Dive into the archives.
- Jeremy Scahill’s Recent Short Documentary
Blackwater’s Youngest Victim: Father of 9 Year-Old Killed in Nisour Square Gives Most Detailed Account of Massacre to Date (full article…)
- Iraq War
The invasion of Iraq was illegal, a senior government lawyer told the Chilcot inquiry into the war today. (full article…)
- That Oil is Ours Dammit!
Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are “entitled” to some of Iraq’s crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq. (full article…)
- The Palestinian Tragedy
The fact that the divided Palestinian political leadership is silent about the mistreatment of the refugees by Arab states does not make such behaviour any less reprehensible – or less dangerous. Some 250,000 Palestinians were chased out of Kuwait and other Gulf States to punish the Palestinian political leadership for supporting Saddam Hussein. Tens of [...]
- Oil Corruption
In 2003, U.S. diplomatist Peter Galbraith resigned at the end of a distinguished, 24-year government career. Over the years that followed, he worked as a contract-based adviser to leaders in Iraq’s Kurdish community, while also arguing passionately in public media that Iraq’s Kurds should be given maximum independence from Baghdad – including full control over [...]
- Coverup
The British military’s chain of command has instructed the country’s top investigators not to examine hundreds of incidents involving Iraqi deaths and serious injury, a former British military police officer told the BBC Sunday. (full article…)
- The Correct Use of Racism
Hundreds of anthropologists at the business meeting — the first official quorum in 30 years — unanimously endorsed a resolution condemning “the use of anthropological knowledge as an element of physical and psychological torture.” But one anthropologist, while sharing her peers’ condemnation of torture as immoral and ineffective, worried that some of her colleagues had [...]
- Couldn’t Have Said It Better
Issam al-Khazraji, a day labourer in Baghdad, said: “He doesn’t deserve this prize. All these problems — Iraq, Afghanistan — have not been solved…The man of ‘change’ hasn’t changed anything yet.” (full article…)
- Déjà Vu
Not all are persuaded. Glenn Greenwald, an author and a left-leaning blogger for the online magazine Salon, called the parallels with the charges that Iraq had so-called weapons of mass destruction in 2002 “substantial and disturbing.” “The administration is making inflammatory claims about another country’s W.M.D. program and intentions without providing any evidence,” he said. [...]
- “Our” Airspace
“We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?” he told the news site ‘The Beast’. (full article…)
- The Cost of U.S. Propaganda
Alhurra, set up under former President George W. Bush to broadcast an American perspective of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, was the subject of a joint investigation last year by ProPublica and CBS’ 60 Minutes. The investigation and a series of ProPublica articles revealed serious staff problems, financial mismanagement and long-standing concerns inside [...]
- Why He Threw the Shoe
I am not a hero. But I have a point of view. I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated; and to see my Baghdad burned, my people killed. Thousands of tragic pictures remained in my head, pushing me towards the path of confrontation. The scandal of Abu Ghraib. The massacre [...]
- This Is “Change”
On the second anniversary of the single worst massacre of Iraqi civilians committed by a private force since the US invasion, President Obama should be forced to explain to the American people and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan why he continues to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to this company and why he [...]
- Joke of the Day
“Any comparison of Israel’s fight on terror with recent conflicts in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc. immediately shows that Israel holds itself to the highest ethical standard.” (full article…)
- The Price of Giving Bush What He Deserved
The Iraqi television journalist who hurled his shoes at then-President George W. Bush was released Tuesday after nine months in prison, claiming Iraqi authorities had tortured him. (more…)
- Outsourcing Atrocity
Private security guards who worked for Blackwater repeatedly shot wildly into the streets of Baghdad without regard for civilians long before they were involved in a 2007 shooting episode that left at least 14 Iraqis dead, federal prosecutors charge in a new court document. (more…)
- How 9/11 Should Be Remembered
After 9/11, it could all have been different, profoundly different. And if it had, there would have been no children imprisoned without charges or release dates in our gulag in Cuba; there would have been no unmanned drones slaughtering wedding parties in the rural backlands of Afghanistan or the Iraqi desert; there would have been [...]
- The Shoe Felt ‘Round the World
Zaidi’s actions during the former US president’s swansong visit to Iraq last December have not stopped reverberating in the nine months since. Next Monday, when the journalist walks out of prison, his 10 raging seconds, which came to define his country’s last six miserable years, are set to take on a new life even more [...]
- War Profiteer
A baker scraping by when American tanks rolled into Baghdad, Mr. Mohsin recently spent $50,000 to throw a one-night bacchanal at the exclusive Hunting Club here. When guests visit his second home, in Baghdad, he proudly shows off the two peacocks he imported from Dubai, to join a menagerie of exotic birds that he sometimes [...]
