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Top Articles on IRAQ

The following article summaries are listed chronologically with the most recent posted articles on the top of this page.

Each article heading is a link to the article itself. Most of these articles can also be found under the page headings

 "Iraq" and "Downing Street Memo".


Obama And The Middle East

By Joshua Frank 18 January, 2006
Countercurrents.org

So I guess we know what the buzz is going to be for the next, ah, year or so. It looks like Barack Obama, the rookie Senator from Illinois, is going to run for president. He has received a plethora of accolades from key primary states in recent weeks...


Claiming the Prize: War Escalation Aimed at Securing

Iraqi Oil

By Chris Floyd, Information Clearing House
Posted on January 12, 2007, Printed on January 12, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46602/

I. The Twin Engines of Bush's War The reason that George W. Bush insists that "victory" is achievable in Iraq is not because he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it's that his definition of "victory" is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and on-line. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned "surge" of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand. At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new "hydrocarbon law" essentially drawn up by the Bush Administration and its U.K. lackey, the Independent on Sunday reports.


Pelosi On Opposing Iraq Escalation:
"We Will Not Be Swiftboated On These Issues"

By Bob Geiger Created Jan 10 2007 - 10:20am

In a media conference call Tuesday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) reinforced the tough stance that she and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) are taking against the Bush-McCain doctrine of escalating the Iraq war, denouncing Bush's historic "poor judgment" and warning that Democrats will not allow their loyalty to the troops to be questioned because of their stance.



Democrats Draw Battle Lines Against Bush's 'Surge'


 
By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet
Posted on January 10, 2007, Printed on January 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46492/

The balloons were still being inflated for the Democrats' inaugural bashes on the Hill last week when the bloody specter of Iraq appeared in the form of Cindy Sheehan. The direct-action peace mom showed up in the Cannon House Office Building last Wednesday with a handful of fellow activists, pamphlets, and no intention of letting the first news conference convened by House Democrats begin and end with yet another thumbs-up "100 Hours" boilerplate. As Rahm Emanuel finished talking up a bill to reduce student loan rates, Sheehan and her supporters made their trademark demands: "De-escalate! Investigate! Troops home now!"


Bush's Speech Is a Sad Attempt to Salvage His Name

By Robert Scheer, Truthdig
Posted on January 10, 2007, Printed on January 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46556/

To surge or not to surge, that is the question. As our prince proposes, once again, to take arms against a sea of troubles, he responds not to the disaster that he has visited upon Iraq, but rather embraces a desperate strategy for salvaging what remains of his reign.


Bush's Rush to Armageddon

By Robert Parry
January 8, 2007

George W. Bush has purged senior military and intelligence officials who were obstacles to a wider war in the Middle East, broadening his options for both escalating the conflict inside Iraq and expanding the fighting to Iran and Syria with Israel’s help.


Saddam: A Monster of Our Creation

By Robert Scheer, AlterNet
Posted on January 3, 2007, Printed on January 7, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46234/

Someone has to say it: The hanging of Saddam Hussein was an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of President Bush's claim it was "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy." Instead, the rushed, illegal and unruly execution of a former U.S. ally after his conviction in a kangaroo court blurred the line between terrorist and terrorized as effectively as Saddam's own evil propaganda ever did.


Bush and the Neocon's 'Surge' to Nowhere

By Robert Dreyfuss, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on January 6, 2007, Printed on January 6, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46277/

Every now and then, you have to take a lesson or two from history. In the case of George

Bush's Iraq, here's one: No matter what the President announces in his "new way forward"

speech on Iraq next week -- including belated calls for "sacrifice" from the man whose

answer to 9/11 was to urge Americans to surge into Disney World -- it won't work. Nothing

our President suggests in relation to Iraq, in fact, will have a ghost of a chance of success.

Worse than that, whatever it turns out to be, it is essentially guaranteed to make matters worse.


The Real Cost of the Iraq War: 50,000 U.S. Casualties

By Michael Munk, AlterNet
Posted on January 4, 2007, Printed on January 4, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46161/

To bring the human cost to Americans of the invasion and occupation of Iraq home, antiwar groups across the country are marking mark the 3,000th death of a member of its military components (at this writing the total is 3,004). But by focusing only on the number of dead Americans we are being manipulated along with the media and public by the administration's determination to minimize the cost in blood of establishing permanent military bases in the heart of the Middle East oil patch.


Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on October 16, 2006, Printed on December 30, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/43045/

Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part series. Go here to read the second installment. Iraq is sitting on a mother lode of some of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable crude oil on earth, and the rules that will determine who will control it and on what terms are about to be set. The Iraqi government faces a December deadline, imposed by the world's wealthiest countries, to complete its final oil law. Industry analysts expect that the result will be a radical departure from the laws governing the country's oil-rich neighbors, giving foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than with other major oil producers and locking in their control over what George Bush called Iraq's "patrimony" for decades, regardless of what kind of policies future elected governmentsmight want to pursue.


Military Escalation: Bush Can't Kick the Habit

By Robert Scheer, Truthdig
Posted on December 21, 2006, Printed on December 21, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/45764/

Here we go again: A new secretary of defense and yet another call for ending the war in Iraq by escalating it. What are they smoking in the Bush White House?


Robert Gates Lines Up with Bush

By Robert Parry
December 19, 2006

In early December, when Senate Democrats politely questioned Robert M. Gates and then voted unanimously to confirm him as Defense Secretary, they bought into the conventional wisdom that Gates was a closet dove who would help guide the United States out of George W. Bush's mess in Iraq.


Zinn: Iraq is Same Old Song and Dance [VIDEO]

Howard Zinn gave a speech to the University of Wisconsin (my alma mater,thank you) explaining the ultimately simple mechanism behind our repeated mistake of fighting wars both disastrous to our nation and to others. Bad History. Watch a clip, right.


Active Duty Soldiers Call for An End to the Occupation of Iraq

By Marc Cooper, TheNation.com
Posted on December 18, 2006, Printed on December 18, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/45646/

For the first time since Vietnam, an organized, robust movement of active-duty US military personnel has publicly surfaced to oppose a war in which they are serving. Those involved plan to petition Congress to withdraw American troops from Iraq.


