Iraq

Hawks Push For Iraq War, Rule Of Law Prevents It

June 14, 2014 Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.or Educate! Iraq, Wars and Militarism

The same people who got the US into the mistaken Iraq War are now urging President Obama to use military force in Iraq again. Republican hawks are using the violence in Iraq as a political tool that is escalating pressure for US military intervention. But, if the US follows the rule of law -- both US and international law -- the president does not have the authority to attack Iraq without Congressional and UN authorization. . . . It is evident to all, except those who want to go to war and refuse to follow domestic and international law, that President Obama needs the US Congress to act to authorize military force; and the United Nations needs to approve military intervention. If President Obama acts without these, he will be acting in violation of established law. Following the 'rule of law' may prevent the United States from involving the country in another illegal war and may prevent further destruction and chaos in Iraq.

The Iraq Invasion Has Led To Bloody Chaos

June 14, 2014 Owen Jones, www.theguardian.com Educate! Iraq, United Kingdom (UK), Wars and Militarism

I have encountered no sense of vindication, no "I told you so", among veterans of the anti-war protest of 15 February 2003 in response to the events in Iraq. Despair, yes, but above all else, bitterness – that we were unable to stop one of the greatest calamities of modern times, that warnings which were dismissed as hyperbole now look like understatements, that countless lives (literally – no one counts them) have been lost, and will continue to be so for many years to come. In July 2002, the Guardian warned that Britain was "sleepwalking to war". Blair's commitment to invade come what may – which the Chilcot inquiry (when it is finally published) will either confirm or whitewash – is now established. By September 2002, the inevitability had sunk in. In the first demonstration, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in London on 27 September – me and my grandfather among them – full of determination and foreboding. Three weeks earlier, Amr Moussa, then-secretary general of the Arab League, warned that the Iraq war would "open the gates of hell".

Blackwater Guards Face Trial In Iraq Shootings

June 13, 2014 AP, www.AP.org Educate! Blackwater, Iraq, Trial

Four former Blackwater Worldwide security guards went on trial Wednesday in the killings of 14 Iraqis and the wounding of at least 18 others. Over the next few days, a jury of 12 residents from the District of Columbia will be chosen from a pool of 111 people to decide the guards' fate. The trial is expected to last months. The judge overseeing the trial, Royce Lamberth, has been a U.S. district judge for more than 25 years and he has a military background. He served as a captain in the Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps from 1968 to 1974, including three years at the Pentagon. The prospective jurors filled out 26-page questionnaires that delved into whether they had any personal experience with excessive use of force by security guards; whether they would be able to follow testimony from Arabic-speaking witnesses through a translator; and whether they have strong feelings about the war in Iraq or the prosecution of American citizens for acts committed in a war zone .

International Lawyers Seek Justice for Iraqis

April 20, 2014 Dahr Jamail, www.truthout.org Resist! Iraq, War Criminal, Wars and Militarism

International lawyers and activists converged at a conference titled The Iraq Commission, in Brussels, Belgium, April 16 and 17, with the primary aim of bringing to justice government officials who are guilty of war crimes in Iraq. "Within a few days of this, a lawless atmosphere developed within my unit,” Ross Caputi, a former marine who took part in the brutal November 2004 siege of Fallujah told the Iraq Commission. "There was a lot of looting going on. I saw people searching the pockets of the dead resistance fighters for money. Some people were mutilating corpses." The conference represents the most powerful and most current organized attempt in the world to bring justice to those responsible for the catastrophe in Iraq, and included powerful international lawyers like International Court of Justice lawyer Curtis Doebbler and Louie Roberto Zamora Bolanos, a lawyer from Costa Rica who successfully sued the government of his country for supporting the war in Iraq.

