After a Twelve Year Mistake in Iraq, We Must Just March Home
Twelve years ago last week, the US launched its invasion of Iraq, an act the late General William Odom predicted would turn out to be "the greatest strategic disaster in US history." Before the attack I was accused of exaggerating the potential costs of the war when I warned that it could end up costing as much as $100 billion. One trillion dollars later, with not one but two "mission accomplished" moments, we are still not done intervening in Iraq ... We recently gained even more evidence that the initial war was sold on lies and fabrications ... It is hard to believe that in a society supposedly governed by the rule of law, US leaders can escape any penalty for using blatantly false information - that they had to know at the time was false - to launch a pre-emptive attack on a country that posed no threat to the United States.
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Is a War of Aggression a War Crime or Not?
... What about the war crime known as a "war of aggression"? That's a type of war where one nation initiates an unprovoked attack on another nation. A war of aggression was declared a war crime at Nuremberg. Did the principles that were set forth a Nuremberg apply only to Germany, or were they universal? I think most people would respond that the Nuremberg principles are universal ... It is an undisputed fact that Iraq never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. It is also undisputed that the president failed to secure the congressional declaration of war against Iraq that the Constitution mandates.
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Pres. Bush Made Intel Fit Iraq Policy, Secret British Memo Shows
A highly classified British memo, leaked in the midst of Britain's just-concluded election campaign, indicates that President Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy. The document, which summarizes a July 23, 2002, meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair with his top security advisers, reports on a visit to Washington by the head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service. The visit took place while the Bush administration was still declaring to the American public that no decision had been made to go to war ... "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD," weapons of mass destruction. The memo said "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
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Syria War Was Planned In Advance, Because Syria is Anti-Israel, Says French Ex-Foreign Minister Dumas
The war in Syria was planned years in advance, and the motive was to overthrow a regime that Israel regards as hostile, says former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas. "I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria," said Dumas in a recent interview with French television LCP. "This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and organized ..." Responding to a question on the motive behind the war, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives, Dumas said, "Very simple! With the very simple aim! To overthrow the Syrian government, because in the region, it's important to understand, that this Syrian regime has a very anti-Israeli stance. Consequently, everything that moves in the region -- and I have this from the former Israeli prime minister, who told me 'We'll try to get on with our neighboring states, but those who don't get along, we will take them down'."
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Iraq: A War For Israel
So if the official reasons given for the war were untrue, why did the United States attack? Whatever the secondary reasons for the Iraq war, the crucial factor in President Bush's decision to attack was to help Israel. With support from Israel and America's Jewish-Zionist lobby, and prodded by Jewish "neo-conservatives" holding high-level positions in his administration, President Bush - who was already fervently committed to Israel - resolved to invade and subdue one of Israel's chief regional enemies.
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Iraq and the Media: A Critical Timeline: Recalling US Media Deception
It's hardly controversial to suggest that the mainstream media's performance in the lead-up to the Iraq War was a disaster. In retrospect, many journalists and pundits wish they had been more skeptical of the White House's claims about Iraq, particularly its allegations about weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, though, media apologists suggest that the press could not have done much better, since "everyone" was in agreement on the intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons threat. This was never the case. Critical journalists and analysts raised serious questions at the time about what the White House was saying. Often, however, their warnings were ignored by the bulk of the corporate press. This timeline is an attempt to recall some of the worst moments in journalism, from the fall of 2002 and into the early weeks of the Iraq War.
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Syria's President Criticizes Western Media's Distorted Coverage in Recent Interview
President Bashar Assad sharply criticizes the western media for what he regards as its systematically distorted portrayal of the conflict in his country and of the origins and role of the "Islamic State." In this English-language interview, the Syrian leader is articulate and self-possessed. This 26-minute interview with a Portuguese television journalist was conducted on March 4, 2015.
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The Long History of Hate Speech
... Americans have regularly supported legislation against hateful speech, although the contexts of the regulation have shifted dramatically over the course of the twentieth century ... The censorship of motion pictures, constitutional until 1952, often included bans on racial ridicule in the early twentieth century. Pennsylvania's State Board of Censors of Motion Pictures, founded in 1913, banned racial ridicule for several years, as did state censorship boards in Kansas and Maryland. ... The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), established in 1909, spearheaded the prohibition of racial ridicule in motion pictures.
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The Morning After: Looking Beyond the Israel Election Results
... Benjamin Netanyahu's victory, unexpected and unequivocal, will usher in another coalition of right wing zealots, nationalists, and the religious ... The two-state solution is clinically dead. It's time to think about the alternative. Does anyone know of an alternative to the two-state idea other than one state? Does anyone really believe that Israel will be able to go on with the status quo, which has never been a real status quo, for another fifty years? Another fifty years of cruel, brutal, illegal occupation, without counterpart anywhere in the world ... Another fifty years of Jewish settlements and Palestinian disinheritance?
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The End of the Liberal Zionist Façade
... There is, however, one clear advantage to the election results: clarity. At least now there will be no liberal Zionist façade, camouflaging Israel's unwillingness to dismantle its colonial project. The Israeli refrain that a diplomatic solution with the Palestinians cannot be achieved because the Palestinians lack leadership will ring even more hollow. Finally, the claim that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East will be exposed for what it is: a half truth. While Israel is a democracy for Jews it is a repressive regime for Palestinians.
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