Iraq Study Group Recommends Privatization

By Antonia Juhasz, AlterNet
Posted on December 7, 2006, Printed on December 11, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/45190/

In its heavily anticipated report released on Wednesday, the Iraq Study Group made at least four truly radical proposals. The report calls for the United States to assist in privatizing Iraq's national oil industry, opening Iraq to private foreign oil and energy companies, providing direct technical assistance for the "drafting" of a new national oil law for Iraq...


Iraq Study Group or Saudi Protection League?


 

The Baker Boys: Stay Half the Course

by Greg Palast

They're kidding, right?

James Baker III and the seven dwarfs of the "Iraq Study Group" have come

up with some simply brilliant recommendations. Not.
 


The Surreal Politics of Premeditated War

by R.W. Behan

Published on Sunday, December 3, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

George W. Bush, who proudly claimed the mantle of “war president,” was keenly

rebuked in the recent mid-term election. The event was notable, but it merely continued

the surreal politics of premeditated war—a politics that has dominated the last six bizarre,

hideous years of our nation’s history.

Two elements of the repudiation seem unreal, indeed.


Iraq Study Group Offers No Real Plan for Withdrawal

By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on December 5, 2006, Printed on December 5, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/45091/

Finally, the President and the New York Times agree. In a news conference with

the Iraqi Prime Minister last week, George W. Bush insisted that there would be

no "graceful exit" or withdrawal from Iraq; that this was not "realism." The next

day the Times, in a front page piece (as well as "analysis" inside the paper) pointed

out that, "despite a Democratic election victory this month that was strongly based

on antiwar sentiment, the idea of a major and rapid withdrawal seems to be fading

as a viable option."


Barack Obama And The Winds Of War

By Glen Ford

01 December, 2006
Black Agenda Reprt

Barack Obama is a windblown politician. The junior Illinois senator avoids anchoring

himself to any principle, lest his political sails fail to catch the slightest breeze blowing

from the left or the right. His political direction is always tentative, although his ultimate

destination is never in doubt: he will be a formidable national presence--maybe even president.


Ten Fallacies About the Violence in Iraq

By John Tirman, AlterNet
Posted on November 28, 2006, Printed on November 29, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/44771/
The escalating violence in Iraq's civil war is now earning considerable attention as we pass

yet another milestone -- U.S. occupation there, in two weeks, will exceed the length of the

Second World War for America. While the news media have finally started to grapple with

the colossal amount of killing, a number of misunderstandings persist. Some are willful deceptions.

Let's look at a few of them:


Iraq Disaster Warning



By WILLIAM S. LIND
UPI Outside View Commentator 11/10/06 -- - WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 (UPI

-- The third and final act in the U.S. national tragedy that is the Bush administration may soon play itself out.



Sources indicate increasing indications of "something big" happening between the Nov. 7 congressional election and Christmas. That could be the long-planned attack on Iran.



An attack on Iran will not be an invasion with ground troops. We don't have enough of those left to invade Ruritania. It will be a "package" of air and missile strikes, by U.S. forces or Israel.


Why is NY Times Silent on Massive Iraq Death Toll?

A question for Bill Keller [ Post294992815 ] Published: October 16, 2006  Author: World Socialist Web Site

The corporate-controlled American media is deliberately suppressing the results of a survey that demonstrates that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has caused more than 600,000 deaths in the past three years—a figure that in and of itself refutes all the claims by the Bush administration that it carried out the invasion of Iraq in order to foster democracy in the Middle East. What kind of "freedom" and "human rights" can be the consequence of such a slaughter?


The major American media organizations—including the New York Times—published only brief reports on the study October 11. Taking their cue from President Bush, who declared the survey’s methodology faulty without offering any proof, the Times and other leading media outlets have dropped the subject. There have been no editorials in the Times, the Washington Post, or other major newspapers, nor any demands for a more serious response from the Bush administration.



How to Make Hundreds of Thousands of Dead Iraqis Disappear

By Eric Alterman, HuffingtonPost.com
Posted on October 20, 2006, Printed on October 20, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/43224/

According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, George Bush's lies

have killed not 30,000 innocent Iraqis, as the president not long ago estimated, but nearly

22 times that amount, or 655,000. Neither the Pentagon, nor much of the mainstream media

have made much attempt to make their own counts -- it's just not that important to anyone.

So how has the U.S. media reported on these shocking-albeit-necessarily-imprecise findings,

based on door-to-door surveys in 18 provinces, by the experts trained in this kind of thing?

The actual methods included obtaining data by eight Iraqi physicians during a survey of 1,849

Iraqi families -- 12,801 people -- in 47 neighborhoods of 18 regions across the country. The

researchers based the selection of geographical areas on population size, not on the level of

violence. How strict were their standards? They asked for death certificates to prove claims --

and got them in 92 percent of the cases. Even so, the authors say that the number could be

anywhere from 426,000 to 800,000.


Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on October 16, 2006, Printed on October 16, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/43045/

Editor's note: this is the first of a two-part series.

Iraq is sitting on a mother lode of some of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable

crude oil on earth, and the rules that will determine who will control it and on what

terms are about to be set.

The Iraqi government faces a December deadline, imposed by the world's wealthiest

countries, to complete its final Oil Law. Industry analysts expect that the result will

be a radical departure from the laws governing the country's oil-rich neighbors,

giving foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than with other major

oil producers, and locking in their control over what George Bush called Iraq's

"patrimony" for decades, regardless of what kind of policies future elected

governments might want to pursue.


Stephen Colbert with PNAC Founder, Bill Kristol

 

Stephen Colbert sliced and diced prominent neo-conservative Bill Kristol on the

Project For the New American Century, Iraq and Iran.


Woodward Says Bush Lied

In this clip from Sunday night's 60 Minutes, Bob Woodward is welcomed

aboard the train that left the station about 3+ years ago.

