When failure is your middle name, why not copy the masters? The US may be using Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon as a model for its supposed draw-down in Iraq. In other words, expect America to hassle and monitor Iraq for years to come, violating Iraqi sovereignty. Like Israel does in Lebanon.
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
Iraqis hate us because we abuse and kill them
Before the Afghan war logs, Wikileaks released the “Collateral Murder” video. The Nation provides an exclusive that details the casual brutality dished out by the US to average Iraqis. No wonder the insurgency continues to rage: One by one, soldiers just arriving in Baghdad were taken into a room and questioned by their commanding officers.…
How ANZ bank is backing cluster bombs
Just one more reason to dislike the banking industry: A postcard produced by campaigners shows six-year old Abdullah, pictured with his left arm missing above the elbow. It explains the Iraqi boy was sleeping in his home in 2003 when a cluster bomb came through his window, the shrapnel blowing off his arm and tearing…
What the West has left Iraq
Anthony Shadid writes a powerful piece in the New York Times on the deadly legacy of America in Iraq, in 2003, today and into the future. The occupation isn’t about to end: The morning after President Obama spoke of bringing the war in Iraq to “a responsible end,” insurgents planted their black flag on Tuesday…
Let the post Wikileaks leaking begin
This piece didn’t get the attention it deserves. Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg (a clear inspiration to Wikileaks and Julian Assange) told the Washington Post last weekend what documents or information should be leaked and freely available. A truly free society would depend on it: 1. The official U.S. “order of battle” estimates of the…
The lack of intelligence of American intelligence
Fulton Armstrong is a former US intelligence officer who sent the following letter to the New York Review of Books and explains how the US intelligence community is close to broken (so remember this when a forthcoming report appears on Iran): I was a member of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), as national intelligence officer…
Australia is increasingly owned by somebody else
My following article appears in Crikey today: The Crikey/ACIJ series on Australian companies profiting from the foreign aid budget is a welcome discussion of the rapid privatisation of services in Australia and overseas, an area largely ignored by the mainstream media. The market, lightly regulated or not, is simply accepted by most commentators as the…
Iraqi state boosted by American money (but details gone missing)
What a jolly good war. Money well spent: The Defense Department is unable to properly account for $8.7 billion out of $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil revenue entrusted to it between 2004 and 2007, according to a newly released audit that underscores a pattern of poor record-keeping during the war. Of that amount, the military…
A day at Revolution Books
Yesterday’s event at New York’s Revolution Books alongside writer and author Michael Otterman – interviewed today about Iraqi casualties on NPR – was a unique opportunity to discuss Palestine and Iraq. We talked about the hidden civilian trauma, power of the US to wage war with little social cost inside the country, the power of…
An anti-war tabloid press would be just lovely
Name more than one leading Western corporate newspaper that actively works against wars and occupation? There aren’t too many and the ones that do should be celebrated.