I am a South Jersey Friend and dad with a love out of outreach and a passion for looking afresh at Friends' testimonies, language and practices. I am the publisher of Quaker Quaker, a community site for Friends, and write about online publicity, organizing and design on my business site at MartinKelley.com.
Iraq
If you missed the leaks at the time, you can watch them at CollateralMurder.com. They are videos taken from the gun-sights of US helicopters, complete with the commentary from military personnel firing down into the Iraqi neighborhoods below them. The videos capture the killing of civilians, including two Reuters journalists. They show just how impersonal murder has become. This is a video game war and there's no real consequence to shooting the wrong target from thousands of feet away.
June 7, 2010 11:30 AM.
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baghdad, bradley manning, collateral murder, iraq, war, wikileaks
Categories: iraq , peace | Tags: baghdad, bradley manning, collateral murder, iraq, war, wikileaks
Reports are in that link up the US torture program and the hunt for the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Jonathan S Landay in McClatchy News quotes a "former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue":
"The main [reason for the torture] is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."
"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.
All this is not really a surprise; I covered it in real time over on Nonviolence.org. There were numerous reports that the Vice President and Secretary of Defense were pushing the intelligence agencies to come up with evidence that would back their flawed theories.
The United States is supposed to be the champion of freedom but we resorted to the most brutal of communist-era torture techniques because our highest officials were more interested in their cartoon view of the world than the complex reality (and not so complex: anyone who's taken an "Intro to Islam" class would know that an alliance between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden would be have been very unlikely). When facts and ideological theories don't match up, it's time to dig for more facts and revisit the ideologies.
April 22, 2009 7:13 PM.
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iraq
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abuse, ahmed chalabi, al Qaida, cheney, freedom, intelligence, interrogation, Iraq, nonviolence, osama bin laden, rumsfeld, saddam hussein, torture
Categories: iraq , peace | Tags: abuse, ahmed chalabi, al Qaida, cheney, freedom, intelligence, interrogation, Iraq, nonviolence, osama bin laden, rumsfeld, saddam hussein, torture
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners. The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.It sounds like something out of the 1962 thriller film The Manchurian Candidate. And in a way it is: the idea that Chinese Communists had used inhuman ruthlessness to unlock the secrets of the brain to create the perfect truth technique would be a charming artifact of 1950s American culture, something to show alongside the hula hoop and the Jetson-like hover cars we're all supposed to be driving in the year 2000. Instead it's yet another exhibit in Pentagon amnesia.
Doesn't anyone do any fact checking at the Pentagon? "Officials who drew on the SERE program [in 2002 to design American intelligence adaptation] appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners." And yet... it's clear that Presidents Bush and Cheney wanted false information in 2002 to launch the war against Iraq. Whatever "confessions" can be wrung from the Baghdad taxi drivers who got caught up in the arrest sweeps can certainly be used to bully the growing number who oppose the war.
But what do we want, justifications or the truth? Peace in the region or protection from sins of the past? Forget that torture is inhuman: it's also just an unreliable way of getting accurate information. It's hard to imagine a realistic scenario where the horrible events of 9/11 could have been stopped by acts of torture by U.S. intelligence or military personnel but it's could have been stopped if thoughtful analysts had been allowed to share information across agency lines and been focused on true knowledge and understanding.
July 2, 2008 1:59 AM.
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Categories: iraq , peace
The department is taking an even harder line with other Congressional committees looking into the matter, and is refusing to provide information about any role it might have played in the destruction of the videotapes.The Times article goes on to explain that scheduled grilling of CIA officials by the House Intelligence Committee will almost definitely be postponed because of the Justice Department's obstruction.
2002: the CIA tortures prisoners and films the proceedings;
2005: the CIA destroys the evidence because it would implicate those agents who conducted torture;
2007: the Justice Department tries to shut down Congressional investigations into the tapes' destruction.
Thankfully Congressional leaders don't seem to be standing down in the wake of the Justice Department bullying, with both Democrats and Republicans vowing to press on. From the Washington Post: "Congressional leaders from both parties alleged that Justice is trying to block their investigation and vowed to press ahead with hearings." Will Congress finally start demanding accountability for how American intelligence forces have been acting since 2001? Well, don't hold your breath. Still we might all be in store for some interesting revelations over the next couple of weeks.
