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By Gretchen Morgenson, Joshua Rosner
$17.04
By Lauren B. Davis
$35
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AP photo / Hadi Mizban
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It was a violent Sunday in Iraq, as attacks of all stripes killed dozens and the U.S. death toll crossed 4,000. A day of suicide bombings, shootings and rocket and mortar attacks has cast yet another shadow over the “surge.”
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runcynthiarun.org/votenader.org
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By Chris Hedges — Those of us who oppose the war, who believe that all U.S. troops should be withdrawn and the network of permanent bases in Iraq dismantled, have only two options in the coming presidential elections—Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney.
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By Nick Turse —
Remember the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? Nick Turse, author of the new book “The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives,” has come up with a far more sinister version of that fun genealogical party activity—only this time, all proverbial roads lead back to the U.S. military instead of the “Footloose” star.
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By Marie Cocco — Back in 2006, the Iraq Study Group said that all U.S. combat brigades in Iraq should be out by now. They also warned that an escalation, or “surge,” “would not solve the fundamental cause of violence in Iraq.”
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By Joe Conason — John McCain says that when it comes to Iraq, Americans should look to the future, but that’s to be expected of such an enthusiastic supporter of the disaster.
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By Amy Goodman — Last weekend, in the lead-up to the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a remarkable gathering occurred just outside Washington, D.C., called Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations.
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The New York Times / James Hill
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By Patrick Cockburn — All governments lie in wartime, but American and British propaganda in Iraq over the past five years has been more untruthful than in any other conflict since the First World War.
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By Robert Fisk — The Independent’s Robert Fisk looks back at five years of catastrophe in Iraq and is reminded of Winston Churchill’s depiction of Palestine as a “hell-disaster.”
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AP photo / Hadi Mizban
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By Scott Ritter — As we approach the fifth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I find myself thinking back on how we got ourselves into this predicament. ... As I examine where we are today and contemplate our future and those who are positioning themselves to play a role in Iraq, it seems to me that there is at least one such incident, a dinner party I attended at the home of Ahmed Chalabi in June 1998 that is worthy of a more public illumination.
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The Iraq occupation has once again taken a violent turn. Dozens of Iraqis were killed on Tuesday as the average number of Iraqis killed or found dead each day continues to rise. Eight U.S. soldiers died on Monday, the most in one day since last September. U.S. military officials, however, have been anxious to downplay any talk of a trend.
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Adm. William Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command, resigned on Tuesday, explaining that his reputation as an obstacle to President Bush’s military designs had become too much of a distraction. Fallon was often reported to be a thorn in the side of the president and his other military advisers, a role both the admiral and administration officials strongly deny.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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By Stanley Kutler — The president must be delighted with the Arizona senator, a candidate who is credited as a foreign policy authority despite his devotion to the long-term occupation of Iraq.
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By Marie Cocco — Because superdelegates—not to mention Democrats in general—want a candidate who can beat McCain, they want answers to some very uncomfortable questions.
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AP photo / Oded Balilty
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By Chris Hedges — War creates a world without empathy. Those who have empathy cannot, as did Palestinian gunman Alaa Hisham Abu Dheim, coldly murder students in a Jerusalem library. Those who have empathy cannot drop tons of iron fragmentation bombs on crowded Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, killing more than 120 Palestinians in a week, of whom one in five were children and more than half were civilians.
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It wasn’t a good Sunday for Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, as the leaders of Pakistan’s two biggest opposition parties agreed to set aside enough of their differences to form a coalition. Their first order of business is to strip the president of a number of his powers.
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A week after Turkey withdrew troops from northern Iraq, claiming its military initiative against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was successfully completed, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani met with Turkish President Abdullah Gul to try to figure out how regional tensions might be contained in the future.
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By Warren I. Cohen — Just who are the “neocons,” where did they come from and how was it they came to wield so profound an influence among the highest circles of America’s policy elites? These are some of the questions asked by Jacob Heilbrunn in his new book, “They Knew They Were Right.”
