential election, she or he will have to tackle battles abroad—and, no less significantly, at home. Boyarsky predicts that, after ending the Iraq war, a Democratic president would “immediately be confronted with domestic issues that have no Democratic consensus, issues in which debate is charged with deep feelings about national, ethnic and racial identity.”
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By Eugene Robinson — Last week, George W. Bush invited nine conservative pundits to the White House for what amounted to a pep talk, with the president providing all the pep. Many of the columnists have described his demeanor as incongruously sunny, but some of the accounts are downright scary. Could the whole world be out of touch, or is it just him?
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By Andy Borowitz — In the public’s frustration with the Iraq war Borowitz finds satire, reporting that George W. Bush has proposed enlisting the Transformers to help move things along.
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AP Photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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By Robert Scheer — In 1795, James Madison wrote of war’s far-reaching and corrosive effect on public liberty. He could well have been warning us about our own King George, just the sort of imperial president that Madison and other founders of our nation feared most.
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Fox comedy show MadTV, in a skit built on the common American mispronunciation of a certain occupied country’s name, effectively skewers the Bush administration’s faulty foreign policy—and especially its intransigence in the face of popular opposition to it—via this phony Steve Jobs presentation of the new “iRack.”
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has announced that Senate Democrats are going to force Republicans to filibuster all night long if they want to continue to block Iraq troop withdrawal legislation. Previously, the Democrats politely allowed the opposition’s formal promise to filibuster to stand in for the action itself.
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AP Photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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Patrick Cockburn —
Scrambling to shore up support for the Iraq war, President Bush has released a report claiming progress has been made. To many, it seems that the administration is playing its last cards. Patrick Cockburn, in an article originally published in Britain’s The Independent, analyzes the situation.
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bbc.co.uk
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In an account typical of some circulating in Basra, a resident told the BBC that she was attacked by a dog-sized creature with the head of a monkey. Many locals believe that such creatures (recently identified as honey badgers) have been released by the British to sow panic. The rumors have now been officially denied by UK military spokesman Maj. Mike Shearer: “We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.”
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AP Photo / Toni Nicoletti
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Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian —
Truthdig contributor Chris Hedges teamed up with Laila Al-Arian for The Nation’s shocking report “The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness,” in which American vets describe, in graphic detail that will challenge even the least fainthearted readers, “the disparity between the reality of the war and how it is portrayed by the US government and American media.”
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Check out the trailer for “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,” the chilling outcome of acclaimed author and columnist Norman Solomon’s collaboration with the Media Education Foundation. (Above, Bill O’Reilly, one of those in the movie.) The documentary is based on Solomon’s book of the same name and uses archival footage to map the rhetoric of war since the 1960s.
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AP Photo / Toni Nicoletti, pool
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Truthdig contributor Chris Hedges teamed up with Laila Al-Arian for The Nation’s shocking report “The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness,” in which American vets describe, in graphic detail that will challenge even the least fainthearted readers, “the disparity between the reality of the war and how it is portrayed by the US government and American media.”
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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 / Anja Niedringhaus
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Although Lt. Gen. David Petraeus thinks the U.S. troop “surge” is finally starting to show some positive results, it may be too late to bolster the enthusiasm of several key Republicans in Congress who have joined their Democratic colleagues in challenging President Bush’s position on the Iraq war—which, along with the war in Afghanistan, is costing America $12 billion a month.
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President Bush was referring to U.S. troops when he made a comparison to Revolutionary War fighters who resisted a foreign occupation, but he could just as easily have been referring to the Iraqi insurgents. He made the remark during a July 4th address to National Guard members and their families.
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AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
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What’s a former secretary of defense to do now that he’s out of a job? Well, the answer for Donald Rumsfeld is apparently to write a (controlled) memoir arguing in defense of his military maneuvers in Iraq—for a sweet chunk of change.
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By Andy Borowitz — The satirist jokes that George W. Bush, recognizing Paul Wolfowitz’s uncanny ability to blow it, has decided to appoint the former Iraq war salesman and World Bank scandal magnet as the president of al-Qaida.