December 15, 2007 6:53 AM.
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cia, house intelligence committee, justice department
Categories: iraq , wars and militarism | Tags: cia, house intelligence committee, justice department
Poor Cindy Sheehan, the famous anti-war mom who camped outside Bush's Crawford Texas home following the death of her son in Iraq. News comes today that she's all but resigned from the protest movement. She posted the following on her Daily Kos blog
The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party... However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."
The sad truth is that she was used. Much of the power and money in the anti-war movement comes from Democratic Party connections. Her tragic story, soccer mom looks and articulate idealism made her a natural poster girl for an anti-Bush movement that has never really been as anti-war as it's claimed.
Congressional Democrats had all the information they needed in 2002 to expose President Bush's outlandish claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But they authorized his war of aggression anyway. More recently, Americans gave them a landslide vote of confidence in last November's elections but still they step back from insisting on an Iraq pull-out. The Nonviolence.org archives are full of denunciations of President Clinton's repeated missile attacks on places like the Sudan and Afghanistan; before reinventing himself as a earth-toned eco candidate, Al Gore positioned himself as the pro-war hawk of the Democratic Party.
Anti-war activists need to build alliances and real change will need to involve insiders of both major American political parties. But as long as the movement is fueled with political money it will be beholden to those interests and will ultimately defer to back-room Capital Hill deal-making.
I feel for Cindy. She's been on a publicity roller coaster these past few years. I hope she finds the rest she needs to re-ground herself. Defeating war is the work of a lifetime and it's the work of a movement. Sheehan's witness has touched people she'll never meet. It's made a difference. She's a woman of remarkable courage who's pointing out the puppet strings she's cutting as she steps off the stage. Hats off to you Cindy.
Nonviolence.org's fundraising campaign ends in a few hours. In four months we've raised $150 which doesn't even cover that period's server costs. This project celebrates its twelfth year this fall and accurately exposed the weapons of mass destruction hoaxes in real time as they were being thrust on a gullible Congress. Cindy signed off:
Good-bye America ...you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can't make you be that country unless you want it. It's up to you now.
Sometimes I really have to unite with that sentiment.
May 29, 2007 4:56 PM.
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Categories: iraq , peace movement
From the New York Times : "I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted today of lying to F.B.I. agents and grand jurors investigating the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative amid a burning dispute over the war in Iraq."
The Washington Post notes that Libby is the highest-ranking White House official to be indicted on criminal charges in modern times.
This has been a long time coming. This is the first conviction arising from the Bush Administration's deliberate campaign to mislead Congress and the American people into the war in Iraq. Libby was Vice President Cheney's right hand man and orchestrated a nasty smear campaign against the family of Joseph Wilson, a state department diplomat who researched, questioned and publicly doubted one of the major pieces of "evidence" of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program cited by the President George W Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address.
Libby was found guilty of perjury and making false statements to investigators. In the course of the trial, it became clear that his boss, the Vice President, was actively involved in the smear. From the Post again: "Testimony and evidence revealed that the vice president dictated precise talking points he wanted Libby and other aides to use to rebut Wilson's accusations against the White House, helped select which journalists would be contacted and worked with Bush to declassify secret intelligence reports on Iraqi weapons that he believed would contradict Wilson's claims."
Unfortunately deliberately misleading Congress and the American people and holding up the most obvious forgery as a cause of war is still not considered a treasonable offense. Pity.
March 6, 2007 1:31 PM.
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Some good questions asked over at Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo: about Vice President Cheney's complicity in and essential authorship of one of the central lies at the core of the Bush administration's case for war
The truth, though, is that we are not really examining the cover-up in this case so much as we are still living within it. Most of the key facts of this episode either remain entirely concealed or buried under a mass of government produced misinformation.
January 28, 2007 9:44 AM.
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iraq
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iraq
Categories: iraq , iraq
I must be honest and admit that I've always found President Bush's State of the Union speeches unbearable. The distortions and half-truths are infuriating and the unearned confidence of a draft-dodging rich kid turned failed military adventurer just sends my blood pressure through the roof. I wish I could be detached enough to listen at least to the art of fine speech-writing but the message gets in the way.