Still, it's significant that a man with such creed goes on TV and effectively

says that Bush lied.


Poll: Iraqis Back Attacks on U.S. Troops

By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic WriterWed Sep 27, 6:28 PM ET

About six in 10 Iraqis say they approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces, and slightly more

than that want their government to ask U.S. troops to leave within a year, a poll finds.

The Iraqis also have negative views of Osama bin Laden, according to the early September

poll of 1,150.

The poll, done for University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, found:

_Almost four in five Iraqis say the U.S. military force in Iraq provokes more violence than it prevents.


Iraq Civilian Deaths Hit a Record


Sep 21, 8:47 AM (ET)

By NICK WADHAMS

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August

hit 6,599, a record-high number that is far greater than initial estimates suggested,

the United Nations said Wednesday.


US Defense And Oil Company Executives Reap Windfalls

From Iraq War

By Naomi Spencer

15 September 2006
World Socialist Web

Since September 11, 2001, and the Bush administration’s initiation of the

“war on terror,” inequality in the US has grown at a rapid rate and to grotesque

proportions. The criminal nature of war on Iraq is reflected in every facet of

American life, least surprisingly of all in the enormous fortunes of the ruling

elite. Indeed, the current war, the most privatized in history, is viewed by a wide

range of corporate executives and investors as an open-ended outsourcing opportunity.

________________________________________________________________

Interview of Senator John Rockefeller-3 Minute Streaming Video

head Democrat on the Intelligence Committee,

who says that Bush 'deliberately manipulated' the American public on Iraq intelligence and

because of Iraq 'we are much less safer today.'


9-11, Afghanistan and “The Survival of Civilization”

By Gabriele Zamparini
On 20 September 2001

US President Bush addressing the Congress stated: “The United States respects the people of Afghanistan -- after all, we are currently its largest source of humanitarian aid…”. On 7 October 2001 addressing the country Bush said: “At the same time, the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies. As we strike military targets, we'll also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering men and women and children of Afghanistan. The United States of America is a friend to the Afghan people…”.



Five years later the results of this respectful and generous friendship have been published by the Senlis Council, an international policy think tank with offices in

Kabul, London, Paris and Brussels. “Afghanistan Five Years Later: The Return

of the Taliban” reads: After five years of intensive international involvement in Afghanistan, the country remains ravaged by severe poverty and the spreading starvation of the rural and urban poor.


Bush and Saddam Should Both Stand Trial, Says Nuremberg Prosecutor

by Aaron Glantz Published on Friday, August 25, 2006 by OneWorld.net

A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferenccz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting "aggressive" wars--Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.


Seven Hair-Raising Realities About the Iraq War

By Michael Schwartz, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on August 22, 2006, Printed on August 22, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/40629/

With a tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon holding, the ever-hotter war in

Iraq is once again creeping back onto newspaper front pages and towards the top of

the evening news. Before being fully immersed in daily reports of bomb blasts, sectarian

violence, and casualties, however, it might be worth considering some of the just-under-the

-radar-screen realities of the situation in that country. Here, then, is a little guide to understanding

what is likely to be a flood of new Iraqi developments -- a few enduring, but seldom commented

upon, patterns central to the dynamics of the Iraq war, as well as to the fate of the American

occupation and Iraqi society.


Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?

By Jan Frel, AlterNet
Posted on July 10, 2006, Printed on July 10, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/38604/

The extent to which American exceptionalism is embedded in the national psyche is awesome to behold.

While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more special than any others on

the planet, Americans still react with surprise at the suggestion that their country could be held responsible

for something as heinous as a war crime.

From the massacre of more than 100,000 people in the Philippines to the first nuclear attack ever at

Hiroshima to the unprovoked invasion of Baghdad, U.S.-sponsored violence doesn't feel as wrong and

worthy of prosecution in internationally sanctioned criminal courts as the gory, bload-soaked atrocities

of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, and most certainly not the Nazis -- most certainly not. Howard Zinn

recently described this as our "inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned

in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior."


Three Iraq Myths That Won't Quit

By Scott Ritter, AlterNet

Posted on June 26, 2006, Printed on June 26, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/38011/ It is hard sometimes to know what is real and what is fiction when it comes to the news out of Iraq. America is in its "silly season," the summer months leading up to a national election, and the media is going full speed ahead in exploiting its primacy in the news arena by substituting responsible reporting with headline-grabbing entertainment. So, as America closes in on the end of June and the celebration of the 230th year of our nation's birth, I thought I would pen a short primer on three myths on Iraq to keep an eye out for as we

"debate" the various issues pertaining to our third year of war in that country.

The myth of sovereignty Imagine the president of the United States flying to Russia, China,

England, France or just about any other nation on the planet, landing at an airport on supposedly

sovereign territory, being driven under heavy U.S. military protection to the U.S. Embassy, and

then with some five minutes notification, summoning the highest elected official of that nation to

the U.S. Embassy for a meeting. It would never happen, unless of course the nation in question is

Iraq, where Iraqi sovereignty continues to be hyped as a reality when in fact it is as fictitious as any

fairy tale ever penned by the Brothers Grimm. For all of the talk of a free Iraq, the fact is Iraq remains

very much an occupied nation where the United States (and its ever decreasing "coalition of the willing")

gets to call all the shots.


Iraq's Holocaust

Montoya

The Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies has published many reports which

outline the horrendous costs of Bush’s war and occupation in Iraq.  But there is a much

larger issue, even larger than America's invasion and occupation of Iraq since 2003: the IPS

reports fail to address long term systemic abuses and the intentional ‘scourging' of Iraq over

many years, ergo the West's willful destruction of Iraq and its people since 1969. This article

examines the lethal long term effects of Western meddling in Iraq, and how Iraq's destruction 

began in 1969, when the United States undermined any nascent democratic processes in the

Qassim and al Bakr regimes, and moved to deny self-determination/self-government by the

Iraqi people. While the United States acted as the central villain in Iraq’s long demise, other

external powers actively participated, including the UN, which acted as a willing partner and

legitimizing agent for Iraq’s ongoing horrors.

