OMNI
NEWSLETTER
ON IRAQ
BUILDING A CULTURE OF PEACE & JUSTICE TO REPLACE THE CULTURE OF WAR
and EMPIRE, Dick Bennett, Editor.
(#17,
June 19, 2014; #16 June 14, 2014; #15 Sept. 30, 2013; #14 March 19, 2013; #13,
Nov. 3, 2012; #12 March 19, 2012; #11 Feb.9, 2012; #10, October 18, 2011; #9 August 8, 2011; #8
March 19, 2011; #7, April 29, 2010; #6 March 17, 2010, # 5 June 1, 2008; #4
April 3, 2008; #3 March 24, 2008, #2
Jan. 16, 2008, #1 Nov. 2, 2007.)
What’s at stake:
“America Iraq war is
not over, and that’s why we need to have a record, so the next time someone in Washington Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs (May 2014, p. 44).
My
blog: War Department/Peace Department
My
Newsletters:
Index:
See OMNI Patriotism Forum, Patriot Day
Nos. 10-16 at
end.
Contents
Illegal Iraq
Parry,
President Obama’s Choices
Contact
President and Representatives
Contact the President, Oppose Another War, from
Historians Against the War
Peace Action, via HAW, Contact President Obama
JustForeignPolicy, Denounce US Military Action in Iraq
Lessons
Learned
Jon Perr, 10 Lessons Learned from the Iraq
Jim Wright, A Navy Seal’s Angry Reply to Defenders
of the War from Bush/Cheney/Rice to Mitt
Romney
Romney
Juan Cole, Don’t Trust the Bombing
Engelhadt, Violent Jihadism Intensifying Thanks to
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice-Powell
Juan Cole, Iran
Reuters, Possible Iran/US Cooperation vs. Sunni
Insurrection
Sunni Rebellion Spreading
Redrawing
the Map of Iraq
Attack
on Oil Refinery
Obama at a
Crossroad of War or Peace
19 June 14
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arack Obama is at a crossroads of his presidency: one path leads to
heightened conflicts favored by Official Washington’s neoconservatives and
liberal interventionists; the other requires cooperation with past adversaries,
such as
For the first five-plus years of his administration, Obama has
sought to straddle this divide, maintaining traditional U.S. alliances that have pushed for Washington ’s violent interference in the affairs of other
countries, particularly in the Middle East, but also collaborating behind the
scenes with Russia
But the days of such splitting the difference are ending. Obama
will soon have to decide to either stand up to the still influential neocons as
well as hawks in his own administration and seek help from Russia and Iran to
resolve conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere — or join the neocon
warpath against Russia, Iran and Syria.
The first option would mean breaking with old allies, including
the Saudi monarchy and Israel ’s
Likud government, and rejecting their view that Iran
and the so-called “Shiite crescent” from Tehran
through Baghdad and Damascus
to Beirut represent the greatest threat to U.S. and their own interests in the Middle East .
This departure from the old
ways would require realistic negotiations over the Syrian civil war,
accepting the continued rule of President Bashar al-Assad at least for the near
future; reaching an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program; and resolving the
Ukraine crisis in a way that addresses Russia’s security concerns, including
accepting Crimea’s decision to rejoin Russia, agreeing to a federated structure
for Ukraine and keeping Ukraine out of NATO.
Sticking to the other [old]
route would follow the interests of Saudi Arabia
and Israel into new conflicts:
deeper intervention in Syria ’s
civil war with the goal of overthrowing Assad; rejection of Iran ’s offers to compromise on its nuclear
program; and intensified confrontation with Russia
over Ukraine
This “tough-guy-ism” would surely make Official Washington’s
pundits and pols happy. They could boast about American resolve in support of
“freedom” and “human rights” — even if it led to worse tyranny, mass killings
and economic pain.
MORE http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/24326-focus-obama-at-a-crossroad-of-war-or-peace
GLOBAL
IS LOCAL, LOCAL GLOBAL
“Conflicts
in our age have become both local and global, blurring the distinction between
the two. We can no longer speak of local
and national conflicts without considering their international implications,
nor can we ignore the impact of global trends and relations on local
issues.” Ibrahim Kalin, “Islam and
Peace,” in Crescent and Dove, ed. by
Qamar-ul Huda (USIP, 2010, p. 30).
Action Alert: Oppose US Military Intervention
in Iraq
haw-info-bounces@stopthewars.org on behalf of Carolyn Eisenberg
[Carolyn.Eisenberg@Hofstra.edu]
To:
haw-info@stopthewars.org
Attachments:
Monday, June 16, 2014 8:37 AM
Send A Message Today!
Tell Your Member of Congress to:
Oppose US Military Intervention in Iraq and Syria
Oppose the $ 571 Billion Defense Appropriations
Bill
Congressional Switchboard: 202-224-3121
As the situation in Iraq deteriorates, the “Never
Learn” caucus is demanding US military intervention in the form of ground
troops, air strikes, Special Operations and weapons deliveries. The
unfolding tragedy in Iraq United States to involve itself militarily in Iraq
This coming week the House of Representatives is
set to pass a $571 billion Defense Appropriations bill. Our oversized military drains resources from
urgent domestic needs. The United
States
Please Call your Reps today and
tell them:
No to $571 Billion FY 2015
Defense Appropriations bill !
