NewsTrust - War in Iraq - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

The Pentagon Garrisons the Gulf

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Nick Turse - Nov. 23 (Opinion) - As Washington talks Iraq withdrawal, the Pentagon builds up bases in the region.

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Afghan Lessons from the Iraq War

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Ray McGovern - Nov. 17 (Opinion) - You don’t have to go back 40 years to the Vietnam War to feel the sting of déjà vu. Returning to the Iraq War just three years ago will suffice.

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Whaddaya Mean Obama Hasn't Done Anything?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Esquire - By John H. Richardson - Nov. 03 (Comment) - A blow-by-blow breakdown of the young president's first year reveals that today's frustration stems not from a lack of policy so much as a lack of common ground. Therein lies the myth of the American center.

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22 Things Dick Cheney Can't Recall About the Plame Case

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Nick Baumann - Oct. 31 (Opinion) - Notes from former Vice President Dick Cheney's interview with the FBI about the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity were finally released on Friday afternoon after a lengthy legal battle. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued the Justice Department last year to obtain the interview notes; a judge finally ordered their release on October 1. In the interview, Cheney demonstrated a behavior common among Bush administration officials under investigation: he couldn't remember much of anything. Here's a non-comprehensive list of 22 things Dick Cheney claimed he couldn't recall about the Plame case, in the order they appear in the FBI's notes:

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Iraq on the Edge

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Joost R. Hiltermann - Oct. 29 (Opinion) - For the occasional visitor such as myself, various methods exist to measure America's standing in Iraq, Iraqi suspicions and aspirations, and progress in the transfer of power, but none prove as illuminating as the checkpoints into and throughout Baghdad's Green Zone, that diminishing symbol of the Bush administration's ambitions.

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Obama's foreign policy report card

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Juan Cole - Oct. 27 (Opinion) - Why can't the administration of President Barack Obama get the word out about its policy successes? President Obama campaigned on an ambitious platform of withdrawing from Iraq, engaging Iran on its nuclear program and persuading the Pakistani government to take on the Taliban and al-Qaida. Despite the charge by critics from both the right and the left in the wake of his winning the Nobel Peace Prize that he has accomplished little so far, in fact he has already set in motion significant change on several of these fronts -- despite the enormous domestic tasks that have inevitably preoccupied his administration. Yet you'd never hear about these successes from the mainstream media.

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Obama's Choice: Failed War President or the Prince of Peace?

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Nick Turse - Oct. 22 (Opinion) - More than 100 years after their early counterinsurgency efforts on two tiny islands in the Philippines, U.S. troops are still dying there at the hands of Muslim guerillas. More than 50 years later, the U.S. still garrisons the southern part of the Korean peninsula as a result of a stalemate war and a peace as yet unmade. More recently, the American experience has included outright defeat in Vietnam, failures in Laos and Cambodia; debacles in Lebanon and Somalia; a never-ending four-president-long war in Iraq; and almost a decade of wheel-spinning in Afghanistan without any sign of success, no less victory.

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As the Commander in Chief Deliberates, Frustration Builds Within the Ranks

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Elisabeth Bumiller - Oct. 20 - Active and retired military officers say there is concern that President Obama is moving too slowly on deciding on troop levels for Afghanistan.

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Lt. Choi Won't Lie for His Country

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Amy Goodman - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - After receiving the letter from the Army, Choi wrote an open letter to his commander in chief, Obama. He said: "I have personally served for a decade under Don't Ask, Don't Tell: an immoral law and policy that forces American soldiers to deceive and lie about their sexual orientation. Worse, it forces others to tolerate deception and lying." U.S. troops in Afghanistan are serving side by side with NATO forces that include openly gay and lesbian troops.