___________________________________________________________

Keeping Iraq's Oil In the Ground

By Greg Palast, AlterNet
Posted on June 14, 2006, Printed on June 15, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/37371/

World oil production today stands at more than twice the 15-billion a-year maximum

projected by Shell Oil in 1956 -- and reserves are climbing at a faster clip yet. That leaves

the question, Why this war?

Did Dick Cheney send us in to seize the last dwindling supplies? Unlikely. Our world's petroleum

reserves have doubled in just twenty-five years -- and it is in Shell's and the rest of the industry's

interest that this doubling doesn't happen again. The neo-cons were hell-bent on raising Iraq's oil

production. Big Oil's interest was in suppressing production, that is, keeping Iraq to its OPEC quota

or less. This raises the question, did the petroleum industry, which had a direct, if hidden, hand, in

promoting invasion, cheerlead for a takeover of Iraq to prevent overproduction?

_______________________________________________________

Unreported-The Zarqawi Invitation to Visit Iraq

by Greg Palast
 
They got him -- the big, bad, beheading berserker in Iraq.  But, something's gone unreported

in all the glee over getting Zarqawi … who invited him into Iraq in the first place?
 
If you prefer your fairy tales unsoiled by facts, read no further.  If you want the uncomfortable

truth, begin with this:  A phone call to Baghdad to Saddam's Palace on the night of April 21, 2003. 

It was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on a secure line from Washington to General Jay Garner.
 
The General had arrives in Baghdad just hours before to take charge of the newly occupied nation.

The message from Rumsfeld was not a heartwarming welcome.  Rummy told Garner, Don't unpack,

Jack -- you're fired.
 
What had Garner done?  The many-starred general had been sent by the President himself to take

charge of a deeply dangerous mission. Iraq was tense but relatively peaceful.  Garner's job was to keep

the peace and bring democracy.
 
Unfortunately for the general, he took the President at his word.   But the general was wrong.

"Peace" and "Democracy" were the slogans.

_______________________________________________________

The Great Iraq Oil Grab

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on May 22, 2006, Printed on May 22, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/36463/

There's a story, perhaps apocryphal, that Pentagon planners wanted to name the invasion

of Iraq, "Operation Iraqi Liberation." Only when someone realized that the acronym -- O.I.L.

-- might raise some uncomfortable questions, was "Operation Iraqi Freedom" born.

Supporters of the Iraq war airily dismiss chants of "no blood for oil" as a manifestation of the

antiwar crowd's naïveté. They point out that Iraq's government still controls its oil and argue

that we could have simply bought it on the open market.

Both of those claims are true on their face, but bringing Iraq's vast oil wealth under the control of

foreign multinationals -- with U.S. firms the best positioned to develop it -- was always central to U.S.

plans for Iraq. That Iraq's oil will continue to be "owned" by the "Iraqi people" is what differentiates

classical 19th-century colonialism practiced by British officers in pith helmets from the neocolonialism

the United States perfected in the second half of the 20th century. The newer brand can be summed

up like this: We'll respect your sovereignty and abide by your domestic laws -- as long as we can help

you write those laws to guarantee our firms' profits.

______________________________________________________________

Rummy Logic & Enduring Lies

By Robert Parry
May 8, 2006

Rebellion was in the air, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acting like a crafty minister

to an embattled king, fending off citizens outraged over government lies and the growing death toll

from a war built on deception.

As hecklers at a speech in Atlanta on May 4 accused the Bush administration of lying and then were

dragged away one by one, Rumsfeld appealed for civility and for renewed faith in George W. Bush’s honesty.

“You know, that charge [of lying] is frequently leveled against the President for one reason or another,

and it’s so wrong and so unfair and so destructive of a free system, where people need to trust each other

and government,” Rumsfeld told a crowd of international affairs experts.

Anyone who’s followed the twisted course of Iraq War rationales had to marvel at Rumsfeld’s chutzpah,

putting citizen accusers on the defensive and turning government deceivers into defenders of “a free system.”

How could he expect such a transparent ploy to work?

But the cagey Pentagon chief may have recognized that he could still score with two target audiences: die-hard

Bush loyalists and the Washington press corps. The word “lie” – when applied to Bush – sends Bush's backers

into a fury and thus is studiously avoided by the mainstream press.

_____________________________________________________________

The Military is in Iraq for Long Haul

By Michael Hirsh

Newsweek

May 1, 2006 issue - Maj. Micah Morgan fondly pats the nose of his Predator drone, much

as a cavalry officer of old might have stroked the muzzle of his prized horse. "This is the future

of the Air Force," says Morgan, a former B-1 bomber pilot. It is a glorious day in the Sunni Triangle.

Outside the "wire" of Balad Air Base the insurgency still rages and sectarian war looms, but the sky

above is a deep azure and, no small thing, wholly American-owned. A relaxed Morgan watches from

the shade of Saddam Hussein's old hardened hangars as another Predator—an unmanned craft about

the size of a Cessna—approaches for a remote-control landing at the vast airfield after a recon mission.

Stepping into one of his modular "ground-control stations," which are encased in steel and shipped to Balad

as single units, Morgan flicks on a screen that shows his flock of drones (the exact number is classified,

but it's the largest fleet in the world) hovering over Baghdad, each carrying two Hellfire missiles and

searching with uncanny clarity for insurgents and other signs of trouble.

__________________________________________________________

Condi, War Crimes & the Press

By Robert Parry
April 3, 2006

During the three years of carnage in Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has

shifted away from her now-discredited warning about a “mushroom cloud” to assert

a strategic rationale for the invasion that puts her squarely in violation of the Nuremberg

principle against aggressive war.

On March 31 in remarks to a group of British foreign policy experts, Rice justified the

U.S.-led invasion by saying that otherwise Iraqi President Saddam Hussein “wasn’t going

anywhere” and “you were not going to have a different Middle East with Saddam Hussein

at the center of it.” [Washington Post, April 1, 2006]


Time to Talk War Crimes

By Robert Parry
March 28, 2006

In a world where might did not make right, George W. Bush, Tony Blair and their key

enablers would be in shackles before a war crimes tribunal at the Hague, rather than

sitting in the White House, 10 Downing Street or some other comfortable environs in

Washington and London.