No to Military Intervention in Iraq or Syria
There is immense pressure on
the President for military intervention in Iraq
and Syria
Carolyn Eisenberg and Margaret Power for Historians Against the War
Steering Committee
Some useful articles:
[haw-info] Tell President Obama "Don't
Try to Put Out the Fire in Iraq
haw-info-bounces@stopthewars.org on behalf of Marc Becker
[marc@yachana.org]
Actions
To:
haw-info@stopthewars.org
Attachments:
Friday, June 13, 2014 4:05 PM
Flag for follow up.
Start by Sunday, June 15, 2014. Due by Sunday, June 15, 2014.
The rapid
disintegration of the Iraqi Army has created enormous pressure on the White
House to take military action. While the President has ruled out the use of
American troops, other military interventions-including air strikes- are being
actively considered. National Peace
Action has put out an action
alert directed to the White House. We are pasting it in here for your
consideration. We encourage you to forward it to friends.
Steering Committee of Historians Against the War
Steering Committee of Historians Against the War
|
||
|
Dear Dick,
President Obama is under heavy pressure to order directU.S. military intervention in Iraq and Syria U.S.
Thanks to Reps. Barbara Lee [2] and John Conyers, we have a crucial opportunity TODAY to push back against the warmongers. The House will be voting on amendments to the defense appropriation that would block directU.S. military action in Iraq and block the U.S.
Call Rep. Steve Womack at (202) 225-4301 today. When you reach a staffer (or leave a voice mail) say
President Obama is under heavy pressure to order direct
Thanks to Reps. Barbara Lee [2] and John Conyers, we have a crucial opportunity TODAY to push back against the warmongers. The House will be voting on amendments to the defense appropriation that would block direct
Call Rep. Steve Womack at (202) 225-4301 today. When you reach a staffer (or leave a voice mail) say
I urge you to support Barbara Lee’s amendments
to the defense appropriation to block funds from being used to wage another war
in Iraq United
States
When you're done, report
your call with our easy
response form:
http://justforeignpolicy.org/act/iraq-call-in
Robert Naiman and Megan Iorio
Just Foreign Policy
Help us meet our June fundraising goal—make a $10 tax-deductible contribution today!
We have $3,480 left to raise by the end of the month. Your financial support helps us create opportunities for Americans to agitate for a more just foreign policy.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate
References:
1.“What to Do With the Twins?” Thomas Friedman, New York Times, June 17, 2014,http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/opinion/thomas-friedman-the-conundrum-of-a-unified-iraq-and-a-unified-syria.html
2. “Amendments Opposing Iraq War Could Put House Democrats in Tough Spot,” Emma Dumain, Roll Call, June 18, 2014, http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/amendments-opposing-iraq-war-could-put-house-democrats-in-tough-spot/
http://justforeignpolicy.org/act/iraq-call-in
Robert Naiman and Megan Iorio
Just Foreign Policy
Help us meet our June fundraising goal—make a $10 tax-deductible contribution today!
We have $3,480 left to raise by the end of the month. Your financial support helps us create opportunities for Americans to agitate for a more just foreign policy.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate
References:
1.“What to Do With the Twins?” Thomas Friedman, New York Times, June 17, 2014,http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/opinion/thomas-friedman-the-conundrum-of-a-unified-iraq-and-a-unified-syria.html
2. “Amendments Opposing Iraq War Could Put House Democrats in Tough Spot,” Emma Dumain, Roll Call, June 18, 2014, http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/amendments-opposing-iraq-war-could-put-house-democrats-in-tough-spot/
MARCH 19, 2013: 10th ANNIVERSARY OF US
For a full list of US military deaths
in Iraq and Afghanistan Iraq
Dick,
Here is an article from Daily Kos
which sums up why USA or
anyone should stay away from war anywhere - especially in the Middle
East .
Carl
This communication may
be monitored and collected without consent in secret by the NSA
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/15/1306639/-10-lessons-from-Bush-s-fiasco-in-Iraq
attribution: History Channel Video
"Obama lost Iraq Mosul and Tikrit to the forces
of the Islamic State in Iraq U.S.
forces in Iraq
But
foaming-at-the-mouth Republicans and their furious right-wing allies aren't
just wrong. They are desperately trying to evade paternity for a world-historical
calamity they birthed and still support. Iraq was lost the moment the
first U.S. troops crossed the border from Kuwait.
It's no surprise
Republicans are running away from Bush's bastard. After all, there were no
weapons of mass destruction. Saddam posed no imminent threat to the United States Afghanistan
threatens the United States
of America
In the run-up to the
invasion of the Iraq
But that's not the only maxim George W. Bush and his
allies should have learned from their debacle in Iraq Iraq
1. Don't Fight Wars on
the Cheap
Going to war without
the manpower needed to bring victory and secure the peace was one of the first
things the Bush administration should have learned in Afghanistan
But by the beginning
of 2003, Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were repeating their
mistake, only on a much larger scale. That February top Army General Eric
Shinseki warned Congress and the Bush administration that the American occupation of Iraq
would require "something on the order of several
hundred thousand soldiers." And for that honesty and prescience, General
Shinseki was mocked and ridiculed. As Rumsfeld put it:
The idea that it would
take several hundred thousand U.S.