- (Baseless) Statements from the NYT
He made no mention of American troops in a nationally televised speech, even though nearly 130,000 remain in the country; most had already pulled back from Iraq’s cities before Tuesday’s deadline. The excitement, however, has rung hollow for many Iraqis, who fear that their country’s security forces are not ready to stand alone and who [...]
- A Puppet’s Snub
When the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, held a meeting with 300 top military commanders last week a US general who tried to attend was asked to leave. “We apologise to you, but this is an Iraqi meeting and you’re not invited,” he was told. (more…)
- The Brilliant Political Analysis of Thomas Friedman
At first, this dialogue took place primarily through violence. Liberated from Saddam’s iron fist, each Iraqi community tested its strength against the others, saying in effect: “Show me what you got, baby.” (more…)
- Israel is Fourth Most Dangerous Country
According to a new study by the Institute for Economics & Peace, Israel came 141st out of the 144 countries analyzed—placing it safer than only Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. (more…)
- This is “Change”
The Pentagon is prepared to leave fighting forces in Iraq for as long as a decade despite an agreement between the United States and Iraq that would bring all American troops home by 2012, the top U.S. Army officer said Tuesday. (more…)
- Toture, American Style
As the Obama administration continues to fight the release of some 2,000 photos that graphically document U.S. military abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, an ongoing Spanish investigation is adding harrowing details to the ever-emerging portrait of the torture inside and outside Guantánamo. Among them: “blows to [the] testicles;” “detention underground in total darkness [...]
- Soldier Stress
But then an email, written in February 2008 from Katz to a colleague, came to light. “Shh! Our suicide prevention co-ordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on [...]
- This is “Change”
“This tragic, misguided, and unprincipled reversal seems to be consistent with the fact that instead of getting a real ‘change’ on policies under the Obama administration, the American people are experiencing continuity across the board with those of the discredited and criminal Bush administration when it comes to international law, human rights, and U.S. constitutional [...]
- This is “Change”
The president is seeking to overturn a deal made last month between the Pentagon and the American Civil Liberties Union to make public the pictures from Abu Ghraib and other prisons after a court ruled they should be released. Obama instructed the White House legal office to argue in court against the immediate release of [...]
- Obama’s War
American soldiers opened fire and killed a 12-year old boy after a grenade hit their convoy in Mosul on Thursday. (more…)
- Celebrating With a Barbeque
He went on to take his turn raping the schoolgirl before covering her face with a pillow and shooting her three times. The soldiers started to leave but paused to consider the corpse and after a discussion, decided to douse Abeer’s body with kerosene and set it alight. The men then went back to base [...]
- Adoring Crowds
Hundreds of Iraqis protested against U.S. forces on Sunday after U.S. soldiers killed a man and a woman in an overnight raid that was condemned by the provincial governor. The U.S. military said it targeted “special groups” fighters. (more…)
- Juan Cole on U.S. Torture
[N]ote that the March waterboardings were not for the purpose of increasing national security; they were intended to provide a propaganda victory for an illegal war plan. That is not just wrong, it is evil. (more…)
- U.S. State Terror
In air attacks causing civilian deaths, 46% of victims of known gender were female, and 39% of victims of known age were children. Mortar attacks claimed similarly high proportions of victims in these two demographic groups (44% and 42%). By comparison, 11% of victims across all weapons types were Iraqi females, and 9% were children. [...]
- The American Way
Since Sept. 11, 2001, when the country’s attention understandably turned to terrorism, nearly 120,000 Americans have been killed in nonterror homicides, most of them committed with guns. Think about it — 120,000 dead. That’s nearly 25 times the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. (more…)
- Bush’s Legacy
The oil sector, still Iraq’s most significant industry, is plagued by a rotting infrastructure. Pipelines in Basra are being kept together by “duct tape and spit”, according to one concerned American official. “They can burst at any minute.” Most Iraqis today might say much the same about their country. They are grateful for the temporary [...]
- This is “Change”
Rice explains: “I think the challenge in Iraq is not to lose focus. It is not a question of when American combat forces withdraw. The distance between what the Obama Administration is talking about and what we negotiated is very small, but Iraq is on its way to becoming a strategic asset, but it’s not [...]
- A Date Forgotten
April 9 was the sixth anniversary of the fall of the Saddam Hussein government in Iraq. The date passed without much remark in the United States, which is consumed with its own domestic economic problems and high rates of unemployment, rendering a distant foreign misadventure virtually invisible. Gone are the debates over whether a US [...]