The latest evidence of their war crimes was revealed in secret British minutes of an Oval

Office meeting on Jan. 31, 2003, when Bush, Blair and their top aides chillingly discussed

their determination to invade Iraq, though still hoping to provoke the Iraqis into some violent

act that would serve as political cover.

Bush, who has publicly told Americans that it was Saddam Hussein who “chose war” by

refusing to disarm, was, in reality, set on invading Iraq regardless of Hussein’s cooperation

with United Nations weapons inspectors, according to the five-page memo described in detail

by the New York Times. [March 27, 2006]

______________________________________________________

Bush Says US Troops To Remain In Iraq Indefinitely

By Jerry White

22 March 2006
World Socialist Web


At a White House press conference Tuesday morning President George W. Bush

suggested that the US would continue the occupation of Iraq for years, if not decades,

to come. Asked if there would be a day when there were no more American forces in

that country, Bush replied that that would be “decided by future presidents and future

governments of Iraq.”

Bush suggested that US troops would remain long after the end of his administration in

January 2009, making it clear that the country is to be reduced to the status of a semi-colonial

protectorate. Refusing to give a “timetable” for complete withdrawal, the president repeated

his oft-made statement that US military commanders would decide when force levels would be reduced.

____________________________________________________________

Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools


THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCCOMPLISHED

by Greg Palast
for The Guardian

20 March 2006

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border,
most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are
beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.

But don't kid yourself -- Bush and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney,
accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've
forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White
House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years
ago, launching of what he called,

          "Operation
           Iraqi
           Liberation."


Bush Signs Bill to Raise Debt Ceiling

Mon Mar 20, 2:43 PM ET With no fanfare, President Bush signed a bill Monday pushing the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $9 trillion.

"Biggest" Air Attack in Iraq Turns Out to be Bush PR Stunt

Buzzflash.com

Why bother spending billions of dollars on big corporate mainstream media reporters when they could just as easily have the Pentagon supply the stories and footage directly? They already do in most cases. Take the breathlessly "covered" air attack in Iraq. "Largest Air Attack in Iraq War Launched Against Insurgents," read one big city headline we saw. And television was right there, providing lead stories on the massive "air attack." Only, of course, it turned out to be a PR stunt to boost Bush's poll ratings at home and divert attention from the civil war in Iraq, as if the U.S. presence was accomplishing something.


Iraq & the Nuremberg Precedent

By Peter Dyer
March 16, 2006

Editor's Note: As the United States approaches the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion, much of the commentary is focusing on the Bush administration's "incompetence" in prosecuting the war -- the failure to commit enough troops, the decision to disband the old Iraqi army without adequate plans for training a new one, the highhandedness of the U.S. occupation.

But what about the legal and moral questions arising from the unprovoked invasion of Iraq? Should George W. Bush and his top aides be held accountable for violating the laws against aggressive war that the United States and other Western nations promulgated in punishing senior Nazis after World War II? Do the Nuremberg precedents that prohibit one nation from invading another apply to Bush and American officials -- or are they somehow immune? Put bluntly, should Bush and his inner circle face a war-crimes tribunal for the tens of thousands of deaths in Iraq?

Despite the present-day conventional wisdom in Washington that these are frivolous questions, they actually go to the heart of the American commitment to the rule of law and the concept that the law applies to everyone. In this guest essay, Peter Dyer looks at this larger issue:


Iraq: Permanent US Colony

By Dahr Jamail

14 March 2006
t r u t h o u t


Why does the Bush Administration refuse to discuss withdrawing occupation forces

from Iraq? Why is Halliburton, who landed the no-bid contracts to construct and maintain

US military bases in Iraq, posting higher profits than ever before in its 86-year history?

Why do these bases in Iraq resemble self-contained cities as much as military outposts?

Why are we hearing such ludicrous and outrageous statements from the highest ranking military

general in the United States, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace, who

when asked how things were going in Iraq on March 9th in an interview on "Meet the Press"

said, "I'd say they're going well. I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say

they're going very, very well from everything you look at."


Iraq: A Cluster Of Torture Prisons

By Ghali Hassan

13 March, 2006
Countercurrents.org


After the US's deliberate and unprovoked war on Iraq, “reconstruction” becomes one

of the US's moral clichés to justify crimes against the Iraqi people and ongoing Occupation.

In reality, the “reconstruction” of Iraq is the continuation of the destruction of Iraq and

humiliation of Iraqi society.

Countless prisons have been built where the practice of humiliation, sadistic torture, sexual

abuse and rape of Iraqi men, women and children are used on daily basis to force the entire

Iraqi population into submission.

The $20 billion initially appropriated by the US administration to “reconstruct” Iraq were a

gift to US corporations and the Bush cronies. The only visible construction in Iraq today is

the rise in the construction of prisons. According to Reuters; “The U.S. State Department is

winding down its $20 billion reconstruction program in Iraq and the only new rebuilding money

in its latest budget request is for prisons . . . State Department Iraq coordinator James Jeffrey

told reporters he was asking Congress for $100 million for prisons but no other big building

projects were in the pipeline."

___________________________________________________________

U.S. Troops in Iraq: 72% Say End War in 2006

Released: February 28, 2006

  • Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay

  • “as long as they are needed”

  • While 58% say mission is clear, 42% say U.S. role is hazy

  • Plurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown

  • Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11, most don’t blame Iraqi

  • public for insurgent attacks

  • Majority of troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation

  • Plurality of troops pleased with their armor and equipment

______________________________________________________

Can You Say 'Permanent Bases? The American Press Can't


Posted on Saturday, February 18 @ 09:34:13 EST

bases, ranging from mega to micro in Iraq. Most of these were to be given back to the Iraqi

military, now being "stood up" as a far larger force than originally imagined by Pentagon

planners, leaving the U.S. with, Graham reported, just the number of bases -- 4 -- that the

Times first mentioned over two years earlier, including Balad Air Base and the base Poole

visited in western Anbar Province. This reduction was presented not as a fulfillment of original

Pentagon thinking, but as a "withdrawal plan." (A modest number of these bases have since

been turned over to the Iraqis, including one in Tikrit transferred to Iraqi military units which,

according to Poole, promptly stripped it to the bone.)