Rumsfeld's
deputy Paul Wolfowitz was
even more scathing. Wolfowitz, who just days after the invasion claimed
"we're dealing with a country that could really finance its own
reconstruction, and relatively soon," lambasted Shinseki at a hearing of
the House Budget Committee:
Some of the higher-end
predictions that we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will
take several hundred thousand U.S.
troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq
When chaos erupted in Baghdad less
than a month after the start of the U.S. invasion, Rumsfeld brushed it off:
"Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit
crimes and do bad things."
As it turned out, Shinseki
was right. But it would take another four years until his wisdom was widely
acknowledged. On January 10, 2007—the same day President Bush announced his
"surge" to reverse the exploding civil war in Iraq—the New
York Times reported, New Strategy Vindicates Ex-Army
Chief Shinseki.
2. Don't Uncork
Bottled Up Sectarian Divisions
The under-sized
occupation force wasn't the only thing crisis Shinseki foresaw before President
Bush began to "shock and awe." He also highlighted a key reason why a
much larger American troop presence would be needed in post-Saddam Iraq
We're talking about
post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant
with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems.
Problems, indeed.
While Saddam Hussein and his Sunni minority regime had used brutality and
foreign conflicts to keep the Shiite majority and Kurdish separatists under
control, the carnage following the first Gulf War showed what Iraq's pent-up
sectarian divisions could produce once unleashed.
Behind closed doors,
Secretary Rumsfeld admitted as much. In his famous October 15, 2002,"Parade of Horribles"
memo, he fretted (briefly, to be sure) that "Iraq could
experience ethnic strife among Sunni, Shia, and Kurds." As he put it in
Point 17:
US could fail to
manage post-Saddam Hussein Iraq
successfully, with the result that it could fracture into two or three pieces,
to the detriment of the Middle East and the benefit of Iran
Within weeks of
toppling Saddam, the United States
was fighting former regime insurgents in the Sunni triangle, Shiite militias in
Baghdad and Basra
Nevertheless, in August 2004 President
Bush explained the growing U.S.
Had we had to do it
[the invasion of Iraq
Or as Vice President Dick Cheney put
it almost two years before General David Petraeus led the U.S.
Nine years after
Cheney made that laughable statement, sectarian conflict has mushroomed across the Middle
East. And as Dexter Filkins explained,
the rise of ISIS in northwest Iraq can be attributed in large measure to the
chaos across the border in Syria:
But as we'll see
below, President Bush's man, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, made matters
much, much worse.
3. Al Qaeda Thought It
Was Better to Fight Us There
On October 14, 2003,
President Bush announced that "we're making great progress in Iraq"
before turning to a talking point he
would use for years to come:
We'd rather fight them
there than here.
As it turned out, Al
Qaeda fighters across the Middle East and North Africa
felt the same way.
Before he launched his
war in Iraq
BUSH: One of the major
theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq
RADDATZ: But not until after the U.S.
BUSH: Yeah, that's
right. So what? The point is that al Qaeda said they're going to take a stand.
Well, first of all in the post-9/11 environment Saddam Hussein posed a threat.
And then upon removal, al Qaeda decides to take a stand.
4. Sectarian U.S.
In August 2006,
the Washington Post reported,
"Tribal sheikhs in Iraq 's
Anbar province turned against a chief U.S. U.S.
troops into Iraq
Too often the light at
the tunnel has turned out to be a train, but I really believe -- I really
believe that there's a strong possibility that you may see a very substantial
change in Anbar province due to this new changes in our relationships with the
sheiks in the region.
But the decision
of Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha and
other Sunni tribal leaders to turn on the Al Qaeda forces led by Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi and partner with the U.S. in arming some 90,000Sons of Iraq came
with a big asterisk attached. As the Post noted in 2008:
But experts stress the
moves by Sunni sheikhs was less an embrace of U.S.
objectives and more a repudiation of al-Qaeda in Iraq
"The Americans think they have purchased
Sunni loyalty," Nir Rosen, a fellow at New York University
Center
By late 2007, there
were already worries that the Sunnis wouldn't stay bought, with Shiite
politicians and CIA analysts warning that "when the U.S. leaves, what
we'll have are two armies" and "there is a danger here that we are
going to have armed all three sides: the Kurds in the north, the Shiite and now
the Sunni militias." And that risk would be elevated if the
Shiite-controlled government led by Prime Minister Al-Maliki refused to
accommodate Sunni interests in Baghdad
The Shiite-dominated
central government has arrested prominent Sunnis on accusations that they are
secret members of the long-disbanded Baath Party, which has alienated Sunni
elites. Meanwhile, a Sunni revolt a few hundred miles to the north of here
against the Shiite-aligned government in neighboring Syria
Last month, government police officers wounded
two guards and detained two others in a raid on the home of a Sunni, Sheik Albo
Baz, in Salahuddin Province , prompting a protest by several thousand
Sunnis in Samarra
This followed the roundup by police officers
of 600 suspected Baath Party sympathizers in October; they were accused of
planning a coup.
For the moment,
Abu Risha and many of the Sunni tribal leaders remain allied with the central
government in Baghdad ISIS intensified, many
of their Sons of Iraq did not. Many Sunni members of the Iraqi army simply
walked away.
5. Don't Hitch the U.S.
That's why, as Fred Kaplan put
it, "The collapse of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, has little to do
with the withdrawal of American troops and everything to do with the political
failure of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki." It was, after all, Maliki who
refused to sign a permanent status of forces agreement with the U.S.
