Iraq

Former Blackwater Guard Gets Life In Prison For Baghdad Shooting

April 14, 2015 Reuters, www.reuters.com Educate! Criminal Justice, Imperialism, Iraq, Wars and Militarism

A former Blackwater security guard was sentenced to life in prison and three others got 30-year terms on Monday in the massacre of 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians at a Baghdad traffic circle in 2007, closing a case that had outraged Iraqis and inflamed anti-U.S. sentiment around the world. The Sept. 16 incident stood out for its brazenness and formed a tense backdrop to talks between the United States and Iraq over the continued presence of U.S. forces in Iraq. It also sparked debate over private security contractors working for the U.S. government in war zones. The four guards opened fire with machine guns and grenade launchers on the Iraqis, including women and children, at Nisur Square. A heavily armed, four-truck Blackwater Worldwide convoy the men were in had been trying to clear a path for U.S. diplomats.

Report: 1.3 Million Lives Lost In US War On Terror

March 29, 2015 Staff, www.psr.org Educate! Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Wars and Militarism

The report, authored by members and colleagues of the German affiliate of the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), is a comprehensive account of the vast and continuing human toll of the various “Wars on Terror” conducted in the name of the American people since the events of September 11, 2001. This publication highlights the difficulties in defining outcomes as it compares evaluations of war deaths in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Even so, the numbers are horrific. The number of Iraqis killed during and since the 2003 U.S. invasion have been assessed at one million, which represents 5% of the total population of Iraq. This does not include deaths among the three million refugees subjected to privations. Body Count takes a clear and objective look at the various and often contradictory--reports of mortality in conflicts directed by the U.S. and allied forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The result is a fuller picture of the devastation and lethality to civilian non-combatants throughout these regions. Unfortunately, these deaths have been effectively hidden from our collective consciousness.

Anti-War Protests In Washington And Los Angeles

March 22, 2015 Staff, www.rt.com Resist! Iran, Iraq, Peace, Wars and Militarism

A series of anti-war protests rolled through the US on Saturday, condemning Washington’s involvement in past and ongoing conflicts in the wider Middle East. In Los Angeles about a hundred anti-war activists took to the streets marching on Hollywood Boulevard with coffins. Rallying against US involvement in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine, protesters carried signs reading “Hands off Syria” and “Wanted for the destruction of Iraq.” Organized by the Answer Coalition and supported by other anti-war activist groups including CodePink and Popular Resistance, the activists marched from outside the CNN headquarters on Sunset Boulevard to the TCL Chinese Theatre in the heart of Hollywood. Earlier in the day a 200-strong crowd of anti-war activists took to the streets of Washington DC, as part of a three day 'Spring Rising' campaign, that stands in opposition to US military interventions across the globe – especially its drone campaigns.

CIA Just Declassified Doc That Supposedly Justified Iraq Invasion

March 21, 2015 Jason Leopold, www.uslaboragainstwar.org Educate! CIA, Iraq, Wars and Militarism

Thirteen years ago, the intelligence community concluded in a 93-page classified document used to justify the invasion of Iraq that it lacked "specific information" on "many key aspects" of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. But that's not what top Bush administration officials said during their campaign to sell the war to the American public. Those officials, citing the same classified document, asserted with no uncertainty that Iraq was actively pursuing nuclear weapons, concealing a vast chemical and biological weapons arsenal, and posing an immediate and grave threat to US national security.

Google Disables All Ads On Antiwar.com For Abu Gharib Photos

March 20, 2015 Educate! Freedom of the Press, Iraq, Ukraine, Wars and Militarism

We received a note from Google Adsense informing us that all ads for our site had been disabled. Why? Because of this page showing the horrific abuses committed by U.S. troops in Iraq at Abu Ghraib. This page has been up for 11 years. During all that time Google Adsense has been running ads on our site – but as Washington gets ready to re-invade Iraq, and in bombing, killing, and abusing more civilians, they suddenly decide that their "anti-violence" policy, which prohibits "disturbing material," prohibits any depiction of violence committed by the U.S. government and paid for with your tax dollars. This page is the third-most-visited page in our history, getting over 2 million page views since it was posted. To say this is an utter outrage would be an understatement: it is quite simply the kind of situation one might expect to encounter in an authoritarian country where state-owned or state-connected companies routinely censor material that displeases the government. Is Google now an arm of the U.S. State Department?