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Top Things you Think You Know about Iran that are not True

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Oct. 01 (Opinion) - Thursday is a fateful day for the world, as the US, other members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany meet in Geneva with Iran in a bid to resolve outstanding issues. Although Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had earlier attempted to put the nuclear issue off the bargaining table, this rhetorical flourish was a mere opening gambit and nuclear issues will certainly dominate the talks. As Henry Kissinger pointed out, these talks are just beginning and there are highly unlikely to be any breakthroughs for a very long time. Diplomacy is a marathon, not a sprint.But on this occasion, I thought I'd take the opportunity to list some things that people tend to think they know about Iran, but for which the evidence is shaky.Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the USReality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war modern history (unlike the US or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of "no first strike." This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.Reality: Iran's military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to "wipe it off the map."Reality: No Iranian leader in the executive has threatened an aggressive act of war on Israel, since this would contradict the doctrine of 'no first strike' to which the country has adhered. The Iranian president has explicitly said that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel. Belief: But didn't President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to 'wipe Israel off the map?'Reality: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did quote Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that "this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" (in rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Qods bayad as safheh-e ruzgar mahv shavad). This was not a pledge to roll tanks and invade or to launch missiles, however. It is the expression of a hope that the regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. It is not a threat to kill anyone at all.Belief: But aren't Iranians Holocaust deniers?Actuality: Some are, some aren't. Former president Mohammad Khatami has castigated Ahmadinejad for questioning the full extent of the Holocaust, which he called "the crime of Nazism." Many educated Iranians in the regime are perfectly aware of the horrors of the Holocaust. In any case, despite what propagandists imply, neither Holocaust denial (as wicked as that is) nor calling Israel names is the same thing as pledging to attack it militarily.Belief: Iran is like North Korea in having an active nuclear weapons program, and is the same sort of threat to the world.Actuality: Iran has a nuclear enrichment site at Natanz near Isfahan where it says it is trying to produce fuel for future civilian nuclear reactors to generate electricity. All Iranian leaders deny that this site is for weapons production, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly inspected it and found no weapons program. Iran is not being completely transparent, generating some doubts, but all the evidence the IAEA and the CIA can gather points to there not being a weapons program. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate by 16 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed with fair confidence that Iran has no nuclear weapons research program. This assessment was based on debriefings of defecting nuclear scientists, as well as on the documents they brought out, in addition to US signals intelligence from Iran. While Germany, Israel and recently the UK intelligence is more suspicious of Iranian intentions, all of them were badly wrong about Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction and Germany in particular was taken in by Curveball, a drunk Iraqi braggart.Belief: The West recently discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapons plant in a mountain near Qom.Actuality: Iran announced Monday a week ago to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it had begun work on a second, civilian nuclear enrichment facility near Qom. There are no nuclear materials at the site and it has not gone hot, so technically Iran is not in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, though it did break its word to the IAEA that it would immediately inform the UN of any work on a new facility. Iran has pledged to allow the site to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, and if it honors the pledge, as it largely has at the Natanz plant, then Iran cannot produce nuclear weapons at the site, since that would be detected by the inspectors. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted on Sunday that Iran could not produce nuclear weapons at Natanz precisely because it is being inspected. Yet American hawks have repeatedly demanded a strike on Natanz.Belief: The world should sanction Iran not only because of its nuclear enrichment research program but also because the current regime stole June's presidential election and brutally repressed the subsequent demonstrations.Actuality: Iran's reform movement is dead set against increased sanctions on Iran, which likely would not affect the regime, and would harm ordinary Iranians.Belief: Isn't the Iranian regime irrational and crazed, so that a doctrine of mutally assured destruction just would not work with them?Actuality: Iranian politicians are rational actors. If they were madmen, why haven't they invaded any of their neighbors? Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded both Iran and Kuwait. Israel invaded its neighbors more than once. In contrast, Iran has not started any wars. Demonizing people by calling them unbalanced is an old propaganda trick. The US elite was once unalterably opposed to China having nuclear science because they believed the Chinese are intrinsically irrational. This kind of talk is a form of racism. Belief: The international community would not have put sanctions on Iran, and would not be so worried, if it were not a gathering nuclear threat.Actuality: The centrifuge technology that Iran is using to enrich uranium is open-ended. In the old days, you could tell which countries might want a nuclear bomb by whether they were building light water reactors (unsuitable for bomb-making) or heavy-water reactors (could be used to make a bomb). But with centrifuges, once you can enrich to 5% to fuel a civilian reactor, you could theoretically feed the material back through many times and enrich to 90% for a bomb. However, as long as centrifuge plants are being actively inspected, they cannot be used to make a bomb. The two danger signals would be if Iran threw out the inspectors or if it found a way to create a secret facility. The latter task would be extremely difficult, however, as demonstrated by the CIA's discovery of the Qom facility construction in 2006 from satellite photos. Nuclear installations, especially centrifuge ones, consume a great deal of water, construction materiel, and so forth, so that constructing one in secret is a tall order. In any case, you can't attack and destroy a country because you have an intuition that they might be doing something illegal. You need some kind of proof. Moreover, Israel, Pakistan and India are all much worse citizens of the globe than Iran, since they refused to sign the NPT and then went for broke to get a bomb; and nothing at all has been done to any of them by the UNSC.End/ (Not Continued)