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AP photo / Hadi Mizban
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By Patrick Cockburn — Ahmadinejad’s unprecedented trip to Baghdad demonstrates his nation’s influence on its neighbor since the fall of Saddam.
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By Joe Conason — Within the next two weeks, the number of American troops killed in Iraq is likely to reach 4,000, assuming that the average number of fatal casualties per day remains steady. It is an arbitrary number, given meaning by the fact that the nation may briefly take notice, but a day will come in this presidential campaign when Sen. John McCain must explain what he thinks we have gained by the sacrifice of those men and women.
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AP photo / Hussein Malla
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By Scott Ritter — Imad Mughniyeh was once America’s most-wanted terrorist, and his crimes were truly abhorrent. But his assassination, Ritter argues, will only lead to more violence.
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AP photo
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By Chris Hedges — There’s an ugly secret behind the “success” of the surge: The United States is paying off Iraqi militants with weapons and cash. It’s a recipe for disaster, one that reminds Chris Hedges of “Yugoslavia before the storm.”
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Truthdig
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Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer interviews documentarian Alex Gibney about his 2008 Academy Award-winning documentary, “Taxi to the Dark Side,” a compelling examination of the circumstances that led Americans to commit torture.
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english.aljazeera.net
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After bombarding the area with airplanes and artillery, Turkish forces entered northern Iraq, ostensibly in search of Kurdish rebels. It isn’t the first time Turkey has crossed the border, but one source described the force as much bigger—roughly 10,000 men—than previous incursions. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, however, said he believed only a few hundred Turkish troops were involved in the operation.
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It’s unfortunately not unusual anymore to hear about the politicization of American legal and intelligence institutions under the Bush administration, but, even so, this report by The Nation’s Ross Tuttle about how the trials of six key prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have allegedly been rigged from the get-go is disturbing. Updated
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AP photo / Mark Wilson, pool)
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The official reason the U.S. military offered for its show of fireworks Wednesday night high above the Pacific was to shoot down, using an anti-satellite missile, a failed spy satellite before it might do damage upon reentry. However, not everyone read the skywriting that way.
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By Joe Conason — As a presidential candidate, John McCain stands out not only for his vocal endorsement of the unpopular war in Iraq, but also because one of his own sons is a Marine Corps officer on active duty there.
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By Eugene Robinson — John McCain has the advantage of getting to run right away. Too bad he’s campaigning on failed policies and bad ideas.
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The Mosaic Intelligence Report looks at the killing of Emad Moghniyeh, whom the United States considered a leading terrorist. Hezbollah has vowed to avenge him, and Israel has put its military and embassies on high alert.
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By Marie Cocco — The president and other fear mongers love to harangue Americans with the specter of terrorism when their pet projects (and our freedoms) are on the line, but when it comes to the basic programs that protect us from disaster, money talks louder than threats.
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The House of Representatives and Senate have now both signaled their disapproval of the CIA’s use of waterboarding by voting for a ban on any techniques but the 19 officially approved by the Army, but President Bush has already, in turn, signaled his intent to veto any legislation that would rule out harsh interrogation methods.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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It’s safe to assume that the people currently advising Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on foreign policy will continue to do so if their candidate is elected. So what approaches can we expect from an Obama or a Clinton administration? There are some bad apples in either bunch, but Foreign Policy in Focus says the company Obama and Clinton keep largely parallels their votes on the war.
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AP photo / Carlos Osorio
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By Chris Hedges — Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani are the three stooges of the Christian right. These self-described former Muslim terrorists are regularly trotted out at Christian colleges—a few days ago they were at the Air Force Academy—to spew racist filth about Islam on behalf of groups such as Focus on the Family. It is a clever tactic.
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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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bfs-zh.ch
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Vladimir Putin isn’t taking the expansion of NATO and a planned missile shield lightly. The Russian president told his people: “It is already clear that a new phase in the arms race is unfolding in the world. ... It is not our fault, because we did not start it.” Flush with oil money, Russia is planning to beef up and flaunt its military capabilities in response.