Writing in the New
Yorker, Dexter Filkins recalled Maliki's ascension to the premiership
engineered by the Bush administration. In 2006, Bush undermined the incumbent
PM, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who struggling to form a government:
An avuncular, bookish
figure, Jaafari had infuriated Bush with his indecisiveness, amiably presiding
over the sectarian bloodbath that had followed the recent bombing of a major
Shiite shrine.
During the videoconference, Bush asked
Khalilzad, "Can you get rid of Jaafari?"
"Yes,"
Khalilzad replied, "but it will be difficult."
Difficult, but not
impossible. "I have a name for you," a CIA offered told U.S.
Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, "Maliki."
And as Filkins explained this week,
"Maliki is a militant sectarian to the core, and he had been fighting on
behalf of Iraq's long-suppressed Shiite majority for years before the Americans
arrived, in 2003." That also explains in part why John McCain and Lindsey Graham urged
President Bush in September 2008 to engineer a coup against Maliki. That's why
Filkins, who believes the U.S.
should have tried harder to maintain a small legacy force in place, believes
Al-Maliki is "probably the dominant" factor in the current
disintegration in Iraq
Time and again,
American commanders have told me, they stepped in front of Maliki to stop him
from acting brutally and arbitrarily toward Iraq
In the two and a half
years since the Americans' departure, Maliki has centralized power within his
own circle, cut the Sunnis out of political power, and unleashed a wave of
arrests and repression. Maliki's march to authoritarian rule has fueled the
reëmergence of the Sunni insurgency directly. With nowhere else to go, Iraq
That was evident
in rapid ISIS takeover of Mosul.
The much larger Iraqi army units evaporated in the face of hundreds of ISIS fighters. On Thursday, the Washington
For many in the mostly
Sunni city, the ouster of the hated national security forces was welcome,
offering a sign of just how much the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad
With his declaration
of emergency coming just two weeks after a disputed and inconclusive election,
Prime Minister Al-Maliki will likely seek to consolidate his power further
still. Such a development could only make the Sunni alienation worse.
It's worth remembering that Nouri Al-Maliki wasn't George
W. Bush's first choice to head up the post-Saddam government in Baghdad U.S. forces in Iraq
for spying on behalf of Tehran
6. The Enemy of Our
Enemy is Not Our Friend
If there was any
question that the blowback from George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq only served to produce an Iranian ally in Baghdad Syria and Iraq
We face the same
enemy, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Five months later,
U.S. surveillance aircraft are monitoring Iraq as President Obama weighs
additional assistance and possible American air strikes
against ISIS forces. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported
that Iran had already dispatched two
Revolutionary Guards units to help defend Baghdad and protect the Shiite shrine
cities of Najaf and Karbala.
If that assistance for
Al-Maliki in Baghdad Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon
that helped the Allawi President Bashar Al-Assad reverse the civil war in Syria
To put it another way, in Iraq Iran
our friend: across the border in Syria ,
Iran
All of which brings us
back to Lesson 2 ("Don't Uncork Bottled Up Sectarian Divisions")
above. It's awfully hard to distinguish friend from foe in the Middle East if you, like John McCain,
can't remember the difference between Shiite and Sunni. Just as dangerous is to
pretend, as Weekly Standard editor
and Project for the New American Century (PNAC) Iraq war cheerleader Bill Kristol did in 2003,
that sectarian divisions don't exist at all:
On this issue of the
Shia in Iraq, I think there's been a certain amount of, frankly, a kind of pop
sociology in America that, you know, somehow the Shia can't get along with the
Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic
fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq
7. U.S.
Reacting to the
current chaos in Iraq
"Lindsey Graham
and John McCain were right," McCain said. "Our failure to leave
forces on Iraq
Of course, McCain has
been wrong about almost everything in
Iraq from the get-go. But his insistence on permanently
keeping American troops and materiel in Iraq
Americans are in South Korea , Americans are in Japan , American troops are in Germany
When The
Nation reporter David Corn asked McCain about his earlier suggestion
that American forces could remain in Iraq
for a hundred years, "he reaffirmed the remark, excitedly declaring that U.S. troops could be in Iraq
But Iraq
is not Germany , Japan and South Korea U.S. forces maintain
permanent bases to protect the host government from external threats, project
American power in the region and to deter potential Russian (previously
Soviet), Chinese and North
Korea Iraq , the U.S. United States
Perhaps the most
pathetic thing is that John McCain knew this maxim once. Twenty years before
the Iraq War and 30 before he called for American intervention in Syria, McCain
opposed President Reagan's 1983 peace-keeping
mission in Lebanon. As CNN recalled in 2008:
McCain said "I do
not see any obtainable objectives in Lebanon Beirut
killed 241 U.S.
"In Lebanon
8. Regime Change is a
Recipe for Disaster
A Republican
presidential debate in December 2011 provided one of the most telling moments
of the entire campaign. One after another, the GOP candidates described the
Iranian nuclear program as an imminent, existential threat
to the United States that cannot be allowed to come to fruition.
Then-frontrunner Newt Gingrich explained how he would handle Tehran
I think replacing the
regime before they get a nuclear weapon without a war beats replacing the
regime with war, which beats allowing them to have a nuclear weapon. Those are
your three choices.