_________________________________________________________

Scott Ritter: 'Still Cherry-picking the Facts on Iraq'

One piece of information in particular caught my eye. The revelations made by retired

CIA officer Paul Pillar in an article published in the March-April issue of the journal

Foreign Affairs should come as a surprise to no one who has been following the disturbing

case of Iraq and the missing weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Mr. Pillar is a career intelligence officer with the CIA who served as the deputy chief of the

Counterterrorist Center and, most recently, as the national intelligence officer for Near

East/Middle East affairs from 2000 to 2005. His essay offers sound analysis to back up

his claim that the Bush administration had made the decision to invade Iraq independent

of any viable intelligence analysis to sustain the allegation that Iraq possessed undeclared

and hidden WMD capability. This capability allegedly not only violated international law

but also constituted a threat to the United States and the international community that justified

the use of force.

Nowhere does Mr. Pillar mention the issue of regime change and the role played by

the CIA in carrying out covert action at the instruction of the White House (both

Democratic and Republican) to remove Saddam Hussein from power.  I may not have

been the national intelligence officer, but I was plugged into the system well enough to know "Steve,"

who headed the CIA's Near East Division inside the Directorate of Operations, and helped plan

and implement several abortive coup attempts in Iraq. I also knew "Don," who helped run the

CIA's Counter Proliferation Center and was well aware of how the CIA interfered with and

undermined several investigations and operations run by U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq.

If these operations had reached fruition, the myth of a noncompliant Iraq might have been

undone, thereby putting at risk the CIA's primary tasking vis-a-vis Iraq: regime change.
 

___________________________________________________________________________-

Intelligence, Policy and the War in Iraq
By Paul R. Pillar

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006

Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence

community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration

disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and

selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.

PAUL R. PILLAR is on the faculty of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown

University. Concluding a long career in the Central Intelligence Agency, he served

as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.

____________________________________________________

Former CIA Official Says Bush Misled Country to War

By Cam Simpson
Washington bureau
Published February 10, 2006, 8:29 PM CST

WASHINGTON -- The former CIA official charged with
managing the U.S. government's secret intelligence
assessments on Iraq says the Bush administration chose
war first and then misleadingly used raw data to
assemble a public case for its decision to invade.
_____________________________________________________________

No Bravery, Only Sadness

This powerful video portrays the impact of the Bush Doctrine on our

soldiers and the civilians of Iraq as this war goes on and on. It is worth

watching and then passing on to others, for the powerful way in which it

portrays painful truths of the illegal war on Iraq.

______________________________________________________________

 

THE LIE OF THE CENTURY

www.whatreallyhappened.com

There is nothing new in a government lying to their people to start a war.

Indeed because most people prefer living in peace to bloody and horrific

death in war, any government that desires to initiate a war usually lies to

their people to create the illusion that support for the war is the only possible

choice they can make.


Blair-Bush Deal before Iraq War Revealed in Secret Memo

Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday February 3, 2006

PM promised to be 'solidly behind' US invasion with or without UN backing
 

Tony Blair told President George Bush that he was "solidly" behind US plans to

invade Iraq before he sought advice about the invasion's legality and despite the

absence of a second UN resolution, according to a new account of the build-up to

the war published today.

A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on

January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush

made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN

resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons

programme.


Iraq, Niger, And The CIA

By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Feb. 2, 2006

Vice President Cheney and his then-Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter"

Libby were personally informed in June 2003 that the CIA no longer considered

credible the allegations that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium

from the African nation of Niger, according to government records and interviews

with current and former officials. The new CIA assessment came just as Libby and

other senior administration officials were embarking on an effort to discredit an

administration critic who had also been saying that the allegations were untrue.


'Proof Bush Deceived America'


Posted on Saturday, January 14 @ 09:49:37 EST
 

Ray McGovern, TomPaine.com

James Risen's State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, may hold bigger secrets than the disclosure that President George W. Bush authorized warrantless eavesdropping on Americans. Risen's book also confirms the most damning element of the British Cabinet Office memos popularly called the "Downing Street memos;" namely, that "the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy." The result is that it is no longer credible to maintain that the failures in the Iraqi intelligence were the product of a broken intelligence community. The Bush administration deliberately fabricated the case against Iraq, lying to Congress and the American people along the way.


So Iraq Was About the Oil

By Robert Parry November 8, 2005

When Colin Powell’s former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson publicly decried the Bush administration’s bungling of U.S. foreign policy, the focus of the press coverage was on Wilkerson’s depiction of a “cabal” headed by Vice President Dick Cheney that had hijacked the decision-making process. Largely overlooked were Wilkerson’s frank admissions about the importance of oil in justifying a long-term U.S. military intervention in Iraq. “The other thing that no one ever likes to talk about is SUVs and oil and consumption,” the retired Army colonel said in a speech on Oct. 19. While bemoaning the administration’s incompetence in implementing the war strategy, Wilkerson said the U.S. government now had no choice but to succeed in Iraq or face the necessity of conquering the Middle East within the next 10 years to ensure access to the region’s oil supplies.


Extra Armor Could Have Saved Many Lives, Study Shows

By MICHAEL MOSS

A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor. That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.


Pentagon propaganda program orders soldiers to promote


Iraq war while home on leave
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Dec 29, 2005, 05:44

Good soldiers follow orders and hundreds of American
military men and women returned to the United States
on holiday leave this month with orders to sell the
Iraq war to a skeptical public.

The program, coordinated through a Pentagon operation
dubbed “Operation Homefront,” ordered military
personnel to give interviews to their hometown
newspapers, television stations and other media
outlets and praise the American war effort in Iraq.