Better then to listen to the Democratic response, given by Senator James Web. The transcript is over on the NYTimes and the video is over on YouTube. Here's a taste.
Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On the political issues those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm's way. We owed them our loyalty, as Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in defending it.
Worth a look: Josh Marshall over at TalkingPointsMemo.com had the neat idea to set up a YouTube group for people to give their own video responses to the State of the Union.
January 24, 2007 9:45 AM.
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Categories: iraq , peace movement
In the news: more than 1,000 service members sign petition to end Iraq War (Stars and Stripes), organized by the Appeal for Redress campaign sponsored by a handful of military antiwar groups including Nonviolence.org alums Veterans for Peace. The simple petition reads:
As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq. Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.Supporting the troops means making sure American lives aren't being wasted in dead-end wars. Their service and their sacrifice has been too great to continue the lies that have fueled this conflict since the very beginning, starting with the mythical Saddam/Al Qaeda connection and the phantasmic weapons of mass destruction. The current escalation (euphemised as a "surge") of troop levels is simply an escalation of a badly-run war plan. When will this all end?
Update: President Bush has admitted that the Iraq government fumbled the executions.. Meanwhile, the UN puts the 2006 Iraqi death toll at 34,000. When will Bush admit he's fumbled this whole war?
January 16, 2007 9:22 PM.
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Categories: iraq , peace movement , wars and militarism
What are the Iraqis and the American administrators thinking? Another botched execution in Baghdad, this time of Saddam Hussein's half brother. Why are the executioners dressed like terrorists, their faces covered with hoods? The videos of Saddam's execution looks like it took place deep in some hidden-away warehouse.
I'm not a big believer in capital punishment. It's primitive and barbaric and it reeks heavily of vigilante justice and the terrorist code. But if you're going to do it, you have to imbue the moment with all the solemnity of the state. The symbolism has to make clear that this is culmination of a long, considered process, that this is a necessary part of a nation's duty to provide law and order to its people.
But the new round of videos coming out of Baghdad look too much like the execution videos made by insurgents kidnapping Western workers and activists. Is the new Iraqi government simply insurgents in suits? Why doesn't Washington even care about the symbolic appearance of these high-profile executions?
January 16, 2007 12:17 PM.
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Older Entries
- What does the world gain?. World headlines for the hanging of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. He was executed for the mass killing of civilians... December 31, 2006 3:30 AM. View Comments
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- Turning on the Killing Fields. I'm returning from a working summer sabbatical from Nonviolence.org to find the world situation both completely the same and completely... August 4, 2006 8:54 AM. View Comments
- Making Friends, Making Enemies and Looking Toward the Future. The current war talk against Iran is hopelessly short-sighted. A successful US military action would only delay Iran's getting nuclear... April 14, 2006 12:24 PM. View Comments
- If at first you don't succeed: Bush targeting Iran. As iraq slides ever more incontrovertibly into civil war, President Bush looks elsewhere to secure his legacy. Seymore Hersh writes... April 10, 2006 9:27 PM. View Comments
- Christian peacemaker hostage Tom Fox found dead in iraq. Sad news coming over the internet: after 100 days of captivity, Christian peacemaker Tom Fox was found dead yesterday in... March 11, 2006 7:32 AM. View Comments
- peace movement humanitarian among iraq abductees. The UK News Telegraph is confirming what many of us in the peace movement have been worrying about all day:... November 28, 2005 8:45 PM. View Comments
- US admits to chemical weapons use in Nov 2004 attack on Falluja. The Pentagon has just admitted that it used white phosphorous as incendary chemical weapon in it's attacks against insurgents in... November 16, 2005 5:48 PM. View Comments