Gingrich made that
pronouncement, even as the last U.S.
troops were preparing the leave Iraq
A quick spin through
the Wayback Machine can dredge up the infamous letter from
the Project for a New American Century to President Clinton in 1998. Signed by
what now looks like many future inhabitants of Dante's inner circle, Bill
Kristol, John Bolton, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams among
others urged a replacement for the containment policy that had kept Saddam
Hussein in a stranglehold:
In your upcoming State
of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined
course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to
enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S.
In the near term, this
means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly
failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from
power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
We all know how that
policy, made real by the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney,
worked out. Replacing governments, especially by military force, has not
generally been a happy experience for the United States
9. Democracy Promotion
Can't Come from the Barrel of Gun
During its short but
incredibly damaging life, the Bush Doctrine advocated
three propositions. The first was that the United
States would not tolerate safe havens for terrorists, a
pledge belied by President Bush's refusal to launch unilateral American strikes
to take out Osama Bin Laden and high-ranking Al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan
The second pillar of
the Bush Doctrine was democracy promotion. As he put it in his 2005 State of the Union address,
Bush declared that the mission of the United States was nothing less than to
end tyranny and dictatorship worldwide:
The only force
powerful enough to stop the rise of tyranny and terror, and replace hatred with
hope, is the force of human freedom...And we've declared our own intention:
America will stand with the allies of freedom to support democratic movements
in the Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our
world.
Predictably, the
neoconservative amen corner collectively chanted its approval. David Brooks proclaimed "the Bush agenda is
dominating the globe." On March 4, 2005, Charles Krauthammer declared,
"We are at the dawn of a glorious, delicate, revolutionary moment in the
Middle East," adding "It is our principles that brought us to this
moment by way of Afghanistan and Iraq." Three days later in a Time piece
titled Three Cheers for the Bush
Doctrine, Krauthammer mocked the opponents of the Bush Doctrine
vision of democratic transformation in the Middle East, labeling them
"embarrassingly, scandalously, blessedly wrong." And the next day,
the National Review's Rich Lowry proclaimed,
"By toppling Saddam Hussein and insisting on elections in Iraq, while
emphasizing the power of freedom, Bush has put the United States in the right
position to encourage and take advantage of democratic irruptions in the
region."
But it was Kristol of
the Weekly Standard who was perhaps the Bush Doctrine's most
vocal cheerleader and self-satisfied proponent. In the wake of the Iraqi
elections, Kristol declared the complete
victory of the Bush Doctrine and the arrival of a seminal
moment in world history, one ushering in a new era of democratic change around
the globe:
Just four weeks after
the Iraqi election of January 30, 2005, it seems increasingly likely that that
date will turn out to have been a genuine turning point. The fall of the Berlin
Wall on November 9, 1989, ended an era. September 11, 2001, ended an
interregnum. In the new era in which we now live, 1/30/05 could be a key
moment--perhaps the key moment so far--in vindicating the Bush Doctrine as the
right response to 9/11. And now there is the prospect of further and
accelerating progress.
But things didn't work
out that way. The elation of purple fingers in Iraq ,
the Orange Revolution in Ukraine
and the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon Iraq U.S.
force or even American ideals, as the revolution triggered by a fruit vendor in
Tunis
10. Preventive War is
an Idea Whose Time Has Never Come
The third and most
controversial tenet of the Bush Doctrine was preventive war.
Whether or not
preventive war constitutes legitimate self-defense under international law,
history is replete with examples. (For Americans, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor should leap to mind.) While
"pre-emption" is "meant to grab the tactical advantages of
striking first against what is seen as a truly imminent threat, when an
adversary's attack is close at hand," in contrast the Oxford Bibliographies explained:
The strategic logic of
preventive war is rooted in the desire to halt the erosion of relative power to
a rising adversary and the future dangers this power shift might present.
Leaders calculate that a war fought in the near term will be less costly than a
war fought at a later date, after the potential adversary has had an
opportunity to increase its military capabilities. Under preventive war
conditions, there is no certainty that this future war will actually be fought;
preventive war is launched to avoid the mere possibility of a higher-cost
future war or the potential for the target state to use its rising power in a
coercive way.
To be sure, President
Bush's invasion of Iraq
Simply stated, there
is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is
no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies,
and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions
will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors -- confrontations
that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue
to develop with his oil wealth.
For his part, John McCain was on board 100
percent. He didn't just agree that the Iraq
I remain confident
that we will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
But it didn't work out
that way. Bush, Cheney, Rice and McCain (among others) were, as Iraq Survey
Group Charles Duelfer testified
in October 2004, "almost all wrong." And not just about WMD, but
about Saddam's links to Al Qaeda and pretty much everything else. To have any
legitimacy in international law and in the court of world opinion, the
justifications for preventive war must be true and the "gathering
threats" real ones. The Bush administration failed on every criterion.
To put it another way,
if any idea should have been thoroughly discredited by the blood and treasure
lost in ousting Saddam Hussein and the subsequent carnage in Iraq
Nevertheless, if the
Republicans now attacking President Obama have their way, the United States will be on a course for a new
preventive war, this time against Iran Tehran
If some of these folks
think that it's time to launch a war, they should say so. And they should
explain to the American people exactly why they would do that and what the
consequences would be.
Or as General David
Petraeus put it during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq
The final ending hasn't been written yet. But we do know this: President George W. Bush
broke Iraq
"To
initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it
is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that
it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." -- Robert H.