Iraq Lies Continue: Obama’s Iraq Fairy Tale

March 30, 2014 Sheldon Richman, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Barack Obama, Iraq, Wars and Militarism

I promised myself that I would no longer comment on what Barack Obama has to say, because it’s just not worth the time and effort. Obama’s public remarks are comprehensible only if you keep one thing in mind: he, like other politicians, thinks most people are morons. I am so appalled by what Obama said in Europe the other day, however, that I must break my promise. In his speech he said, regarding events in Crimea, that Russia has pointed to America’s decision to go into Iraq as an example of Western hypocrisy. Now, it is true that the Iraq War was a subject of vigorous debate not just around the world, but in the United States as well. I participated in that debate and I opposed our military intervention there. But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system. We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory. We did not grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state that could make decisions about its own future.

Hearings: Iraq’s Right To Heal, 11 Years After Iraq Invasion

March 29, 2014 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Iraq, Media, Wars and Militarism

The newspaper that claims to print "all the news that's fit to print" -- - failed to identify the organizations conducting the Right to Heal Campaign; - failed to report that a formal complaint against the U.S. government had been filed by those organizations at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or explain the substance of that complaint; - failed to report that Iraqis had come to the US to testify in support of that complaint, were present and did testify before the McDermott committee mentioned in the article and later at a People's Hearing (also mentioned . . . Accuracy involves more than correctly reporting events. It also involves not omitting information that is relevant to the subject of the report and necessary to understanding those events.

U.S. Is Quietly Shipping More Weapons to Iraq

March 18, 2014 Staff www.commondreams.org Educate! Iraq

This month alone, "the United States delivered nearly 100 Hellfire missiles together with hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition and M4 rifles" to the Iraqi government, the U.S. Embassy to Iraq revealed Sunday. In a public statement, the U.S. Embassy claimed the shipments were sent to aid the Iraqi government and military's so-called "counter-terrorism" operations targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Yet, experts have warned that the ongoingn flow of U.S. weapons into Iraq has only escalated political and sectarian violence in the country and region that was set in motion by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Veterans Take the Stand in NYC Free Speech Trial

March 12, 2014 Ellen Davidson, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Afghanistan, Iraq, Wars and Militarism

“Unjust laws need to be broken so they will be removed,” is the explanation U.S. Army veteran Ellen Barfield gave for refusing to leave New York City’s Vietnam Veterans Plaza after the 10 pm closing time last October. She was testifying in her own defense March 11 during the second day of a trial of five veterans arrested at the plaza on Oct. 7, 2013. The defendants were arrested with 14 others (whose charges were later dismissed) as they read the names of the war dead from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam and laid flowers at the base of the memorial. The five had flex-cuffed themselves together and lay on the ground, and were charged with resisting arrest, obstructing government administration, disorderly conduct, failure to obey a park sign, trespassing, and failure to obey a lawful order.

G-20 Protester’s Amazing Statement To Court Before Sentencing

February 14, 2014 Joel Bitar, www.supportjoel.com Educate! Afghanistan, Finance and the Economy, G-20, Iraq, Israel, Revolution, Wars and Militarism

It is only really possible to understand the events that took place in Toronto in the context of the global movement against neoliberalism and the corporatization of the planet. It is my belief that this movement is best explained as an individual and collective response to various forms of domination and exploitation. My politics are inseparable from my own life experiences, which I would like to briefly speak about now. When I was in college trying to get rich and focusing on my own personal comforts seemed right when everyone else was chasing the same thing. However, two events occurred during this time that fundamentally changed the way I now see the world. The first event was the global financial crisis of 2008. The second event took place in December, 2008, when Israel launched an invasion into the Gaza Strip. This led me to see more and more about the world that I could not unsee, including how the continued exploitation of the environment is connected to the same economic interests mentioned above. Financial crises, war and environmental degradation share a common thread. They are born of the prevailing economic system, which is only interested in maximizing profit and increasing growth. This system is predicated on maintaining vast levels of inequality, where a small number of people have incredible amounts of wealth while the masses are locked in poverty.

Let Them Stay Week 2014 – Stop Deportations!