- Bush: Let Torture Sing?. There's a reasonable expectation that intelligence agencies should be possessed of a certain degree of intelligence. The graphic pictures of... October 25, 2005 7:44 PM. View Comments
- Reporters letting themselves be tools of partisan dirty tricks. Now that the evidence is building that the Plame outing was a political dirty trick from one of the top... July 18, 2005 12:05 PM. View Comments
- Bush's spinmeiser Rove behind Wilson/Plame smear campaign?. Rove posing as a patriotThere's evidence that one of President Bush's key aids was involved with the leak that revealed... July 12, 2005 11:01 AM. View Comments
- Jail for all the wrong reasons. Judith Miller in cursor.org parody photo referring to her tendency to print dubious WMD intelligence from Ahmed Chalabi, Bush's favorite... June 28, 2005 8:42 AM. View Comments
- Wapo: Army is bungling recruitment. Today's Washington Post has an article claiming that the Army is "bungling recruitment. The continuing stream of combat deaths in... June 11, 2005 10:54 PM. View Comments
- Presidential Commission on Prewar Intellegence. It seems beyond yesterday's news but the findings of the presidential commission on intelligence gives more evidence about the deeply-flawed... April 1, 2005 7:57 AM. View Comments
- More Detainee Deaths. The New York Times is reporting that "at least 26 prisoners have died in American custody in iraq and Afghanistan... March 16, 2005 8:44 AM. View Comments
- iraqi Elections. Today of course is the day iraq votes. Much of what we'd say here has been written elsewhere: that large-scale... January 30, 2005 9:18 AM. View Comments
- Is Iran Next?. Over at the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh is reporting that forces in the Bush Administration are looking at war with... January 24, 2005 9:17 AM. View Comments
- These are Related. First-hand accounts from journalists at the scene of yesterday's Mosul blast at a U.S. based that killed 24 and wounded... December 22, 2004 4:57 PM. View Comments
- CBS News Covers New Conscientious Objectors. 60 Minutes is doing a story tonight on the 5500 soliders who have disobeyed orders and deserted their military duties... December 8, 2004 8:55 AM. View Comments
- Exporing Failed Military Adventures: Who's Next?. The United Nations reports that Afghan Poppy Growing Reaches Record Level. It's nice to know that the Bush Administration made... November 19, 2004 12:40 PM. View Comments
- Everyday Atrocities. Warblogging is running transcripts and video stills of a U.S. Marine kiling an wounded insurgent in cold blood, in front... November 16, 2004 2:12 PM. View Comments
- Falluja Assault and Battlefields to Come. Today the United States military began an extensive campaign against the iraqi city of Falluja, which has been under the... November 8, 2004 2:25 PM. View Comments
- Losing the War in iraq. The New York Times reports today that U.S. military forces have conceded that rebels control large portions of iraq. Fighting... September 8, 2004 8:54 AM. View Comments
- The Times just can't apologize enough. A follow-up to our May New York Times might apologize piece. In a new Op/Ed piece they keep apologizing But... July 20, 2004 10:40 AM. View Comments
- July Surprise on the Way?. Disturbing reports that the White House continues to play politics with the "War on Terrorism." First the Republican National Convention... July 9, 2004 1:41 PM. View Comments
- The Spin of Sovereignty. We're told this week that the sovereignty of iraq has been transfered back to the iraqi people. What if it... June 29, 2004 9:11 AM. View Comments
- "Full sovereignty" in iraq. Over on "The Picket Line," some good quotes, commentary and links about the farce meant by "full sovereignty" in iraq:... May 27, 2004 11:01 AM. View Comments
- Ducking the blame with details. When I posted the Slate article last night I missed that the New York Times' From the Editor piece had... May 27, 2004 9:02 AM. View Comments
- NY Times might apologize for pre-war WMD coverage. According to Slate magazine, the New York Times is about to issue an "editor's Note" apologizing for its coverage leading... May 26, 2004 8:42 PM. View Comments
- U.S.'s favorite iraqi a Spy?. The spy in the bespoke suitGuess who's looking like a spy for Iran? Ahmed Chalabi: the guy who gave President... May 22, 2004 10:20 AM. View Comments
- Donald Rumsfeld's Pacifist Dilemma Game. Seymour Hersh, in the New Yorker, claims that the Abu Ghraib torture was an extension of a secret torture program... May 16, 2004 11:23 AM. View Comments
