Iraq

I've long been an admirer of Ethan McCord, the Army soldier who rescued the two children in the Collateral Murder video. Read below the fold...

RE-POST from October 2009, FDL:

“6 Powerful Arguments Against War from Martin Luther King, Mark Twain, Ron Paul, Tom Engelhardt, The Brussels Tribunal, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad”
libbyliberal Saturday October 31, 2009 1:53 am

I have a sense of doom that our President will escalate the war in the Middle East. It won’t be as much as General MacChrystal is asking. This strategy goes along with Obama’s modus operandi of cautious and thoughtful faux-deliberating that ultimately aligns in substance if not degree with the corporate and military status quo. From the very beginning of his term, Obama has seemed lost to the matrix of this status quo, while periodically extending some eloquent and promising rhetoric of change. Read below the fold...

It may seem insensitive to blog about the evil savagery of war (called out profoundly in a recent article by Pepe Escobar) on Easter weekend, when millions of Christians are celebrating the death and resurrection of the extraordinary unconditionally open-hearted historical figure of Jesus Christ. However, to me it seems particularly appropriate considering most American citizens' (reflecting their amoral leadership’s) capacity to talk the talk of religious sentimentality and their incapacity to walk the spiritual walk role modeled by Jesus.

Commitment to promoting universal love, cooperation and partnership? Little evidence of such commitment in the United States. Read below the fold...

Bill Van Auken of wsws has a NON-shallow take on Bill Keller’s recent disappointingly shallow column on the New York Time’s role in the launch of the Iraq War:

On the ninth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, New York Times columnist and former editor Bill Keller has penned a self-serving piece that obscures his own role in justifying that war, while setting ground rules for launching the next one.

Keller’s headline—“Falling in and out of war”—is an accurate reflection of the smug and cynical character of the well-heeled layer of establishment liberals of which he is a part, and which today constitutes a principal constituency for imperialism.

Read below the fold...

FIRST LOOK: WALL STREET IN IRAQ? – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Deputy Secretary Tom Nides (formerly chief administrative officer at Morgan Stanley) will host a group of corporate executives at State this morning as part of the Iraq Business Roundtable. Corporate executives from approximately 30 major U.S. companies – including financial firms Citigroup, JPMorganChase and Goldman Sachs – will join U.S. and Iraqi officials to discuss economic opportunities in the new Iraq. Full list of corporate participants: http://politi.co/kOpyKA*

*Participating Companies in Business Roundtable

Read below the fold...

(519 Obama-dumping days until 2012 election-Hugh's Obama's Scandals List)

There is a shocking article this week in The New Yorker entitled “The Invisible Army” by Sarah Stillman.

Ms. Stillman begins by writing of two women in Fiji, Vinnie Tuiaga and Lydia Qeraniu, who are looking for work in 2007. They get recruited by a local firm called Meridian Services Agency which promises them both jobs in Dubai. You know Dubai. You have seen pictures of that opulent, exciting city I am sure. Read below the fold...

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

This morning on Weekend Edition Sunday, I heard the following: Read below the fold...

Swanson has just published War Is A Lie.  This article originally appeared on TomDispatch.

To understand just how bad the 112th Congress, elected on November 2nd and taking office on January 3rd, is likely to be for peace on Earth, one has to understand how incredibly awful the 110th and 111th Congresses have been during the past four years and then measure the ways in which things are likely to become even worse.  Read below the fold...

(Another golden oldie, this time from the mid '00s, published just after the '06 midterm elections which, as any Democrat would've told you, was a really really super-duper important election -- in fact, The Most Important Election Since The Last Mass Extinction Event. Read below the fold...

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post Read below the fold...

(When I first published this one, it cause quite a wonderful shitstorm in the comments column when it was picked up by Stop Me Before I Vote Again.)

They range from borderline delusional to flat-out certifiable -- and they vote. Read below the fold...

HOW WE LOST AMERICA :: A Brief History in Ten Points (Linked Version)
Copyright (c) 2010 Bruce Arnold. Republication with attribution permitted. Read below the fold...

When wikileaks did its first document dump of classified material from the war in Afghanistan, we saw a number of pushback efforts. It would cost American and Afghan lives, irreparable damage was done. And then there were the convenient "discredit the messenger" charges in Sweden attacking wikileaks founder Julian Assange. None of this panned out. What the leaks did was confirm with the government's own documents what most of us already knew.

Now the second wikileaks dump, on Iraq, has come out and we are seeing new wrinkles in the pushback. Read below the fold...

By David Swanson

Pretending to end a war and occupation, while stationing 50,000 soldiers, 18,000 mercenaries, and 84,000 support contractors in massive and permanent military bases in Iraq is a far cry from what candidate Barack Obama described as ending "the mind-set that got us into war in the first place." It fits better with Nobel Peace laureate Obama's description of war as "not only necessary but morally justified." Read below the fold...