January 15, 2014 Resisters, www.resisters.ca Resist! Asylum, Iraq, Refugees, Veterans

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the arrival in Canada of Jeremy Hinzman, the first Iraq War resister to seek asylum here after refusing to participate in an illegal and immoral war. Yet 10 years on, Jeremy and his family, and many other U.S. war resisters, are still living in limbo – not certain if they will be forced to return to the U.S., where they face harsh punishment for their courageous decision. From January 12 to 19th, join Canadians across the country in Let Them Stay Week 2014, to send a message that U.S. war resisters are welcome in Canada, and that the Canadian government must stop the deportations and enact a provision to let them stay.

Cost of Iraq and Afghan Wars Could Hit $6 trillion

January 8, 2014 Peter Foster, www.telegraph.co.uk Educate! Afghanistan, Iraq, Wars and Militarism

The fresh calculation – which includes the cost of spiralling veterans' care bills and the future interest on war loans – paints a grim picture of how America's future at home and abroad has been mortgaged to the two conflicts entered into by George W Bush in 2001 and 2003. "There will be no peace dividend," is the stark conclusion from the 22-page report from the Kennedy School of Government, "and the legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be costs that persist for decades." The report comes as the US prepares for a final withdrawal from Afghanistan, a move that Barack Obama trumpeted in his State of the Union address as a sign that America was finally moving forward after a sapping decade of war.

Victims of U.S. Chemical Warfare In Iraq

October 15, 2013 Elizabeth Schulte, www.socialistworker.org Educate! Environment, Iraq, Middle East, Wars and Militarism

"For its invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. military didn't hesitate to use depleted uranium once again.According to Jamail, who went to Iraq to report as an independent, "unembedded" journalist: The U.S. and British militaries used more than 1,700 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq in the 2003 invasion (Jane's Defence News, 4/2/04)--on top of 320 tons used in the 1991 Gulf War (Inter Press Service, 3/25/03). Literally every local person I've ever spoken with in Iraq during my nine months of reporting there knows someone who either suffers from or has died of cancer.During its two pounding assaults on the city of Falluja in 2004, the U.S. used large quantities of DU ammunition, as well as white phosphorous--which burns when exposed to air and can cause horrific injuries to anyone caught in its path. It's important to remember that this was a war the U.S. government said it was fighting in order to put a halt to Saddam Hussein's access to "weapons of mass destruction"

Iraqi Birth Defects Covered Up?

October 5, 2013 Jeena Shah, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Environment, Iraq, Middle East, Wars and Militarism

"The U.S. military first used DU in Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War. Official statistics from the Iraqi government indicate that by 1995, 800 out of 100,000 Iraqis were suffering from cancer as compared to before the war when the rate was 40 out of 100,000. A 2001 study by the U.S. government of 21,000 veterans who had served in the Gulf War found an increased rate of miscarriages, and of those who gave birth, two to three times greater likelihood of birth defects. Despite strong evidence of the lasting damage DU can cause, the U.S. once again used it as a weapon following its 2003 invasion and, according to a Pentagon spokesperson, took no responsibility to clean up DU-impacted areas in Iraq."

WHO Blocks Report on Depleted Uranium Cancers and Birth Defects

September 18, 2013 Denis Halliday, globalresearch.ca Educate! Iraq, Nuclear Weapons, Wars and Militarism

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has categorically refused in defiance of its own mandate to share evidence uncovered in Iraq that US military use of Depleted Uranium and other weapons have not only killed many civilians, but continue to result in the birth of deformed babies.

Abu Ghraib Torture Victims Ordered To Pay U.S. Contractor’s Legal Fees

September 13, 2013 Christina Wilkie, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Iraq, Torture

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered four Iraqis who were imprisoned at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison to pay nearly $14,000 in legal fees to defense contractor CACI, an Arlington, Va.-based company that supplied interrogators to the U.S. government during the Iraq War. The decision in favor of CACI stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the former prisoners in 2008, alleging that CACI employees directed the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The suit was dismissed in June, when U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee ruled that because the alleged acts took place on foreign soil, CACI was "immune from suit" in U.S. court.

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