Bush

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In 2003, the Macedonian police arrested Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen vacationing in their country. They handed the unfortunate man over to the CIA, who shipped him off to one of their “black sites.” For those too young to remember (or who have quite understandably chosen to forget), “black sites” was […]

Barack Obama

Juan Cole: The Rise and Fall of Oil and the US Invasion of Iraq

Juan Cole

Here is the closing plenary panel of a conference held in mid-September by the Qatar branch of Georgetown University on “The Invasion of Iraq: Regional Reflections.” Juan Cole is the first speaker in the video below, on the changing relationship of the United States to Iraq and to energy markets in the Bush, Obama, Trump […]

Bush

Iraq’s Climate Crisis: America’s War for Oil and the Great Mesopotamian Dustbowl

Juan Cole

( Tomdispatch.com ) – It was one of the fabled rivers of history and the Marines needed to cross it. In early April 2003, as American forces sought to wrap up their conquest of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, and take strongholds to its north, the Marine Corps formed “Task Force Tripoli.” It was commanded by […]

al-Qaeda

When Foreign Policy Elites Manipulate the Public into War, the First Amendment is the First Casualty

Ali Abootalebi

Eau Claire, WI (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – United States presidents have repeatedly waged wars with tacit congressional approval and distorted narratives at the expense of citizens’ political participation in the political process and to the detriment of their first amendment rights. the seemingly popular support for such interventions is constructed and deprives millions […]

Bush

20 Years Ago, the Bush Administration Launched the Iraq War: Juan Cole: “I Have a Bad Feeling About This”

Juan Cole

To mark the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War, here are some brief blog entries Juan Cole made in the run-up to the war expressing caution and pessimism about the triumphalist rhetoric issuing from the White House and many US news organizations. Juan Cole 01/28/2003 (Remarks delivered in late 2002). The Journal of the International […]

Bush

20 Years On, What Did the Iraq War Truly Cost?

Peter Certo

By Peter Certo | – ( Otherwords.org) – The war claimed more than lives and treasure — it claimed a future’s worth of lost opportunities. Now, younger generations are demanding them back. By Peter Certo | Most of us who were alive then remember where we were on the morning of the 9/11 attacks. As […]

Afghanistan

How the Bush “War on Terror” Fed US White Nationalism and brought the Terror Home

Andrea Mazzarino

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Recently, an agent of the Department of Homeland Security called me and started asking questions about a childhood acquaintance being investigated for extremism. I put him off. My feelings about this were, to say the least, complex. As a military spouse of 10 years and someone who has long written about […]

Bush

George W. Bush denounces “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq — I mean, Ukraine”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Michael Williams at the Dallas Morning News reports on George W. Bush’s speech at his presidential center at Southern Methodist University, during which the former president made what MSNBC’s Mehdi Hassan called “one of the biggest Freudian slips of all time.” Bush denounced the rigged elections that produced the dictatorship […]

Bush

US Deplores Russia’s ‘Shock and Awe’ against Ukraine, but Found its own Against Iraq “Spectacular”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The scenes of the horrible destruction that Russia is inflicting on Ukraine’s civilian cities, from Kharkiv to Mariupol, and the killing of nearly 1,000 civilians, including nearly 100 children, have tugged at the world’s heart strings — and rightly so. Nineteen years ago, when the George W. Bush regime unleashed […]