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By Joe Conason — The revival of John McCain’s presidential candidacy, now expected to carry him through to his party’s nomination, can be interpreted as either proof of the judgment of Republican primary voters or evidence of the paucity of alternative choices.
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By Ellen Goodman — Super Tuesday, Super Duper Tuesday, Plus-Size Tuesday, Vastly Engorged and Rotund Tuesday turned into a serious case of political bulimia. Never before have so many gorged on such huge portions of political expectations only to find themselves purged the next morning.
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AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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By Robert Scheer — Curb your enthusiasm. Even if your favored candidate did well on Super Tuesday, ask yourself if he or she will seriously challenge the bloated military budget that President Bush has proposed for 2009.
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AP photo / Khalid Mohammed
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By Scott Ritter — The former U.N. weapons inspector examines the president’s claims about the “surge” and says what the media and Congress won’t: It is not a strategy, it is an escalation, one that will not prevent the coming collapse of Iraq. There are no solutions just waiting to be found, and the only sensible thing to do is leave. Now.
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Alen Lauzan Falcon, Caglecartoons.com —
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By Aaron Glantz — When young American men and women sign up to serve in our military, the government makes them a basic promise: If they are wounded in the line of duty, they will get the care they need. But for far too many, that’s a promise that only exists on paper—even months after the news emerged about American vets’ shameful treatment at U.S. military facilities.
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A commission set up by Congress in 2005 to examine the readiness of National Guard and reserve units has found that they’re simply inadequate to the task of dealing with a major disaster in the United States. The commission blamed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the Pentagon’s assumption that training for those conflicts would somehow prepare troops for disaster relief at home.
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The number of active-duty soldiers who kill themselves or attempt to is the highest it’s been since the Army began keeping records almost 30 years ago. Three hundred fifty soldiers attempted suicide or injured themselves in 2002, compared with 2,100 in 2007.
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plusnews.fr
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A government probe of Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon has not only found that the war was a blunder but revealed “serious failings” in the political and military leadership of the country. The panel criticized the unnecessary loss of life and found that Israel’s ability to deter its enemies had been seriously damaged. Above, inquiry leader Eliyahu Winograd.
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Last week at the gates of the mercenary company Blackwater, nonviolent protesters who re-enacted an infamous Blackwater shooting were arrested. As “Blackwater” author Jeremy Scahill notes: “The arrest of the activists and the subsequent five days they spent locked up in jail is more punishment than any Blackwater mercenaries have received for their deadly actions against Iraqi civilians.”
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cbsnews.com
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George Piro, the FBI agent who spent nearly seven months interrogating Saddam Hussein, tells “60 Minutes” that the late Iraqi leader didn’t think the U.S. would actually invade and didn’t deny having weapons of mass destruction in order to intimidate Iran. “He told me he initially miscalculated ... President Bush’s intentions,” Piro revealed in the interview, which airs this Sunday.
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overspun.com
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President Bush’s new budget will not fully fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, the White House plans to ask for “bridge” funds—enough to pay for the wars until the next president takes over. Though no official figure has been given, congressional estimates put the amount at less than half of what we spend on the wars in a year.
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merip.org
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The Center for Public Integrity has launched a new Web site that documents some of the 935 “false statements” that George W. Bush and his seven hawks made while pushing war with Iraq. The site endeavors to show that this wasn’t a case of just getting it wrong, but “a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation.”
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By Joe Conason — As America marks the first anniversary of the troop escalation in Iraq, at least one thing has become clear. Although the “surge” is failing as policy, it seems to be succeeding as propaganda.
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AP photo / David Guttenfelder
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By Scott Ritter — Pervez Musharraf’s recent actions remind us, Ritter argues, that America’s special relationship with Pakistan serves neither country’s best interests.
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The questionable actions of Blackwater Worldwide are coming back to haunt the private security contractor once again, this time regarding an incident in May 2005. In that incident Blackwater teams on the ground and in the air near a busy Green Zone checkpoint released CS gas, which is used by the U.S. military only sparingly and only in strictly controlled circumstances. The gas temporarily compromised American troops’ ability to maintain security in the area.
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Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
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