House Judiciary Democrats issue report alleging

gross misconduct by Bush over Iraq

In brief, we have found that there is substantial evidence the President,

the Vice President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration

misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war

with Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the

justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and

degrading treatment and other legal violations in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate

retaliation against critics of their Administration.

There is at least a prima facie case that these actions by the President,

Vice-President and other members of the Bush Administration violate a number

of federal laws, including (1) Committing a Fraud against the United States; (2) Making

False Statements to Congress; (3) The War Powers Resolution; (4) Misuse of Government

Funds; (5) federal laws and international treaties prohibiting torture and cruel, inhuman, and

degrading treatment; (6) federal laws concerning retaliating against witnesses and other individuals;

and (7) federal laws and regulations concerning leaking and other misuse of intelligence.


Eight Facts About Iraq


by Laurence M. Vance

The Bush administration, its accomplices in the news media, and

the conservative talk show hacks who do the bidding of the Republican

party have sold America a bill of goods. The invasion of Iraq was justified,

we have been led to believe, because Saddam Hussein was the reincarnation

of Adolph Hitler, Iraq was in the position of Germany on the eve of World

War II, and the "elite" Republican Guard was the equivalent of the German

Wehrmacht. According to the president himself: "We will end a brutal regime,

whose aggression and weapons of mass destruction make it a unique

threat to the world."


'Mission accomplished: Big Oil's occupation of Iraq'

Raw Story
Posted on Monday, December 05 @ 09:53:54 EST

Heather Wokusch

The Bush administration's covert plan to help energy companies steal Iraq's

oil could be just weeks away from fruition, and the implications are staggering:

continued price-gouging by Big Oil, increased subjugation of the Iraqi people,

more US troops in Iraq, and a greater likelihood for a US invasion of Iran.

That's just for starters.

The administration's challenge has been how to transfer Iraq's oil assets to private

companies under the cloak of legitimacy, yet simultaneously keep prices inflated.

But Bush & Co. and their Big Oil cronies might have found a simple yet devious

solution: production sharing agreements (PSAs).


Senate Intelligence Committee stalling pre-war

intelligence report

12/02/2005 @ 11:54 am

Filed by Larisa Alexandrovna

Phase II, the follow-up to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation

into pre-war intelligence on Iraq, is still facing opposition from administration

officials and has seen little action from the committee’s chairman, Senator

Pat Roberts (R-KS), RAW STORY has learned.


Death squads, Devastation and the Corporate Media

The death squads and the intentional destruction of the Sunni heartland

comprise the first two parts of the three-pronged strategy to defeat the Iraqi

resistance. The final leg on the stool is the propaganda war that is being

directed against the American people to conceal the details of the military’s

war crimes.


Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel

By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade

Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing

that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of

Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that

Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government

records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.


What I Knew Before the Invasion

  By Bob Graham
Sunday, November 20, 2005; B07

    In the past week President Bush has twice attacked Democrats for
being hypocrites on the Iraq war. "[M]ore than 100 Democrats in the
House and Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to
support removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said.

  The president's attacks are outrageous. Yes, more than 100
Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war. Most of
them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the
legitimate belief that the president and his administration were
truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering
menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would
become a mushroom cloud.


The Man Who Sold the War

Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war

By JAMES BAMFORD

Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists.

Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had

secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries

with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is

a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating

information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result.

His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since

1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal

of Hussein from power."


Scott Ritter Tells the Complete Story Why We're in Iraq


It Begins with the CIA's Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow
Saddam Hussein


Cheney Claimed Iraq Was Providing WMD Training

To Al-Qaeda Months After Source Recanted

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials

repeatedly claimed that Iraq was providing al-Qaeda with training in chemical

and biological weapons. The administration’s claims were based on the statements

of a known fabricator, al Qaeda senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. It gets

worse. The Washington Post reports that al-Libi formally retracted his claims in

early 2004:

 

VIDEOS PROVING U.S. MILITARY’S USE OF

CHEMICAL WEAPONS IN IRAQ


Carter: White House Manipulated Iraq Intel


ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK (AP) - The Bush Administration's prewar claims that Saddam

Hussein had weapons of mass destruction were "manipulated, at least" to mislead

the American people, former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday.


Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Suspicions

New York Times

November 6, 2005

By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 - A high Qaeda official in American custody was

identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to

use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda

members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified

portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.


Conyers’ Hearings on Downing St. Memo-June 17, 2005

VERY POWERFUL STREAMING VIDEO WITH 7-YEAR CIA ANALYST,

RAY MCGOVERN; CONSTITUTIONAL ATTY. JOHN BONIFAZ;

AMBASSADOR JOE WILSON

This hyperlink will bring you to the Home Page of Crooks and Liars Website.

You will have to locate this particular streaming video on this page.


Conyers Hearings on Downing Street Memo-June 17, 2005

Very Powerful Streaming Video of Cindy Sheehan of Gold Star Families for Peace

This hyperlink will bring you to the Home Page of Crooks and Liars Website.

You will have to locate this particular streaming video on this page.


Confessions of a Marine
    By Jean-Paul Mari
    Le Nouvel Observateur

Iraq: The story no American publisher wanted.

In a just-published book, Master-Sergeant Jimmy Massey tells about his

mission to recruit for, then fight in, the war in Iraq. He tells why he killed.

And cracked.


UK MP George Galloway Calls for Bush, Blair, Koizumi, and

Berlusconi to Stand Trial

Must See Video


IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED."

IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED."

Special to BuzzFlash

By Greg Palast

Posted June 6, 2005

Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has "IMPEACH HIM" written all over it.
The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL,"

dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq , following a closed meeting

with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted

to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism

and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."