- Fleeing the Nightmare
The UNHCR says that 4.7 million Iraqis have left their homes since the war began, up from 3.8 million two years ago. Iraqis are the leading nationality seeking asylum in Europe. (more…)
- Obama’s War
Although the arrest of a Sunni Awakening Council leader and seven of his deputies that triggered the uprising was spun both by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and by the U.S. command as an anti-terrorism issue rather than sectarian repression, it was in fact part of the long-term struggle for power between the Shi’a-dominated government of [...]
- Obama’s Lies
Despite President Barack Obama’s statement at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina Feb. 27 that he had “chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months,” a number of Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), which have been the basic U.S. Army combat unit in Iraq for six years, will remain in Iraq after [...]
- Obama’s Inheritance
The US withdrawal from Iraq is under way. Some troops are preparing to go home and others have pulled back from outposts to bases. But the planned pullback of American soldiers from all Iraqi cities by the end of June will probably not be fully met. (more…)
- Carrying Bush’s Legacy
Many of Obama’s initiatives in his first few days in office — preparing to depart Iraq, ending torture and closing Guantánamo — were aimed at signaling a sharp turn away from Bush administration policies. In contrast, the headline about the strike in Waziristan could as easily have appeared in December with “President Bush” substituted for [...]
- The Morning After
President-elect Barack Obama took only a few days after his election victory before tossing his most liberal supporters overboard. While loading up his administration with war-hawks of various stripes, including Vice President-elect Joe Biden and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, he left antiwar activists weeping in their blogs. (more…)
- Power to the Shoe
On Thursday, Dana M. Perino, the White House press secretary, said President Bush had urged the Iraqis “not to overreact, because he was not bothered by the incident, although it’s not appropriate for people to throw shoes at a press conference, at any leader.” (more…) I disagree—the shoe is the least Bush deserves for the [...]
- Duplicity in Iraq
U.S. military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops. (more…)
- Power to the Shoe
Muntader is my brother and I know him very well. He does not apologise,” Udai al-Zaidi said. (more…) Sounds like a childhood regret…
- Shoe-Thrower to Be Pardoned
Den irakiske journalist, der kastede sine sko efter præsident Bush, beder om at blive benådet. (more…)
- Matthias Gebauer: Touring Guantánamo
The weeds are already growing rampant at the notorious “Camp X-Ray,” and President-elect Barack Obama plans to shut down the entire detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Now the Pentagon is inviting journalists to tour the camp one last time. One would imagine a trip to the world’s best-known and most notorious prison could be an [...]
- Torture, American Style
We can understand that Americans may be eager to put these dark chapters behind them, but it would be irresponsible for the nation and a new administration to ignore what has happened — and may still be happening in secret C.I.A. prisons that are not covered by the military’s current ban on activities like waterboarding. [...]
- Power to the Shoe
Le lancer de chaussures du journaliste Mountazer Al-Zaïdi sur George Bush est d’ores et déjà qualifié de “moment historique” sur la blogosphère irakienne. Les vidéos de la séquence, les parodies et les jeux circulent de site en site et des blogueurs qui n’avaient pas posté depuis longtemps se sont remis à l’ouvrage. (more…)
- A Potential Problem
It is not clear how the US might replace Blackwater. (more…) Is is just so difficult to find eager young killers willing to work for a paltry six-figure income these day.
- Power to the Shoe
The legislative session became so tumultuous that it prompted the speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, to announce his resignation, according to The Associated Press. (more…)
- Time to Leave
The controversial American private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide, which was involved in the shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians last year, should be dismissed by the US Government, an advisory panel to the State Department said yesterday. (more…)
- Guests in Iraq
QUESTION: But he wasn’t a guest. We’re occupiers. PERINO: No, we’re not. We are absolutely a guest. (more…)
- Power to the Shoe
The Shoe Heard Round the World
- Chris Hedges: Israel’s ‘Crime Against Humanity’
Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. [...]
- The Cost of Freedom
U.S. military operations, including the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, have cost $904 billion since 2001 and could top $1.7 trillion by 2018, even with big cuts in overseas troop deployments, a report said on Monday. (more…)
- The Taste of Freedom
Torture and other forms of abuse in Iraqi detention facilities, frequently to elicit confessions in early stages of detention, are well documented. The reliance on confessions in the court’s proceedings, coupled with the absence of physical or other corroborating evidence, raises the possibility of serious miscarriages of justice. In at least 10 investigative hearings and [...]
- Power to the Shoe
Thousands of Iraqis on Monday demanded the release of Muntazer al-Zaydi, the journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W. Bush. (more…)
- Power to the Shoe
Both shoes missed their target – one went high, and the president ducked the other – and Bush did his best to laugh the whole incident off. “I saw his sole,” he joked. But Bush is unlikely to escape the image of a US president cowering behind a lectern watched by an unflinching Maliki. The [...]