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Why They’re Mad

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Howard Kurtz - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - Maybe journalists have been asking the wrong question. In probing why a chunk of the country seems so ticked off at Barack Obama, we've explored possible motivations ranging from racism to programmatic concern about the public option. We have examined whether Obama is trying to do too much and whether he's on TV too much. But perhaps the sense of anger and unease is more deep-rooted than that, and not limited to Glenn Beck conservatives.

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Fear was no excuse to condone torture

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Miami Herald - By Charles C. Krulak, Joseph P. Hoar - Sep. 15 (Opinion) - In the fear that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us to ``take off the gloves.'' As a former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and a retired commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster. But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas -- and his scare tactics.

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Disappearing Iraq

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Jane Arraf - Sep. 15 (Opinion) - Ah, the happy world of Iraq, as seen through U.S. military press releases. Iraq could be exploding—in fact, parts of it still regularly are—but the press-release view would still be that of policemen graduating, officials cutting ribbons, and grateful citizens leading security forces and their U.S. advisers to weapons caches. The few press releases that do bear any relation to the reality we reporters see on the ground (“Iraqi Special Operations Forces Continue Operations Despite Budget Challenges”) are almost instantly recalled. The regular background briefings and press conferences that once helped put the ongoing violence into context are so last year. In a country with 130,000 U.S. troops fighting a war that still costs tens of billions of dollars a month, the military might as well be invisible. And for the most part, it seems to want it that way.

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Bush's Third Term?

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By David Swanson - Sep. 02 (Opinion) - It sounds like the plot for the latest summer horror movie. Imagine, for a moment, that George W. Bush had been allowed a third term as president, had run and had won or stolen it, and that we were all now living (and dying) through it. With the Democrats in control of Congress but Bush still in the Oval Office, the media would certainly be about a mandate for bipartisanship and the importance of taking into account the concerns of Republicans. Can?t you just picture it? There?s Dubya now, still laws via signing statements. Still creating and destroying laws with executive orders. And still at his whim. Imagine Bush continuing his policy of extraordinary rendition, sending prisoners off to other countries ...

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The Failure of Empathy

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Writing Corner - By Beth Wellington - Aug. 18 (Opinion) - American G.I., Alyssa Peterson, who committed suicide after refusing to torture Iraqi prisoners. "The official probe of her death would later note that earlier she had been "reprimanded" for showing "empathy" for the prisoners. One of the most moving parts of the report, in fact, is this: "She said that she did not know how to be two people; she ... could not be one person in the cage and another outside the wire.""

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Hillary Clinton demands accountability for war crimes

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - As we send murderous, crusading civilian units around the world to accompany our invading armies -- while ushering a regime of torture wherever we go -- and then announce we will only Look to the Future, Not the Past, when their crimes are exposed (despite our best efforts to keep them concealed), do we actually expect anyone to take these sermons seriously?