- US military proxies held Berg before decaptiation; who were his executioners?. The U.S. media is giving all-out coverage to video stills of an American named Nicholas Berg, who was decapitated by... May 11, 2004 11:31 PM. View Comments
- The Roots of Nonviolence. I've been finding it a bit difficult to comment on all the recent news on the iraq front. So much... May 1, 2004 12:14 PM. View Comments
- Conscientious Objector to Israeli WMDs. Nuclear whistleblower Mordachai Vanunu will be released from Israeli prisons in a month's time, so I'll repost this entry from... March 22, 2004 11:55 AM. View Comments
- Pretending we just didn't know WMDs weren't there. Joshua Micah Marshall deconstructs the mis-information about all the nonexistent iraqi weapons of mass destruction, focusing on President Bush's latest... February 18, 2004 8:35 PM. View Comments
- Tutu wants apology for war. South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu helped lead his country out of apartheid and the Nobel peace Prize winner has been... February 16, 2004 10:51 AM. View Comments
- The Bean Bomb Comes Back. In case any of you were getting lazy on national defense, back in the news comes Ricin. Someone recently mailed... February 4, 2004 7:11 PM. View Comments
- Arms Inspector admits U.S. wrong about WMDs. Although it doesn't shock those who have followed the Weapons of Mass Destruction scandal with a critical eye over the... January 29, 2004 12:06 PM. View Comments
- Krugman: Credential of Critics Getting Better. New York _Times_ columnist Paul Krugman writes about a Ron Suskind's new book "The Price of Loyalty" that gives an... January 14, 2004 8:32 PM. View Comments
- VITW: The Capture of Saddam Hussein. For a decade, Voices in the Wilderness educated the American people about the devastating effects of the cold war of... December 28, 2003 12:34 PM. View Comments
- Beware Shaking Hands. Recently declassified documents show that American officials didn't care about iraq atrocities or weapons of mass destruction back in the... December 25, 2003 6:26 PM. View Comments
- Presidential "Anxiousness". A special investigatory panel chaired by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft is now finishing a report that faults the... December 25, 2003 5:57 PM. View Comments
- end of a Tyrant. It is good news that Saddam Hussein has finally been captured, alive, just outside Tikrit. A man who murdered thousands,... December 14, 2003 4:57 PM. View Comments
- Understanding the Occupier's Mind. Unpopular occupying forces spend most of their time "pacifying" the very people they're trying to liberate. From Vietnam to the... December 7, 2003 10:00 AM. View Comments
- Architect of War agrees it was illegal?. The U.S. war against iraq just gets stranger every day. One of the key people behind the war told a... November 21, 2003 8:05 PM. View Comments
- "No one beat me, no one slapped me, no one, nothing". The most exagerrated story of the iraq War has to be that of Private Jessica Lynch's capture, torture and rescue.... November 8, 2003 10:00 PM. View Comments
- Last Minute iraqi Appeals for peace were Ignored. There are new reports that the "iraqi government was suing for peace":http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/politics/06INTe.html?ex=1383454800&en=15070e5de808c497&ei=5007&partner=USeRLAND back in March even as U.S. troops gathered... November 6, 2003 9:15 AM. View Comments
- Reclaiming Hope: The peace Movement After the War. In the current issue of _Fellowship_ magazine, Paul Rogat Loeb says it's a time for peace activists to be "Reclaiming... November 3, 2003 7:47 PM. View Comments
- Scandal du Jour: Vice President leaking CIA Names. In the last year scandals seem to follow a curious pattern: they rise up, get a lot of talk in... October 2, 2003 10:47 AM. View Comments
- Bush fails to win after-the-war support. When Bush bypassed the U.N. to start the war with Iraq singlehandedly with only a few major allies, he took... September 26, 2003 11:01 AM. View Comments
- WMDs Don't exist. As the months of Iraq occupation have gone by it has become more and more clear that no weapons of... September 26, 2003 11:00 AM. View Comments
- President Recants, Then Doesn't. everyone's abuzz at President Bush's explicit statement that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and the... September 18, 2003 7:24 PM. View Comments
- Unanswered Questions of 9/11. From _Slate's_ David Plotz, "What You What You Think You Know About Sept. 11...But Don't":http://slate.msn.com/id/2088092/, from the twentieth hijacker to... September 12, 2003 3:25 AM. View Comments