- Another Success for the Bush Doctrine
The brother of the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush has said that the reporter has been beaten in custody. (more…) I’m sure this is what Bush intended when he promised to bring democracy to Iraq. Ah, freedom smells great!
- Power to the Shoe
But the lowly shoe and the Iraqi who threw both of his at President Bush, with widely admired aim, were embraced around the Arab world on Monday as symbols of rage at a still unpopular war. (more…)
- Power To the Shoe
Far from a joke, many in the Mideast saw the act by an Iraqi journalist as heroic, expressing the deep, personal contempt many feel for the American leader they blame for years of bloodshed, chaos and the suffering of civilians. (more…)
- Power to the Shoe
“This is a farewell kiss, you dog,” he yelled in Arabic. “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.” (more…)
- She Came Up With This All By Herself?
The one exception to the view that our values and interests were inextricably linked had really been the Middle East, where I think we had really focused more on stability at the expense of values. We didn’t talk much about democracy in the Middle East. (more…) Let’s put aside Condi’s view that the Middle East [...]
- Just a Shoe and Nothing More
“No one should read anything more into it than what it was, which was an individual throwing a shoe,” Zahren said. (more…) That’s right. Just a shoe. So it would be silly to think that Iraqis are sick of the nightmarish carnage that continues to devastate their country. That’s just silly. It’s only a shoe.
- Time To Leave
Americans are more upbeat about U.S. prospects in Iraq than at any time in the past five years, but nearly two-thirds continue to believe the war is not worth fighting and 70 percent say President-elect Barack Obama should fulfill his campaign promise to withdraw U.S. forces from the country within 16 months, according to a [...]
- Shoe-Thrower Wanted to “Humble the Tyrant”
Den irakiske journalist, som i weekenden blev så arrig på præsident Bush, at han smed begge sine sko efter ham, ønskede at »ydmyge tyrannen«. (more…)
- Shoe In
“Just as the men were shaking hands, an Iraqi reporter in the small crowd stood up and hurled not one, but two shoes, at the president, forcing Bush to duck to avoid getting hit,” Raddatz said. “His press secretary, Dana Perino, was hit in the eye by a microphone as the man was wrestled to [...]
- The Price of Freedom
“When I opened the door he tumbled out. His brain fell between my feet,” Kinani said, breaking down in tears. (more…)
- Rumsfeld’s Legacy
A US Senate committee has accused the former defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, of being directly responsible for the abusive interrogations of detainees at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. (more…)
- Surprised?
The U.S. Defense Department on Wednesday said it had approved the sale to Iraq of weapons valued at up to $6 billion, including 400 Stryker wheeled vehicles, military radios, training aircraft, 20 coastal patrol boats and 140 M1A1 Abrams tanks. (more…)
- Jeremy Scahill: Justice, of a Sort, for Blackwater
For 1,929 days, the Bush administration’s mercenary force of choice, Blackwater Worldwide, has operated on a US government contract in Iraq in a climate that has wed immunity with impunity. Today the Justice Department took the first concrete step to hold accountable the individuals responsible for the single greatest massacre of Iraqi civilians at the [...]
- Washington Post: In Iraq, ‘A Prison Full of Innocent Men’
U.S. officials in Iraq have turned prisons once described as training camps for would-be insurgents into something more closely resembling American-style vocational schools. Religious and technical training are offered to detainees, who are allowed to visit with relatives through teleconferencing calls. But the recently approved U.S.-Iraqi security agreement will soon require the American military to [...]
- Jeremy Scahill: Obama Doesn’t Plan to End the Iraq Occupation
The New York Times is reporting about an “apparent evolution” in president-elect Barack Obama’s thinking on Iraq, citing his recent statements about his plan to keep a “residual force” in the country and his pledge to “listen to the recommendations of my commanders” as Obama prepares to assume actual command of US forces. “At the [...]
- The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy
I have been trying to avoid writing this review, not because of the book’s subject matter (this is not a profound book any sense of the word) but because it has been done so many times before and has by now become quite dated in the ephemeral world of controversy. But I finally read the [...]
- Jeremy Scahill: Obama’s Kettle of Hawks
Barack Obama has assembled a team of rivals to implement his foreign policy. But while pundits and journalists speculate endlessly on the potential for drama with Hillary Clinton at the state department and Bill Clinton’s network of shady funders, the real rivalry that will play out goes virtually unmentioned. The main battles will not be [...]
- Noam Chomsky: What Next? The Elections, the Economy, and the World
Well, let’s begin with the elections. The word that the rolls off of everyone’s tongue is historic. Historic election. And I agree with it. It was an historic election. To have a black family in the white house is a momentous achievement. In fact, it’s historic in a broader sense. The two Democratic candidates were [...]