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AP Photo / Samir Mizban
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By Kasia Anderson — Remember those photos of Iraqi women triumphantly raising freshly inked fingers for Western cameras after voting in their new “democracy”? They were presented to the world by the U.S. government as an indication of a policy that would liberate Iraqi women and men. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way, according to Iraqi women’s rights activist Yanar Mohammed, who says that the “myth of democracy has killed already half a million Iraqis.”
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U.S. forces are making a military and multimedia blitz in and around Baghdad to find the three American soldiers missing since last weekend. Planes dropped leaflets offering a $200,000 reward, the same message was broadcast over loudspeakers and local radio, and hundreds of Iraqis have been held for questioning in recent days, according to the Los Angeles Times.
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Director Oliver Stone’s commercial for MoveOn.org and VideoVets.org, featuring Iraq war veteran John Bruhns, airs on CNN until Thursday. To commemorate the ad and its subject, MoveOn.org assembled an array of videos featuring Stone (above) and Vietnam vet Ron Kovic, Bruhns and the others interviewed in the project.
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foxnews.com
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Director Oliver Stone has announced the winning entry, chosen by voting members of MoveOn.org, from a series of videotaped interviews with Iraq war veterans and their families. Stone has cut the interview with former infantry Sgt. John Bruhns into a 30-second TV spot, ending with a voice-over by Vietnam vet Ron Kovic saying: “Support our troops. Bring them home.”
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Lt. Col. Paul Yingling has hit out with a withering critique of the Iraq war in the Armed Forces Journal, taking aim at American military leaders for being woefully unprepared—and hence not preparing troops—for the challenges the war has posed. What’s more, Yingling thinks it’s bound to end in defeat for the U.S.
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The Senate on Thursday followed the House’s lead, passing the bill that allows $124.2 billion to be dedicated to the war effort so long as our troops begin pulling out of Iraq by Oct. 1 and continue withdrawing over ensuing months. The ball is thus in Bush’s court, and his veto is practically a foregone conclusion at this point.
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ithaca.com
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In a long-overdue move, PBS’ Bill Moyers is turning his lens on top journalists from mainstream press outlets about their actions, or lack thereof, in the months leading up to the Iraq war. Editor & Publisher reports that some subjects, such as Dan Rather, were upfront about their roles and failings in “Buying the War,” while others were not as willing to own up.
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As we enter the third month of the U.S. military buildup, the devastating suicide attacks on two bridges in Baghdad and a bloody assault on a holy city undermine the Bush administration’s claims of progress in Iraq.
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The American Civil Liberties Union obtained 500 claims for compensation filed by civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. The claim descriptions paint a picture of the confusion, chaos, and the seeming randomness of violence which has shaped life and death in Iraq and Afghanistan during the last four years.
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Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation’s editor and publisher, Tuesday night braved a second appearance on “The Colbert Report,” where she was congratulated by Stephen Colbert for her “courage to come back, since I handed you your ass last time.”
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army-technology.com
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Imagine if helicopters were firing on civilians in downtown Omaha or Manhattan, and that might come close to the scene in a busy section of downtown Baghdad on Tuesday, when Black Hawk and Apache helicopters zoomed in and battled insurgent forces.
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At least 20 detainees at Guantanamo Bay are taking part in a hunger strike to protest the harsh conditions of their confinement at the U.S. prison in Cuba.
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Following religious leader Muqtada al-Sadr’s call, thousands of Iraqi Shiites held an anti-U.S. demonstration Monday, marking the fourth anniversary of the American occupation of Baghdad.
Updated
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With all the recent, and widespread, bloodshed in Iraq, the ongoing struggle in Afghanistan can at times be overshadowed. According to the BBC, the Taliban may be behind the deaths of six NATO soldiers in south Afghanistan this weekend.
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chinadaily.com
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As if the Iraqi insurgency situation wasn’t bad enough, now an al-Qaida chapter based in Iraq is causing additional trouble with homegrown rebel groups—and calling on Osama bin Laden for assistance.