- Big Lies & Mass Hysteria. It was Adolf Hitler, the world's most notrious dictator, who told us that "The great mass of people ... will... September 11, 2003 7:19 PM. View Comments
- Creating Terrorists with War Fever. In the New York Times, Paul Krugman argues that the Iraq war was a giant bait-and-switch in his article, Other... September 11, 2003 6:53 PM. View Comments
- Weapons? no. Program? no. Scientists? no. High School Calc? A-ha!. Okay, so the justification for the war on Iraq was the weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein had ready to... September 5, 2003 5:13 PM. View Comments
- NY Times on Bush Course Changes. The _Times_ today looks at the "Bush Administration back-tracking on Iraq and North Korea":www.nytimes.com/2003/09/05/international/middleeast/05ASSe.html. Military firepower and bullying intimidation have... September 5, 2003 12:18 PM. View Comments
- Iraq War Costs Rise. The head of the U.S. occupation in Iraq has announced that the "Iraq rebuilding effort will costs tens of billions... August 27, 2003 8:08 PM. View Comments
- The Real Winners: War Profiteers in Iraq. With the U.S. economy down and jobs scarce, everyone's looking for the big boom industries of the Bush Administration. _Dollars... August 21, 2003 8:18 PM. View Comments
- 'I will probably be found dead in the woods'. The case of David Kelly, the British weapons inspector who anonymously told the BBC that the Blair Administration "sexed up"... August 21, 2003 7:44 PM. View Comments
- Hutton Inquiries shed light on British WMD exaggerations. Inquiries into the "manufactured threat of WMDs":http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3161719.stm have been going on this week in england, a result of the suicide... August 18, 2003 6:59 PM. View Comments
- Who's the liar now?. Oh yes, and the Iraqi chemical weapons trucks? They were actually for weather balloons just like the Iraqis claimed. It's... August 10, 2003 11:40 AM. View Comments
- Overwhelming patterns of Bush Administration lies. A major article by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus in the _Washington Post_ "blows open Bush Administration lies about Iraq's... August 10, 2003 10:45 AM. View Comments
- "The generals love napalm". More reports that the U.S. used internationally banned napalm against Iraq, this time from the UK _Independent_. Best quote comes... August 10, 2003 10:10 AM. View Comments
- Banned Chemical Weapons, then and now. 2,200 tons of outlawed chemical weapons in the news. Not in Iraq, but in Alabama. A citizen's organization called the... August 8, 2003 7:48 PM. View Comments
- When is Napalm not Napalm?. More word games at the Pentagon. They've recently denied reports that they used napalm against troops in Iraq. Reporters have... August 7, 2003 12:41 PM. View Comments
- With pressure gone, Iraqi scientists still deny WMD program. From the _Washington Post_: "Jailed Iraqi scientists still deny arms program":http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5497-2003Jul30.html bq. Some scientists have been arrested and held for... August 4, 2003 8:52 AM. View Comments
- Did Saddam bluff, did Pentagon fool itself?. U.S. government officials keep promising that some Iraqi scientist will come forward to show U.S. military forces where all the... August 2, 2003 2:03 PM. View Comments
- Shift Stories, Debunked Lies. In the Washington Post, an article on shifting U.S. rhetoric. The basic story: Bush silent on missing weapons, going back... August 1, 2003 2:47 PM. View Comments
- True Faith Claiming empire. For those who wonder how the Bush Administration could press a war forward even though they knew they didn't have... August 1, 2003 10:21 AM. View Comments
- "Do you think all this would've happened if Iraq's chief export was broccoli?". From Gutless Pacifist, a question of etiquette: how might the world's biggest oil companies tactfully apologize... July 31, 2003 11:37 PM. View Comments
- Conservatives Jump on Voices Recant. There are plenty of conservative sites jumping on the recantation of the Voices in the Wilderness ex-member. Most of the... July 31, 2003 8:29 PM. View Comments
- Confessions of an Anti-Sactions Activist. There are a bunch of fascinating rants against the contemporary peace movement as the result of an article by Charles... July 30, 2003 11:10 AM. View Comments
- Were Iraq Sanctions Right?. David Rieff writes a good article in the New York Times asking whether sanctions in Iraq were ethical. It seems... July 29, 2003 4:25 PM. View Comments
