The video released by Wikileaks showing US helicopters picking off civilians as our airmen chortle with glee is shocking everyone. Everyone but me, that is. Perhaps I’m suffering from some sort of moral exhaustion: I’ve just about gone numb after living through and constantly writing about the past decade of American war crimes. Abu Ghraib, …
Continue reading “Just Another Atrocity”
Journalist advocacy groups called for the reopening of an investigation into the 2007 killing of a Reuters photographer and his driver after the WikiLeaks Web site released classified video footage on Monday of a 2007 helicopter attack in Baghdad which killed 12 people. "This footage is deeply disturbing," said Joel Simon, executive director of the …
Continue reading “Leaked Video of Shooting Spurs Calls for New Probe”
In my 1950s childhood, Ripley’s Believe It or Not was part of everyday life, a syndicated comics page feature where you could stumble upon such mind-boggling facts as: “If all the Chinese in the world were to march four abreast past a given point, they would never finish passing though they marched forever and forever." …
Continue reading “US War-Fighting Numbers to Knock Your Socks Off”
Updated at 10:07 p.m. EST, April 3, 2010
A gruesome massacre that left at least two dozen Sunnis dead in an area just south of Baghdad has recharged concerns that a new period of sectarian bloodshed is at hand. Overall, at least 31 Iraqis were killed and 18 more were wounded across the country, mostly in what used to be called the Triangle of Death.
Iraq’s major political forces are beginning what is likely to be a lengthy and uncertain process of talks to form a government. A key question is whether Iraq’s politically diverse groups will join forces together based on ideological, ethnic, sectarian, or merely pragmatist considerations. "[T]he core contradictions of Iraqi politics will be on display as …
Continue reading “Uphill Coalition-Building Battle for Winners Unfolds”
As the New York Times reports, former Iraqi prime minister and U.S. sock puppet Iyad Allawi’s apparent victory in his country’s recent election sets up a "period of uncertainty" that may "threaten plans to withdraw American troops." Gen. Ray Odierno, the U.S. commander in Iraq who reminds one of John Candy’s character in the film …
Continue reading “The Desert Ox”
The perpetual reinvention of reality proceeds apace, as neocons who once gave expression to the Bush administration’s most extreme rhetoric now pose as "moderates," – and these same neocons insist the Iraq war was a great success after all. They point to the recent Iraqi elections as proof of their redemption – even as their …
Continue reading “Who Is Iyad Allawi?”
Tom Engelhardt on exporting American democracy
Last Saturday, the Peace Coalition of Monterey County held an antiwar rally on the seventh anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Lawrence Samuels, co-chair of Libertarians for Peace, one of the member organizations, organized the rally with help from Phillip Butler of Veterans for Peace, another member organization. We began with four speeches, broken …
Continue reading “End the Wars”
BAGHDAD – Under Saddam Hussein, women in government got a year’s maternity leave; that is now cut to six months. Under the Personal Status Law in force since Jul. 14, 1958, when Iraqis overthrew the British-installed monarchy, Iraqi women had most of the rights that Western women do. Now they have Article 2 of the …
Continue reading “Women Miss Saddam” 