Video-Powell and Rice in 2001 State that Iraq Is No Threat


British Memo Reopens War Claim
    By Stephen J. Hedges and Mark Silva
    The Chicago Tribune
    Tuesday 17 May 2005
Leaked briefing says US intelligence facts `fixed' around policy.
    Washington - A British official's report that the Bush
administration appeared intent on invading Iraq long before it
acknowledged as much or sought Congress' approval--and that
it "fixed" intelligence to fit its intention--has caused a stir in
Britain.
    But the potentially explosive revelation has proven to be
something of a dud in the United States . The White House has denied
the premise of the memo, the American media have reacted slowly to
it and the public generally seems indifferent to the issue or
unwilling to rehash the bitter prewar debate over the reasons for
the war.

Galloway tongue-lashes Coleman; committee documents

show Bush political friends and family paid Oil-for-Food

kickbacks to Saddam Hussein

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Posted may 27, 2005

May 21, 2005—British Member of Parliament George Galloway presented

the U.S. Senate with the best tongue lashing since U.S. Army counsel

Joseph Welch excoriated Senator Joseph McCarthy over his witch hunt

directed at one of Welch's law firm associates who had been a member

of the Lawyer's Guild: "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency,

sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

The May 17 testimony by Galloway, the newly-elected Respect Party

member for East London's Bethnal Green and Bow constituency, was

in response to a report issued by Minnesota Republican Senator Norm

Coleman's Permanent Select Subcommittee on Investigations that charged

Galloway with personally profiting from Iraq 's United Nations Oil-for-Food

program.


Video Of The Full Testimony Of British MP George Galloway

Before The U.S. Senate

This is a must watch Video!!


Depleted Uranium: A Scientific Perspective

Posted May 30, 2005

An Interview With LEUREN MORET, Geoscientist

ICONOCLAST: Is there a danger of depleted uranium, being used in

weaponry over there, spreading by air over here?

MORET: The atmosphere globally is contaminated with it. It’s completely 

mixed in one year. I’m an expert on atmospheric dust.


U.S. the New Saddam
by Eric Margolis

The most important news from Iraq last week was not the much ballyhooed
constitutional pact by Shias and Kurds, nor the tragic stampede deaths of
nearly 1,000 pilgrims in Baghdad .

The U.S. Air Force's senior officer, Gen. John Jumper, stated U.S. warplanes
would remain in Iraq to fight resistance forces and protect the
American-installed regime "more or less indefinitely." Jumper's bombshell
went largely unnoticed due to Hurricane Katrina.
Nearly 9,000 U.S. troops dead? A NATIONWIDE CALL

FOR INFO FROM SURVIVORS.

Has the Bush administration drastically understated the U.S. military death

count by redefining "death"? The following article suggests that it has, and

it calls for a nationwide campaign to honor deceased service members by

naming and counting them.

According to the article: "...DoD lists currently being very quietly circulated   indicate almost 9,000 [ U.S. military] dead"; this far exceeds the "official" death count of 1,831. How can this be? It's largely because "U.S. Military

Personnel who died in German hospitals or en route to German hospitals have not previously been counted." In other words, "death" has been redefined.


The Other Bomb Drops

Jeremy Scahill Wed Jun 1, 6:29 PM ET Posted June 4, 2005

It was a huge air assault: Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from  Kuwait into Iraqi airspace. At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan . Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist. This was war. But there was a catch: The war hadn't started yet, at least not officially. This was September 2002--a month before Congress had voted to give President Bush the authority he used to invade Iraq , two months before the United Nations brought the matter to a vote and more than six months before "shock and awe" officially began. At the time, the Bush Administration publicly played down the extent of the air strikes, claiming the United States was just defending the so-called no-fly zones. But new information that has come out in response to the Downing Street memo reveals that, by this time, the war was already a foregone conclusion and attacks were no less than the undeclared beginning of the invasion of  Iraq.


Administration's Offenses Impeachable


By Robert Shetterly
Bangor Daily News Posted June 5, 2005

Let's consider an item from the news of about two weeks ago: A British citizen leaked a memo to London's Sunday Times. The memo was of the written account of a meeting that a man named Richard Dearlove had with the Bush administration in July 2002. Dearlove was the head of the England's MI-6, the equivalent of the CIA. On July 23, 2002, Dearlove briefed Tony Blair about the meeting. He said that Bush was determined to attack Iraq. He said that Bush knew that US intelligence had no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no links to foreign terrorists, that there was no imminent danger to the US from Iraq. But, since Bush was determined to go to war, "Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy." "Fixed" means faked, manufactured, conjured, hyped - the product of whole cloth fabrication. So we got aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds imported from Niger, biological weapons labs in weather trucks, fear and trembling, the phony ultimatums to Saddam Hussein to turn over the weapons he didn't have and thus couldn't. We got the call to arms, the stifling of dissent, the parade of retired generals strategizing on the "news" shows, with us or against us, flags in the lapel, a craven media afraid to look for a truth that might disturb their corporate owners who would profit from the war. Shock and Awe. Fallujah. Abu Ghraib. It was all a lie. Many of us have said for a long time it was a lie. But here it is in black and white: Lies from a president who has taken a sacred trust to uphold the Constitution of the United States. So, what does it mean? It means that our president and all of his administration are war criminals. It's as simple as that. They lied to the American people, have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and poisoned its environment, squandered billions and billions of our tax dollars, made a mockery of American integrity in the world, changed the course of history, tortured Iraqi prisoners, and bound us intractably to an insane situation that they have no idea how to fix because they had no plan, but greed and empire, in the first place.


The Crime and the Cover-Up

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective Monday 21 July 2003

The scandal axiom in Washington states that it is not the crime that destroys you, but the cover-up. Today in Washington you can hear terms like 'Iraqgate' and 'Weaponsgate' bandied about, but such obtuse labels do not provide an explanation for the profound movements that are taking place. Clearly, there is a scandal brewing over the Iraq war and the Bush administration claims of Iraqi weapons arsenals that led to the shooting. Clearly, there is a cover-up taking place. Yet this instance, the crimes that have led to the cover-up are worse by orders of magnitude than the cover-up itself. The simple fact is that America went to war in Iraq because George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and virtually every other public face within this administration vowed that Iraq had vast stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. America went to war because these people vowed that Iraq had direct connections to al Qaeda, and by inference to the attacks of September 11.