- Niger : it's US & UK domestic politics. In a reminder that the politics of blame are overlaid on real countries, the African country of Niger has demanded... July 27, 2003 9:24 PM. View Comments
- Condi Rice the next under the WMD scandal microscope. The Washington Post has an interesting article on National Secuity advisor Condoleezza Rice. She's being asked the same question we've... July 27, 2003 1:41 PM. View Comments
- Genocidal dictator hosted by Sauds. Uganda's Idi Amin, one of the most brutal dictators in the Twentieth Century is near death in a coma. As... July 26, 2003 3:05 PM. View Comments
- The Saudi 9/11 connections starts coming to light. By Martin Kelley. The Bush White House is still giving a free pass to the real country behind the 9/11... July 26, 2003 2:47 PM. View Comments
- Slate: Cheney Wraps His Glutes in the Flag. Timothy Noah of Slate talks about Vice President Dick Cheney's unapolegetic speech before the American enterprise Institute. It's clear that... July 24, 2003 9:20 PM. View Comments
- CBS Calls Pres "George W Nixon". It's becoming hip to start comparing President George W Bush with past holders of his office. CBSNews.Com's Dick Meyer is... July 24, 2003 8:57 PM. View Comments
- Oh, you mean THOSe CIA briefings??. Today the White House suddenly remembered they did get two CIA documents doubting the Niger/Iraq connection a full three months... July 23, 2003 9:06 AM. View Comments
- The Real Story: White House treasonable dirty tricks against whistleblower's wife. All the blogs are a-titter about the possibility that Saddam Hussein's sons might have been killed. Who cares? They've certainly... July 22, 2003 6:56 PM. View Comments
- Krugman: Who's Patriotic Now. The New York Times' Paul Krugman must have read my morning essay. Well, or great minds think alike. In today's... July 22, 2003 6:30 PM. View Comments
- We allowed ourselves to be lied to. Feature essay by Martin Kelley. So the President lied. He passed along forged evidence to scare the American people into... July 22, 2003 9:21 AM. View Comments
- Blunt assertions, no evidence, no investigation. The Washington Post has an article about the Bush White House's common practice of making unattributed statements about Iraq without... July 21, 2003 1:31 PM. View Comments
- U.S. Started War Prep in 2002. It's pretty obvious by now that the Administration of George W. Bush came into office wanting a second Gulf War.... July 20, 2003 12:02 PM. View Comments
- White House smear campaign: Gay and Canadian!. This would be funny if it weren't serious. This would be serious if it weren't pathetic. A few days ago... July 18, 2003 6:29 PM. View Comments
- "Have you ever felt like the fall guy?". Story here. In strange and sad news, the man who was probably the unnamed "senior official" who first told the... July 18, 2003 11:00 AM. View Comments
- "Darn Good Intelligence". The Washington Post has a remarkably-wrong assertion by George W. Bush. The President says he decided to start the war... July 15, 2003 10:06 PM. View Comments
- The Bean Defense. The Bean Defense... Readers might remember the field day I had a few weeks ago when US occupying forces announced... July 15, 2003 12:02 PM. View Comments
- Classifying Intelligence Blunders. The U.S. Justice Department might be throwing out its prosecution of suspected Al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui because it doesn't... July 15, 2003 9:11 AM. View Comments
- "The president have moved On". "The president is pleased that the director of central intelligence acknowledged what needed to be acknowledged. The president has moved... July 13, 2003 12:52 PM. View Comments
- Twenty Lies About the War. From the Al-Qaida/Iraq forgery to the Niger/Iraq forgery, from the "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch to the joke that Iraqis... July 13, 2003 12:40 PM. View Comments
- CIA Director Tenet takes the bullet for his President. After a war of finger-pointing between the White House and the CIA, George Tenet has admitted responsibility: "These 16 words... July 11, 2003 7:40 PM. View Comments
- Another brick in the wall. CBS News is getting blunt with its headline "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was Dubious." From the article: "The statement was... July 11, 2003 2:34 PM. View Comments
- George Bush's Homepage?. Here's the wonderfully-smart Weapons of Mass Destruction spoof page, proving once again that satire can be the best weapon against... July 10, 2003 10:37 AM. View Comments