Jackson, Chief U.S. Prosecutor, Nuremberg
Absolutely
Nothing: A Veteran’s Savage Indictment of the Iraq
Tragically,
all we’ve fought for in Iraq, all that 4,500 American lives were shed to gain,
is on the cusp, potentially, of vanishing. - Mitt Romney, “Ideas Summit
All we fought for in Iraq
All we fought for in Iraq
That’s what Mitt Romney says.
We fought for. We fought
for. We.
Oh, so it’s we now,
is it, Mitt?
We.
I must have missed you over there, but it was a busy place. We.
The guy who helped set up “pro-draft” rallies and yet somehow managed to avoid
service in Vietnam
Yeah, fuck you, Mitt.
And you’re all welcome to quote me on that.
Somebody stepped into my office yesterday and asked how I felt
about it. He wanted to know how I felt about “losing” Iraq
How do I feel about losing all we fought for?
I don’t know.
First, I’m going to need somebody to explain to me exactly what
it was that we
were fighting for.
What was it? What is it that we gained, according to Mitt
Romney? And what is on the cusp of vanishing? What is that? No, really,
somebody please explain it to me.
Because I’d love to know.
The Wikipedia says Operation Iraqi Freedom started on the 20th
of March, 2003, which is just another reason why you shouldn’t believe anything
you read in the Wikipedia (don’t, just don’t). That’s not correct, the
war began a day earlier. See, I was there on the night the war really started, at precisely 2200 hours, on
the 19th of March in the Northern
Arabian Gulf . I was there when US Navy SEALs and Polish GROM
stormed the MABOT and KAAOT oil terminals a full day before Saddam Hussein
discovered that his time was finally up. In point of fact, I had arrived
there four months before, a few days before Christmas in December of 2002. From
the day of my arrival (and before that really) to the day the war started, and
for months after, I was a Navy intelligence officer working in support of the
invasion force. There’s not much I don’t know about the events leading up
to war and the aftermath of the invasion.
Well, not much except for that one little detail.
Why.
All these years later, and I still don’t know why.
Oh, I mean, I know what they told us, sure, Saddam Hussein
attacked America
Except those of us in the professional intelligence community
looked at each other and thought, wait, what? How the hell did we miss that?
Saddam and Osama bin Laden are working together? Buwah?
But Rumsfeld, he had his own little extra-constitutional intelligence outfit
staffed with his simpering cronies who he paid to blow smoke up his pinched
grey ass until his colon resembled beef jerky and he sure didn’t have much use
for us – after all, we were
just the military he had.
Ours, as they say, is not to reason why, ours is to but do and
die, right? At least that’s what Rummy told us and you know, you go into war
with the Secretary of Defense you have, not the one you’d like to have. And if
Rumsfeld says he’s got the real scoop, it must be true? Right? Sure, that
justifies his contempt for us, sure it does.
Except, Rumsfeld’s little masturbation fantasy turned out not to
be the case.
But hey, never mind that, Saddam Hussein was threatening us
anyway, wasn’t he? Sure he was, in fact, that’s the first time you heard the
phrase “Weapons of Mass Destruction” isn’t it? The bastard had nukes and germs
and war gas and he was just itching to use them on America Niger
Except all that turned out to be bullshit too, and Colin Powell
was either a dupe of staggering proportions or he was the kind of Soldier who
would fuck his buddy right in the ass without so much as a reach-around and
I’ll leave it up to you to figure which one is worse.
But by the time we figured out we’d been ass-raped by Colin
Powell, we were shoulder deep in Iraq, Baghdad was burning, Iraq’s army had
thrown down their weapons and taken off their uniforms and had melted into the
population, Saddam had vanished and his sons were dead, and the President of
the United States had already declared victory from the deck of an American
aircraft carrier.
And so, the objective became … what?
Hearts and minds and freedom and democracy and nation building
and magic bunnies who fart sunshine and rainbows.
Unfortunately, it turns out we’re real good at the blowing shit
up part, not so good at the magic bunnies part.
Which in retrospect, shouldn’t be all that surprising - given
that in order to build a civilization it helps if you actually have some vague
familiarity with the people involved. Needless to say, we didn’t. And we
didn’t care. To America ,
they were all little brown towelheads, sand niggers, raggedy-assed camel
jockeys who ought to be grateful to America
And it turns out that freedom and democracy and magic flying
bunnies were as elusive as Iraq
So, what was it again that we were fighting for?
MORE http://www.stonekettle.com/2014/06/absolutely-nothing.html
Juan Cole, Don't Trust
the Bombers on Iraq :
"Shock and Awe" Never Works
Juan Cole, Informed Comment, Reader Supported News, June 17, 2014
Cole writes: "In March of 2003, we were treated to an intensive bombardment ofIraq
READ MORE
Juan Cole, Informed Comment, Reader Supported News, June 17, 2014
Cole writes: "In March of 2003, we were treated to an intensive bombardment of
READ MORE
REMEMBER
BUSH-CHENEY-RUMSFELD-RICE
Who WonIraq
Who Won
t was all to be a kind of
war-fighting miracle. The American invaders would be greeted as liberators, the
mission quickly accomplished, and “major combat operations” ended in
a flash -- as George Bush so infamously announced on
May 1, 2003, after his Top Gun landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. No less miraculous was the fact that
it would essentially be a freebie. After all, as undersecretary Paul
Wolfowitz pointed out at
the time,
The Busheviks entered Iraq Washington ’s
Iraq
In short, this was one for the history
books. And not a thing -- nothing --
worked out as planned. You could almost say that whatever it was they
dreamed, the opposite invariably occurred. For those of us in the
reality-based community, for instance, it’s long been apparent that their war
and occupation would cost the U.S. Iraq
And $25 billion later,
the last vestige of American Iraq, the security forces that, in the end, Washington
The arrogance of those occupation years should still take anyone’s
breath away. Bush and his top officials remade reality on an almost
unimaginable scale and, as we study the region today, the results bear no
relation to the world they imagined creating. None whatsoever. On
the other hand, there were two dreams they had that, after a fashion, did come
into existence.