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Will we really be out of Iraq by the end of 2011?

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Fred Kaplan - Aug. 01 (Opinion) - Even as the official focus shifts to the war in Afghanistan, a debate has erupted over the endgame in Iraq. It is universally seen as an endgame; we are getting out. The issue is how quickly, how completely, and, if some troops are left behind, what they should and should not do.

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Kucinich Calls for Debate on National Priorities, Speaks Against Military Funding Bill

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - By Dennis Kucinich - Jul. 30 (Press Release) - "We need to have a serious debate about the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan and the priorities of this nation. We need to discuss our options and we must immediately withdraw U.S. troops and contractors, not just combat troops, but all of our troops. It is time for this body to rethink the validity of funding military operations throughout the world when we have so many priorities that need to be addressed at home.

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To All the Sharp Dressed Soldiers Shipping Out

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Op Ed News - By Eileen Fleming - Jul. 27 (Editorial) - "You can't understand the Taliban without knowing about America's covert operations in the region in the 1980s. President Ronald Reagan's administration, mainly through the CIA, used the Pakistani Intelligence services to fund, arm, and train Afghan and foreign Islamist jihadis to defeat the Soviet army in Afghanistan. Pakistan subsequently used "channels built with U.S. money" to install in Afghanistan a friendly government -- the Taliban. "As I write, 4,000 newly arrived U.S. Marines are trudging through the blistering heat of Helmand Province to push back the Taliban so local Pashtuns can turn out to vote next month for Karzai, their fellow Pashtun. What's wrong with this new Obama strategy?"

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Prepare to Disengage

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Elaine Elison - Jul. 23 (Opinion) - During the Vietnam War, GI dissent was both documented and nurtured by a slew of underground GI newspapers. Papers like "Up Against the Bulkhead," "Harass the Brass" and "About Face" were mimeographed and passed from base to base, hand to hand.

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One Newspaper, Many Checkbooks

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Clark Hoyt - Jul. 19 (Opinion) - Lindsey Hoshan, a freelance journalist in Palo Alto, Calif., hopes to sell a multimedia slide show and maybe an article to The Times about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a mass of floating plastic trash caught in swirling currents in a stretch of ocean twice the size of Texas. But first, she has to get there. To help finance a $10,000 reporting trip aboard a research vessel, Hoshaw has turned to Spot.Us, a Web site where reporters appeal for donations to pay for their projects. If she can raise $6,000 before the September departure date — so far, only about $1,600 has come in — she will take out a loan for the rest, she said. The Times has told Hoshaw that it might pay about $700 for the pictures, more if it also buys a story.

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Iraq Still Facing the Abyss

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Ivan Eland - Jul. 06 (Opinion) - what about poor Iraq? As baseball great Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over, till it’s over.” And the underlying indicators seem to indicate that the worst is yet to come.

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What will happen when U.S. combat troops withdraw from Iraq?

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Fred Kaplan - Jun. 27 (Opinion) - So, is all hell about to break loose in Iraq? By June 30, all U.S. combat troops are scheduled—in fact, they're required—to be withdrawn from all of Iraq's cities, towns, and villages.

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What do the CIA, John McCain, the Iran Uprising, the Afghanistan War, and your Lockheed-Martin Stocks have in Common?

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

stopwar.lafilmonline.com - By Jon Raymond - Jun. 21 (Opinion) - We “elected” a president twice under highly questionable circumstances, a corrupt Supreme Court, corrupt election officials, a governor of Florida who used his authority in miscounting votes to see that his brother was elected, and hacked election machines in at least two recent presidential elections.

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Open Letter To Stephen Colbert

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media Channel - By Danny Schechter - Jun. 15 (Comment) - The Pentagon was delighted and this effort was consistent with the “AAU” mantra that governs news coverage (AAU stands for all about us. ) The Iraqi people and their suffering were no where to be seen on The Colbert Report, just as they are usually invisible on the news.

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