- Brit officials now think WMDs not to be found. Brit officials: "unlikely to be found" every day it becomes harder to claim or believe that US occupying forces will... July 10, 2003 10:07 AM. View Comments
- No doubt no doubt no doubt. I'll just let President Bush speak for himself (emphasis added):There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was... July 9, 2003 4:59 PM. View Comments
- UPDATeD: What Did the President Know?. UPDATe: Thanks to Sejenus (see first comment) for letting us know that this story has been declared a hoax. The... July 9, 2003 2:58 PM. View Comments
- Conceding points no one is disputing. "This is a classic case of trying to jump out ahead of a story by conceding a point that no... July 8, 2003 3:45 PM. View Comments
- White House admits it was wrong about Iraq nuke program. One "senior official" at the White House is quoted as saying: "White House admits it was wrong about Iraq nuke... July 8, 2003 8:54 AM. View Comments
- Swaggering behind Bodyguards. Yesterday Bush went macho when asked about Iraqi baddies: "Bring them on" he crowed to a group of reporters. Well... July 3, 2003 4:15 PM. View Comments
- More claims of WMDs--When will they give up?. The big news of the day is some US Senator from Kansas saying he's seen the evidence of Iraqi Weapons... July 3, 2003 4:13 PM. View Comments
- Does this mean it's officially a quagmire?. President Bush yesterday told a largely-military audience at the White House that the occupation of Iraq will be a "massive... July 2, 2003 10:12 AM. View Comments
- The WMD Scandal Goes Mainstream. Time Magazine quotes President Bush asking each of his aides in turn: "Are you in charge of finding WMD?" It... June 30, 2003 4:18 PM. View Comments
- If Iron-Fisted Rule Worked for Saddam.... Occupation forces in Iraq have canceled upcoming elections. Instead of democracy, the US is choosing the mayors and provincial leaders,... June 28, 2003 5:41 PM. View Comments
- Centrifuge parts are old news. International Atomic energy Agency says the recently-discovered and hyped equipment dates to before the 1991 Gulf War. But as I... June 27, 2003 7:26 PM. View Comments
- US: Iraqis Planned Operation Fart and Stink. In the news today is the latest U.S. claim of evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Read past the... June 27, 2003 6:31 PM. View Comments
- Is the war over?. Is the war over? asked "Nowhere Man" on the Nonviolence Board a week, citing over three dozen articles on continued... June 27, 2003 11:58 AM. View Comments
- embedded Reporter or In-Bed-With Reporter?... There has been a lot of speculation of the "highly unusual" role of New York Times reporter Judith Miller in... June 26, 2003 11:45 AM. View Comments
- Denial and Deception. At the New York Times, Op-ed Columnist Paul Krugman comes right out and says it:There is no longer any serious... June 24, 2003 5:05 PM. View Comments
- The Perfect President for the Reality Show Generation?. Slate's Timothy Noah asks "Can Bush Be Both Ignorant and a Liar?" and concludes that its "impossible to tell--and, ultimately,... June 24, 2003 4:51 PM. View Comments
- Most of the People Most of the Time. A poll by the Washington Post and ABC News says most Americans support U.S. military action in Iran to stop... June 24, 2003 3:17 PM. View Comments
- The Selling of the Iraq War. The New Republic has a long article by John B Judis & Spencer Ackerman detailing the subversion of the intelligence... June 21, 2003 1:31 PM. View Comments
- From the 'Are We Surprised?' Department. This week former General Wesley Clark told NBC's Meet the Press that the White House called him just hours after... June 20, 2003 6:56 PM. View Comments
- Michael Kinsley: Does it matter if Iraq didn't have WMDs?. The editor of Slate wonders if the whole question of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction even matters. "By now, WMD... June 20, 2003 5:56 PM. View Comments
- Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure from Cheney Visits. The Washington Post reports that "senior intelligence officials" at the CIA felt pressured Vice President Dick Cheney's multiple visits to... June 9, 2003 5:04 PM. View Comments
- Who Lied About Weapons of Mass Destruction?. It's time to state the obvious: there weren't any "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. The stated rationale for this... May 31, 2003 3:29 PM. View Comments
- Overview of the Iraq Crisis (March 2003). Last updated March 2003 What is the Crisis? The Persian Gulf War in 1991 ended in a stalemate between... March 20, 2003 11:35 AM. View Comments
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