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The Iraqi insurgency is now nationwide and deadlier than ever, despite the recent surge of U.S. forces. More than 30 people, many of them women and children, were reported dead and dozens wounded Friday when a suicide bomber set off explosives that released chlorine gas in Ramadi—just one of several fatal incidents this week in Iraq.
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The Army is admitting the possibility that two U.S. soldiers were killed by friendly fire in the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Feb. 2. An investigation is still underway, but an Army official says it’s possible that the “confusion that you frequently find on the battlefield” may have caused the soldiers to be shot by their own side.
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British Prime Minister Tony Blair believes there is a window of opportunity over the next two days to negotiate the release of the 15 captive British sailors accused of trespassing in Iranian waters. Blair indicated that British and Iranian government officials have been in talks to work out a way to bring the Britons home without putting them on trial in Iran.
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thegully.com
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Guantanamo Bay detainees hoping to challenge their cases in American courts won’t be aided in their quest by the U.S. Supreme Court, at least for now. Six of the nine Supreme Court justices have ruled against deciding whether the “anti-terror” law that allows for inmates’ indefinite detention at Camp X-Ray is constitutional.
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Two of the 15 captured British sailors are reportedly scheduled to appear on Iranian TV Sunday to offer their “confessions” for trespassing in Iranian waters on March 23. The incident has provoked unrest in Tehran, where Sunday some 200 angry students hurled firecrackers and rocks at the British Embassy, according to the BBC.
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President Bush paid his first visit to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center since last month’s Washington Post exposé revealed the shameful treatment of hundreds of wounded veterans. While the president apologized for the hospital’s “failures,” some of his congressional detractors weren’t impressed by the gesture.
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albawaba.com
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At the close of a particularly bloody week in and around Baghdad, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr railed against the U.S. on Friday, urging Iraqis to join in a protest against American “occupation, destruction and terrorism.” The date set for the protest is April 9, four years after the fall of Baghdad.
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AFP
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British officials are condemning the Iranian government’s use of 15 captured British marines and sailors as “propaganda,” insisting that they did not stray into Iranian waters—even as another sailor has appeared in a video clip claiming, “We trespassed without permission.”
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Multiple bombings in and around Baghdad killed at least 100 people Thursday and may cast doubt upon the efficacy of the U.S.‘s “surge” strategy to crack down on violence.
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A group of off-duty Shiite policemen is suspected of shooting about 70 Sunni men inside their homes Tuesday night in Talafar, an Iraqi border town that President Bush once pointed to as proof that Iraqi forces were able to contain insurgent violence.
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By Zbigniew Brzezinski — The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its bottle. It acquires a life of its own—and can become demoralizing.
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British officials won’t publicly question the results of a study that put the estimated Iraqi death toll at 655,000—that’s more than 500 deaths per day—since the beginning of the war. The dispute over the study, published in The Lancet in October, centered on its methods and the large disparity between its estimates and Iraqi government figures.
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An Iraqi deputy prime minister is recovering after a dual explosion Friday that left six people dead. The assault, believed to have indirect ties to al-Qaida, took place as a prayer group was gathering at the home of the wounded official, Salam Z. al-Zobaee. A cook reportedly helped a suicide bomber sneak onto the property.
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The House of Representatives narrowly passed the hotly debated timeline for getting American troops out of Iraq by Aug. 31, 2008. Bush has indicated he will veto the bill. In a statement to the press, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: “The American people see the reality of war. The president does not.”
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A British government official confided to BBC columnist John Simpson that he wishes he had questioned the presented evidence of WMDs in Iraq before the war began. As it turns out, the British intelligence agency MI6 apparently hadn’t possessed solid details about Iraqi chemical and biological weapons for many years.
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An outbreak of violence in Pakistan has killed more than 50 people since Monday, according to the BCC. Militants connected to the Afghan Taliban in the country’s northwest region have been battling tribesmen.
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