Many Americans still remember the Bush
administration’s bogus pre-invasion claims --
complete with visions of mushroom clouds rising over
American cities -- that Saddam Hussein had a thriving nuclear program in Iraq Iraq Baghdad
"There clearly was a relationship.
It's been testified to," said the
vice president on CNBC in June 2004. "The evidence is overwhelming.
It goes back to the early '90s. It involves a whole series of contacts,
high-level contacts with Osama bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence
officials." Based on cherry-picked intelligence, such claims proved
fraudulent, too, or as David Kay, the man assigned by the administration to
hunt down that missing weaponry of mass destruction and those al-Qaeda links,
put it politely, "evidence free." By then, however, 57% of
Americans had been convinced that there was indeed some significant
relationship between Saddam’s Iraq and al-Qaeda, and 20% believed that Saddam
was linked directly to the 9/11 attacks.
Be careful, as they say, what you wish for. More than a
decade after its invasion and occupation, after Cheney made those fervent
claims, no administration would have the slightest problem linking al-Qaeda to Iraq (or Syria ,
Yemen Pakistan to northern Africa .
SUNNI INSURRECTION advancing, 2 Essays Forwarded by Common
Dreams
Ramzy Baroud: Sectarian Monster Reawakened: Redrawing the Map of
Iraq, Again
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/06/18-1
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/06/18-1
War, Oil, and Intervention as Key Iraq
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/06/18
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/06/18
SundayReview | OPINION
The Fog Machine of War, NYT (June 15, 2014)
JUNE 14, 2014
Chelsea Manning on the U.S.
However, the concerns that motivated me
have not been resolved. As Iraq erupts in civil war and America again
contemplates intervention, that unfinished business should give new urgency to
the question of how the United States
military controlled the media coverage of its long involvement there and in Afghanistan.
I believe that the current limits on
press freedom and excessive government secrecy make it impossible for Americans
to grasp fully what is happening in the wars we finance.
If you were following the news during
the March 2010 elections in Iraq United States military operations had succeeded
in creating a stable and democratic Iraq
Those of us stationed there were
acutely aware of a more complicated reality.
Military and diplomatic reports coming
across my desk detailed a brutal crackdown against political dissidents by the
Iraqi Ministry of Interior and federal police, on behalf of Prime Minister Nuri
Kamal al-Maliki. Detainees were often tortured, or even killed.
Early that year, I received orders to
investigate 15 individuals whom the federal police had arrested on suspicion of
printing “anti-Iraqi literature.” I learned that these individuals had
absolutely no ties to terrorism; they were publishing a scholarly critique of
Mr. Maliki’s administration. I forwarded this finding to the officer in command
in eastern Baghdad
I was shocked by our military’s
complicity in the corruption of that election. Yet these deeply troubling
details flew under the American media’s radar.
It was not the first (or the last) time
I felt compelled to question the way we conducted our mission in Iraq
Among the many daily reports I received
via email while working in Iraq
in 2009 and 2010 was an internal public affairs briefing that listed recently
published news articles about the American mission in Iraq Baghdad
The more I made these daily comparisons
between the news back in the States and the military and diplomatic reports
available to me as an analyst, the more aware I became of the disparity. In
contrast to the solid, nuanced briefings we created on the ground, the news
available to the public was flooded with foggy speculation and simplifications.
One clue to this disjunction lay in the
public affairs reports. Near the top of each briefing was the number of
embedded journalists attached to American military units in a combat zone.
Throughout my deployment, I never saw that tally go above 12. In other words,
in all of Iraq , which
contained 31 million people and 117,000 United States
The process of limiting press access to
a conflict begins when a reporter applies for embed status. All reporters are
carefully vetted by military public affairs officials. This system is far from
unbiased. Unsurprisingly, reporters who have established relationships with the
military are more likely to be granted access.
Less well known is that journalists
whom military contractors rate as likely to produce “favorable” coverage, based
on their past reporting, also get preference. This outsourced “favorability”
rating assigned to each applicant is used to screen out those judged likely to
produce critical coverage.
Reporters who succeeded in obtaining
embed status in Iraq
There have been numerous cases of
reporters’ having their access terminated following controversial reporting. In
2010, the late Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings had his access pulled
after reporting criticism of the Obama administration by Gen. Stanley A.
McChrystal and his staff in Afghanistan
If a reporter’s embed status is
terminated, typically she or he is blacklisted. This program of limiting press
access was challenged in court in 2013 by a freelance reporter, Wayne Anderson,
who claimed to have followed his agreement but to have been terminated after
publishing adverse reports about the conflict in Afghanistan
The embedded reporter program, which
continues in Afghanistan and wherever the United States sends troops, is deeply
informed by the military’s experience of how media coverage shifted public
opinion during the Vietnam War. The gatekeepers in public affairs have too much
power: Reporters naturally fear having their access terminated, so they tend to
avoid controversial reporting that could raise red flags.
