Antiwar.com Original

NOTE: The following is “back-story” to yesterday’s post, which I was tempted to title “All You Ever Wanted to Know About the Attack on Iraq and Now Want to Forget.” I do encourage you to give that posting a look before reading what follows. The attack was launched 20 years ago today. In late February … Continue reading “Epitaph for a ‘Cake Walk’: An Iraq Case Study”

In March of 2003, the United States launched an illegal war of aggression against Iraq. The US regime promoted that illegal war of aggression, starting well in advance, through the manufacture and repetition of falsehoods for the purpose of cultivating fear over non-existent threats, and loathing over nonexistent connections between the Iraqi regime an the … Continue reading “Iraq War Anniversary: Never Back Down on the Only Important Fact”

On March 14, A Russian jet collided with a US drone, leading to the downing of the drone in the Black Sea. The US says that the drone was flying in international airspace when two Russian Su-27 fighter jets made nineteen high-speed passes near the drone before dumping jet fuel on it in an attempt … Continue reading “Reapers and Red Lines: The Downing of an American Drone”

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. Military invasions don’t produce democracies – who knew? Whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, somehow the U.S. government worked to convince itself and the American people that democracy could be exported at rifle point. Not surprisingly, military invasions spread what they usually do: death, destruction and chaos while … Continue reading “Learning Little from the Iraq War”

Twenty years ago on this coming weekend, I was in Mongolia as the Deputy US Ambassador. After writing a Dissent Cable in early March 2003 on the pending US war on Iraq to my boss Secretary of State Colin Powell, I made the decision to resign from the US government as it was poised to … Continue reading “Don’t Let The Media Cheerlead Us Into More Wars Like It Did in Iraq”

Well it seems like only yesterday, though it was half a lifetime ago. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their men and women, especially the neoconservatives, knowingly and deliberately lied this country into starting an aggressive war against Iraq – a war they pretended was a “preemptive” attack against a nation that could never have … Continue reading “Iraq War II – 20 Years Later”

"All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory." — Viet Thanh Nguyen As mainstream U.S. media outlets pause to remember the US invasion of Iraq, it’s clear that there’s a lot they hope we’ll forget – first and foremost, the media’s own active complicity in whipping up public support for … Continue reading “20 Years After the Invasion of Iraq, Will the Media’s Complicity Be Flushed Down the Memory Hole?”

A New York Times Magazine article in July 2020 focused on then Secretary of State Powell and his U.N. speech of Feb. 5, 2003 and the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) upon which it is largely based. A lot of the detail in the article may have been new to many readers, but not to Veteran … Continue reading “Iraq 20 Years: The Uses and Abuses of National Intelligence Estimates”

There is a historically possible world in which the Minsk Agreement never needed to be made. In 2014, a US supported coup removed the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, with his eastern base, and replaced him with a West leaning president who was handpicked by the US. Assistant Secretary of State for European and … Continue reading “The Minsk Deception and the Planned War in Donbas”

Five more were wounded.