10 May
United States Wars, News and Casualties
United States Wars, News and Casualties
Iraq A Deadly Deception 2016, War Documentary 2018
WAR DOCUMENTARY: IRAQ A DEADLY DECEPTION ALJAZEERA DOCUMENTARIES 2018 On the evening of 9/11, George W Bush made a vow to the American public – that he would defeat terrorism.
Unknown to those listening in shock to the presidential address, the president and his advisers had already begun planning their trajectory into an invasion of Iraq. It was packaged as “holding responsible the states who support terrorism” by Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser between 2001 and 2003.
“I believe it represented a recognition that we would never succeed against the terrorists if we went after them one at a time and as long as governments were facilitating the organisation, training, equipping of, financing of terrorist organisations, we were never going to get it under control,” says Perle.
After 100 days spent fighting those who had become publicly accepted as the culprits – Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan – the US set the ball rolling for war against Iraq.
On the evening of 9/11 the president is saying: well, maybe we’ll be going after Iraq now and somebody said, well, that would be against international law. The president responded: I don’t care, we’re going to kick some ass.
The War Criminals
How many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion 15 years ago? Some credible estimates put the number at more than one million. You can read that sentence again.
The invasion of Iraq is often spoken of in our country as a “blunder,” or even a “colossal mistake.” It was a crime.
Those who perpetrated it are still at large. Some of them have even been rehabilitated thanks to the horrors of a mostly amnesiac citizenry. (A year ago Mr. Bush was on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” dancing and talking about his paintings.)
The war criminals, Bush,Cheney,Rice,Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Powell who sold us the war still go on doing what they do.
We condemned children to death, some after many days of writhing in pain on bloodstained mats, without pain relievers. Some died quickly, wasted by missing arms and legs, crushed heads. As the fluids ran out of their bodies, they appeared like withered, spoiled fruits. They could have lived, certainly should have lived – and laughed and danced, and run and played- but instead they were brutally murdered. Yes, murdered!
The war ended for those children, but it has never ended for survivors who carry memories of them. Likewise, the effects of the U.S. bombings continue, immeasurably and indefensibly.
The McGlynn
War News
AP: In Yemen’s Aden, a generation chewed up and spit out by war
ADEN, Yemen (AP) — Best friends, they grew up together. When rebels attacked, they fought together. Eighteen years old and without a day of military training, they picked up Kalashnikovs and went to defend the front line in Yemen’s southern city of Aden.
It was a rite of passage for Osama Ahmed and Ahmed Saleh, a moment for the teens to prove their manhood in a society where every man has a gun and is expected to know how to use it. The day he left for battle, Osama said his mother told him, “Son, I worry about you and want you near me. But if every mother thinks this way, no one will go and fight for us … Do not leave your friends.”
The 2015 Battle for Aden turned out to be a brutal, scarring experience. Today, three years later, Osama and Ahmed wander a shattered city, disillusioned. They have no jobs, hopes or prospects. Nights, they sit on the beach and watch the moon on the waves of the Arabian Sea, chewing qat — a narcotic leaf — and dreaming of leaving Yemen.
“My friends and I, all we think about these days is how to get out,” Osama said. “It doesn’t feel like it will get any better in our lifetime.”
Yemen’s civil war has chewed up and spat out a generation of youth. Fighters on all sides are often minors, some as young as 12, dragged into what many see as a cynical fight between Iranian-backed rebels known as Houthis and a U.S.-backed coalition led by Saudi Arabia nominally supporting the government. Three years of war with no end in sight has wrecked Yemen, causing death, displacement, economic collapse, hunger and disease.
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NYT: Trump’s Iran Move Reminds Some of Run-Up to Iraq War
WASHINGTON — Fifteen years after invading Iraq over weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda that both proved non-existent, the United States is again steering toward a possible confrontation with a Middle East power for suspected work on nuclear weapons and support for terrorism.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s Iran policy sounds hauntingly familiar to some current and former U.S. officials who witnessed the buildup to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, where sectarian and ethnic fractures and some 5,000 U.S. troops still remain.
More than 4,400 U.S. troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died in the conflict, which many analysts have called one of the major U.S. foreign policy debacles of modern times.
“There are disturbing and eerie similarities” in the misuse of intelligence then and now, said Paul Pillar, who was the top U.S. intelligence analyst for the Middle East from 2001 to 2005.
“The basic thing that is going on is a highly tendentious, cherry-picked, ‘we know what the conclusion is'” use of intelligence, Pillar said.
Trump on Tuesday withdrew the United States from a six-nation agreement with Tehran that limits Iran’s nuclear work in return for relief from economic sanctions.
The president charged that the deal, negotiated under his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, did not address Iran’s ballistic missile program, its nuclear activities beyond 2025 or its role in conflicts in Yemen and Syria.
Trump made no mention of assessments by the U.S. intelligence community and the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, which has nuclear inspectors in Iran, that Tehran is complying with the 2015 deal.
Instead, he cited a cache of Iranian documents made public by Israel on April 30 that he said showed Iran’s leaders lied when they denied ever pursuing a nuclear weapons project.
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AP: Israel strikes ‘dozens’ of Iranian targets in Syria
JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military on Thursday said it attacked “dozens” of Iranian targets in neighboring Syria in response to an Iranian rocket barrage on Israeli positions in the Golan Heights, in the most serious military confrontation between the two bitter enemies to date.
Israel said the targets included weapons storage, logistics sites and intelligence centers used by elite Iranian forces in Syria. It also said it destroyed several Syrian air-defense systems after coming under heavy fire and that none of its warplanes was hit.
The blistering Israeli assault was by far the most intensive Israeli action in neighboring Syria since the civil war broke out there in 2011. Israel has largely tried to stay on the sidelines, but has previously acknowledged carrying out over 100 airstrikes over the past seven years, most believed to be aimed at Iranian weapons shipments bound for the Hezbollah militant group.
But with the civil war appearing to wind down, and Iranian forces looking to establish a foothold on Israel’s doorstep, Israel has stepped up its response. Speaking at the Herzliya Conference, an annual security gathering north of Tel Aviv, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Israel would response fiercely to any further Iranian actions.
“We will not let Iran turn Syria into a forward base against Israel. This is the policy, a very, very clear policy, and we’re acting according to this policy,” he said. “We, of course, struck almost all the Iranian infrastructure in Syria, and they need to remember this arrogance of theirs. If we get rain, they’ll get a flood. I hope that we ended this chapter and that everyone understood.”
Iranian state television broke its silence over the Israeli airstrikes late Thursday morning, the start of the Iranian weekend. A presenter announced the Israeli strikes, sourcing the information to Syria’s state-run SANA news agency. The broadcaster also described the Israeli attack as “unprecedented” since the 1967 Mideast war.
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GUARD: Israel retaliates after Iran ‘fires 20 rockets’ at army in occupied Golan Heights
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Israeli military says projectiles were launched from Syria
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IDF says military was ‘moving’ against Iranian targets in Syria