The existing program forces journalists
to compete against one another for “special access” to vital matters of foreign
and domestic policy. Too often, this creates reporting that flatters senior
decision makers. A result is that the American public’s access to the facts is
gutted, which leaves them with no way to evaluate the conduct of American
officials.
[REMEDIES –D]
Journalists have an important role to
play in calling for reforms to the embedding system. The favorability of a
journalist’s previous reporting should not be a factor. Transparency,
guaranteed by a body not under the control of public affairs officials, should
govern the credentialing process. An independent board made up of military
staff members, veterans, Pentagon civilians and journalists could balance the
public’s need for information with the military’s need for operational
security.
Reporters should have timely access to
information. The military could do far more to enable the rapid declassification
of information that does not jeopardize military missions. The military’s
Significant Activity Reports, for example, provide quick overviews of events
like attacks and casualties. Often classified by default, these could help
journalists report the facts accurately.
Opinion polls indicate that Americans’
confidence in their elected representatives is at a record low. Improving media
access to this crucial aspect of our national life — where America
Chelsea Manning is a former United
States Army intelligence analyst.
A version of this op-ed appears in
print on June 15, 2014, on page SR4 of the New York
MEDIA AND AL-QAIDA:
LET’S MAKE DISTINCTIONS
.
On June 14, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported (p. 1A, “Iraqis Urged to Face
Down Sunni Menace”) that “Sunni
militants. . .have seized large areas of territory” and were killing (who?)
In “reprisal.” “Fighters from the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ”
drove “government forces at least temporarily from two towns. . The Sunni Islamic State of Iraq and Levant
(ISIS for short) are Sunnis and have their own
motivations. In Syria
The
irresponsible, unsubstantiated, frequent identification of insurents or
militants with al Qaida by US
mainstream media is a contributing factor in the public’s support for and
confusion over the US
[The
last piece I wrote for #16 referred to Iran ’s
“willingness to confront” the growing Sunni threat in Iraq
Juan Cole, The Second Iran-Iraq War and
the American Switch by Juan Cole, Informed Comment , Reader Supported News, June 13, 2014
Cole writes: "Iran has decided to intervene directly in Iraq and has already sent fighters to the front, according to the Wall Street Journal, based on Iranian sources."
READ MORE
Cole writes: "Iran has decided to intervene directly in Iraq and has already sent fighters to the front, according to the Wall Street Journal, based on Iranian sources."
READ MORE
Tehran Willing to Work With US Over
Iraq Crisis
Reuters , Reader Supported News, June 13, 2014
Excerpt: "Shia Muslim Iran is so alarmed by Sunni insurgent gains in Iraq that it may be willing to cooperate with Washington in helping Baghdad fight back, a senior Iranian official told Reuters."
READ MORE
Reuters , Reader Supported News, June 13, 2014
Excerpt: "Shia Muslim Iran is so alarmed by Sunni insurgent gains in Iraq that it may be willing to cooperate with Washington in helping Baghdad fight back, a senior Iranian official told Reuters."
READ MORE
We
don’’t live near DC, but we can call, and that’s really better, because then we
can get acquainted with all the President’s staff. Quote the President’s invitation as a
cordial introducation. --Dick
From the White House: Write or Call
President Obama is committed to creating the most open and
accessible administration in American history. That begins with taking comments
and questions from you, the public, through our website.
Call
the President
PHONE NUMBERS
Comments:
202-456-1111Switchboard: 202-456-1414
TTY/TTD
Comments:
202-456-6213Visitor's Office: 202-456-2121
Write a letter to
the President
Here are a few simple things you can do to make sure your
message gets to the White House as quickly as possible.
1. If possible, email us! This is the fastest way to get your
message to President Obama.2. If you write a letter, please consider typing it on an 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of paper. If you hand-write your letter, please consider using pen and writing as neatly as possible.
3. Please include your return address on your letter as well as your envelope. If you have an email address, please consider including that as well.
4. And finally, be sure to include the full address of the White House to make sure your message gets to us as quickly and directly as possible:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington , DC 20500
Contents
Illegal Iraq
JUNE 2014 INSURRECTION IN IRAQ
Common Dreams, Obama Considering Air Strikes in Civil
War
Boardman, Another Undeclared War
WAND, Call the President
CREDO, Don’t Bomb
Just Foreign Policy, Sign Petition
Progressive Secretary, Congress Repeal Authorization
for Iraq
BACKGROUNDS to the Uprising of June 2014
Vibes, Failure and Fraud of Construction Program
Van Buren, Botched Construction But What’s a Trillion
Dollars in a Senseless War
Reagan: At least Half-Million Iraqis Killed, One of
Worst Crimes of 21st Century
Iraqi Refugees and Rescuers
Google
Search, UNHCR and Iraqis, April 11, 2014
International Organization for Migration (IOM)
Citizens
Reach Out-- to Bring Them to US and Europe
2014
Salaheddin, 703 Killed in February 2014
Germanos, Mounting Deaths Attributed to US Invasion
and Occupation
Isabel Coles, May 2014 Most Violent Month So Far This
Year
Benedict, Women Soldiers in Sexist Army, 2011
Goodell, Woman in Marine Mortuary Attachment and
After, 2010
END IRAQ
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