Leading historian Gabriel Kolko reminds us how the American elite system works: In April 2008 the National Defense University report on the Iraq War, which called it “a major debacle,” was written by men who had originally fully supported the war in order to advance their careers, realizing later that it was essential to turn…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
Evil gone, reports serious journalist
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who has spent the last while hanging out with Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concludes the following: After spending a week traveling the frontline of the “war on terrorism” — from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Ronald Reagan in the seas off Iran, to…
More than two sides in the global arena
Tony Karon writes in The National about the dangerous tendency of many in the political and media establishment to frame everything in terms of simple terms and good versus bad: Last summer it was so much easier for Americans: “Today we are all Georgians,” John McCain declared at the height of the Russian offensive provoked…
The war on terror started well before 9/11
Jeremy Scahill reminds us that illegality crosses both sides of the US political divide: Members of Congress have expressed outrage over the “secret” CIA assassination program that former vice president Dick Cheney allegedly ordered concealed from Congress. But this program — and the media descriptions of it — sounds a lot like the assassination policy…
The gift the US gave to Iraq
The Angry Arab: Thomas Friedman is embedded in Iraq. He sums up the American legacy in Iraq: “we also left a million acts of kindness and a profound example of how much people of different backgrounds can accomplish when they work together.” Million acts? That must be an estimate of the Iraqi dead.
Being grateful to the US in Iraq still many years away
Years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, a soccer match in Baghdad signifies a sense of normality for a nation still reeling from chaos. The New York Times reports: The score did not matter so much — well, it mattered some. More important was that Iraq’s itinerant national soccer team, displaced for years by war,…
Iraq brought to you by friendly killers
Democracy in Iraq, courtesy of death squads. The Nation reports: The Iraq Special Operations Forces (ISOF) is probably the largest special forces outfit ever built by the United States, and it is free of many of the controls that most governments employ to rein in such lethal forces. The project started in the deserts of…
Acknowledging the Palestinian problem
Will the Zionist lobby complain about the US making this necessary move? The State Department confirmed today that as many as 1,350 Iraqi Palestinians – once the well-treated guests of Saddam Hussein and now at outs with much of Iraqi society – will be resettled in the US, mostly in southern California, starting this fall.…
Jewish journalist would like the chance to pull the trigger
Conservative blogger Michael Totten interviews Zionist journalist and war-enabler Jeffrey Goldberg. They talk about many things, including occupation, Iraq, bombing Iran, Judaism, bombing Iran, Palestinian hatred of Israel, Hamas and the bombing of Iran. Welcome to the insulated and aggressive world of cocooned Zionism: Goldberg: And here’s the thing. Netanyahu doesn’t want to endanger the…
Tone down the Obama love
Mondoweiss writes: Sharing a cab to JFK, business for him, a frolic for me, Antony Loewenstein challenged me, If Israel bombs Iran, then you really… have to get over your adoration of Obama. But I said I wouldn’t. I would say… that Obama was compelled to accept the disaster, against the very fiber of his beliefs, because…