On March 21, Be In Washington, Be In The Street

March 12, 2015 Nick Mottern, www.truth-out.org Resist! Iraq, ISIS, Refugees, Syria, usa, Wars and Militarism

It's estimated that the attack against Mosul in Iraq that the United States is hoping to launch to remove ISIS governance, using Iraq troops, will result in 1.5 million refugees. Two million people were already "displaced" in the fighting over Mosul last summer, according to McClatchy News. The warnings of the new refugee flood coming from the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross may have been a factor causing the Obama administration to back off from publicizing a spring assault on Mosul. But the US plan is apparently still in place to use Iraqis and Kurds to retake Mosul on behalf of the US puppet government in Baghdad. Clearly civilians will be the primary casualties in the slaughter that is now being engineered in Washington.

Destroying History To Advance Hegemonic Racist Ideas

March 2, 2015 Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, www.popularresistance.blogspot.com Educate! Iran, Iraq, Israel, Wars and Militarism, weapons

Ashurian and Babylonian and Sumerian cultures were perhaps more civilized than our current "civilization" (based on monotheistic "religions" or on secular traditions). It is no wonder the remannts of those are being destroyed in Iraq in favor of the new idols (Netanyahu and Zionism). The congress of the strongest military power on earth (the USA) funds regimes that commit Nazi-like atrocities around the world. Israel gets the lion share of this (several billion annually). Netanyahu will try to justify genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and others. Republicans and some democrats will listen to Netanyahu call for yet another war for Israel. Zionists pushed for the catastrophic war on Iraq and Syria (Mesopotamia) and now are pushing for an even more catastrophic war on Iran (ancient Persia). Persian history and archaeology maybe destroyed like they are now doing for Mesopotamian history.

Iraq War Resister Dealt Blow By European Court

February 28, 2015 Connection e.V. and PRO ASYL, www.connection-ev.com Resist! Europe, Iraq, Law, Wars and Militarism

The network for conscientious objection Connection e.V. and PRO ASYL criticize today’s decision by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the case of U.S. AWOL soldier André Shepherd (37) as insufficient and in part quite incomprehensible in its argumentation. “The ruling by the ECJ does not strengthen the position of conscientious objectors and deserters in political-asylum proceedings. The Court avoided some fundamental questions, and answered others unacceptably, contrary to the opinion submitted by the Advocate-General.” said Rudi Friedrich of Connection e.V. The Court’s statements regarding wars that are mandated by a resolution of the U.N. Security Council are especially dubious. Bernd Mesovic of PRO ASYL said, “It is scandalous that the Court more-or-less decrees for such cases that no war crimes ‘are committed’ in such wars, and that this also applies to operations about which there is some other international consensus. Reality is turned on its head by an assertion of fact here.”

U.S. Army Claims To Be Full of Liars

February 25, 2015 David Swanson, www.worldbeyondwar.org Educate! Afghanistan, Iraq, Violence, Wars and Militarism

“Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession” is the title of a new paper by Leonard Wong and Stephen Gerras of the U.S. Army’s Strategic Studies Institute. Its thesis: the U.S. Army is full of liars who habitually lie as part of a lying culture that has internalized and normalized lying to the point of unrecognizability. Finally a claim from the Army I’m prepared to take seriously! But the authors aren’t interested in the Army’s lying press releases or lying Congressional testimony or lying sound bytes promoting each new war, predicting imminent success, and identifying each dead adult or child as an evildoer. In fact, it seems pretty clear that the authors are in fact lying to themselves about the nature of the Army’s lying.

5 Reasons Congress Should Reject Obama’s ISIS War

February 13, 2015 Peter Certo, www.fpif.org Educate! Iraq, ISIS, Syria, Wars and Militarism

At long last, the Obama administration has submitted a draft resolution to Congress that would authorize the ongoing U.S.-led military intervention against the Islamic State, or ISIS. The effort comes more than six months after the U.S. began bombing targets in Iraq and Syria. Since then, some 3,000 U.S. troops have been ordered to Iraq, and coalition air forces have carried out over 2,000 bombing runs on both sides of the border. Better late than never? Maybe not. The language proposed by the White House would authorize the president to deploy the U.S. military against the Islamic State and “associated persons or forces” for a period of three years, at which point the authorization would have to be renewed.

