The Atlantic investigates: Rupert Murdoch wants his Wall Street Journal to displace The New York Times as the world’s paper of record. His ambitions could be good news for the newspaper industry – or another nail in the coffin of serious journalism. Of course, Murdoch did suggest before the Iraq war that one of its…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
The war inside
Last night at the Sydney Film Festival I saw Errol Morris’ documentary on Abu Ghraib, Standard Operating Procedure: It is a powerful and eerie collection of interviews with the major interrogators at the Iraqi prison. It’s clear that these men and women were in above their heads, unsure what to do, what was right, what…
No such thing as humanitarian intervention
My latest New Matilda column is about the myth of “humanitarian intervention”: Last week’s Australian withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq saw a flurry of establishment commentary on the rights and wrongs of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision. Former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer wrote that, “despite the problems” in the war-torn country, “Australians should be…
Who did we go to war for, Daddy?
Staggering (if true): Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have “been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service … to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government,” a Senate Intelligence Committee report…
Liberation forever
Ali Allawi, The Independent, June 5: It is only now that Iraqis have woken up to the possibility that Iraq might be a signatory on a long-term security treaty with the US, as a price for regaining its full sovereignty. Iraqis must know its details and implications. How would such an alliance constrain Iraq’s freedom…
Hiding the killing
Several soldiers who have returned from combat zones talk with the American News Project about what they say is the widespread practice of using “drop weapons” to cover up the killing of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan:
They don’t speak for all
What the hardline Zionist lobby offers the Middle East (war, occupation and terror.) (When will the mainstream Jewish community reject these extremist views publicly, considering a majority of Americans, according to a new Gallop Poll, believe in engagement with Washington’s “enemies”?)
Welcome to the Soviet days
The supposedly explosive memoirs of former White House press bitch Scott McClellan make for interesting reading, but it’s a little hard to take them entirely seriously considering he was one of the key figures leading the propaganda arm of the Bush administration. CNN’s Jessica Yellin said this week that news executives pushed her not to…
Packing a punch
Secretary General of Hizbollah, Sayyid Hassan Nassrallah, Beirut, May 26: Today, by the name of all gatherings here as well all free people in the Arabian and Muslim world, I call Iraqis along with their political and religious leaderships to make a noble and historical decision that prevents the ultimate fall of Iraq in the…
What Americans believe
A snapshot of Americans from recent studies indicate: 22 percent believe President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance. 30 percent believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. 23 percent believe they’ve been in the presence of a ghost. 18 percent believe the sun revolves around the Earth.