Will Left-Right Alliance Stop Obama’s Grab For War Powers

February 12, 2015 Dan Roberts, www.theguardian.com Organize! Congress, Iraq, ISIS, Syria, Wars and Militarism

enior Democrats have vowed to fight Barack Obama’s new plan for what they call a “carte blanche” expansion of military authority, claiming that proposals presented to Congress on Wednesday do almost nothing to constrain the White House’s ability wage war without approval. The California congressman Adam Schiff and Virginia senator Tim Kaine singled out the lack of any geographic limits in the proposed three-year authorisation for military force (AUMF) – as well as the failure to repeal a 2001 law previously used to justify attacks – as areas of major concern. Even as Obama said he was not interested in “perpetual” or “endless war”, leaders of his own party threatened to team up with “strange bedfellows” from the Republican opposition to combat sweeping future presidential power.

How The Iraq War Financed A Beltway Real Estate Boom

January 5, 2015 Ken Silverstein, www.readersupportednews.org Educate! Iraq, Real Estate, Wars and Militarism

Back in the DC real estate doldrums of the mid-1990s, before he helped pave the way for war in Iraq, Stephen Rademaker owned a modest condo in Arlington, Va. Then, a few years later, as a House staffer on the International Relations Committee, Rademakerwrote the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which called for regime change, a phrase that altered the course of history. Bill Clinton signed the Act, which became the basis for the congressional authorization for the use of force against Saddam Hussein four years later; by then Rademaker was working at the State Department. Things soon took a turn for the better, at least for Rademaker; he left government and went to work as a lobbyist, eventually joining countless numbers of retired government officials who cleaned up, directly or indirectly, by leading the country into war.

The CIA Torture Report: Through Arab Eyes

December 21, 2014 Maged Mandour, www.opendemocracy.net Educate! Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Torture

One of the fears highlighted by western and American media was the loss of American moral power in the world, and the possibility of the use of this report for propaganda and recruitment purposes by Jihadist groups. As an Arab, I cannot help but think that this fear is vastly exaggerated, for the simple reason that the US - at least in the Arab world - never possessed this moral legitimacy in the first place. In the average Arab mind, there is a connection between the US, Israel, Arab autocrats, foreign domination and war. In other words, the US is not seen as a moral power; it is seen as an imperial power that uses its local cronies - sometimes with direct intervention - to maintain its hegemony over the region and, most importantly, the people of the region. The torture report will not alter this dynamic nor accelerate it. The Jihadists were created by these practices and wider policies that never received any international condemnation. The increase of extremists at an alarming rate is the result of US foreign policy. Those living under the yoke of America’s allies experience real torture and this is not being addressed as a US responsibility. From the Palestinians in the occupied territories and refugee camps, to the Egyptians living under military autocrats, and Iraqis suffering from the violence of sectarianism; they all languish in a slow painful existence, which is not acknowledged as torture. The US is responsible for the daily torture of millions of Arabs, as a matter of systematic policy, for which it is not being held accountable.

Western Imperialists Have Been Bombing Iraq For 100 Years

October 31, 2014 Nicolas J. S. Davies, www.alternet.org Educate! Great Britain, History, Iraq, ISIS, Palestine, Syria

President Obama's campaign of aerial bombardment against ISIS in Iraq and Syria maintains a British colonial policy designed 100 years ago to avoid the consequences of putting large numbers of boots on the ground in what are now Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. As a British official in Iraq reported in April 1919, "No sooner has one area been subdued than another breaks out in revolt and has to be dealt with by aeroplane…all these tribal disturbances have been dealt with from the air… thus the Army has been saved from marching many weary miles over bad country and sustaining casualties." That Western air forces are still bombing the same countries based on the same rationale a century later is a staggering failure of politics, humanity and the rule of law.

Court Orders Obama: Explain Failure To Release Torture Photos

October 23, 2014 Spencer Ackerman, www.theguardian.com Organize! Afghanistan, Human Rights, Iraq, Media, Torture, usa, Wars and Militarism

The Obama administration has until early December to detail its reasons for withholding as many as 2,100 graphic photographs depicting US military torture of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, a federal judge ordered on Tuesday. By 12 December, Justice Department attorneys will have to list, photograph by photograph, the government’s rationale for keeping redacted versions of the photos unseen by the public, Judge Alvin Hellerstein instructed lawyers. But any actual release of the photographs will come after Hellerstein reviews the government’s reasoning and issues another ruling in the protracted transparency case. While Hellerstein left unclear how much of the Justice Department’s declaration will itself be public, the government’s submission is likely to be its most detailed argument for secrecy over the imagery in a case that has lasted a decade.

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