You know that Pentagon study I mentioned yesterday? The one where the Pentagon concluded, after scouring Iraq for evidence, that there was no link between Saddam and Al Qaeda? The Bush Administration is trying to keep it quiet. ABC News reports: The Bush Administration apparently does not want a U.S. military study that found no direct connection between Saddam Hussein … Read More
No Saddam And Al Qaeda Link
Not news to most of us, but there are — amazingly — still people who believe that Saddam has something to do with bun Laden and 9/11: WASHINGTON — An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama … Read More
The Obama Faux Outrage Of The Day
I’ll let Yglesius explain: Conservatives have been all over Barack Obama (here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here) for telling the following anecdote during last night’s debate: You know, I’ve heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon — supposed to have 39 … Read More
Bush Lied (Many Many Times); People Died
Not news, really: A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, … Read More
Meanwhile In Iraq…
They say that things are going very well there; that is, the surge is "working", even though nobody bothers to give a definition of what "working" actually means in this case. Remember, the whole point of the surge was to give the Iraq government more breathing room to coalesce its government, and so that Iraqi troops could train and eventually … Read More
The Posthumous Post of A U.S. Soldier In Iraq
Here’s a post from Andrew Olmstead (posting as G’Kar) on a blog I regularly read, called Obsidian Wings. The post is dated Sept. 22, 2007: Let me begin with the standard disclaimers, despite which I am certain that at least one commenter will complain that I am in some way attempting to justify the Iraq War, the surge, the presidency … Read More
Blackwater Shoots The New York Times’ Dog
The New York Times has been reporting how the security firm, Blackwater, has been going around shooting innocent people in Baghdad for no good reason. And guess what happened last week? The U.S. embassy in Iraq is investigating another deadly shooting incident involving its Blackwater bodyguards — this time of the New York Times’s dog. Staff at the newspaper’s Baghdad … Read More
Casualties Of War
The other statistic: More than 100,000 of the 750,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have sought treatment for mental problems from the Department of Veterans Affairs, an official said during a hearing on suicides. Dr. Ira Katz, the VA’s deputy chief of patient care, told members of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee that the department’s suicide hotline has received more … Read More
Rape Culture
As if the story of the KBR/Halliburton employee rape of an American staffer in Iraq isn’t bad enough… … it’s much worse when you take into account that KBR/Halliburton has tried to cover it up. … it’s much worse when you take into account that a law (passed by the GOP majority) makes any the KBR/Halliburton employees immune for prosecution … Read More
Halliburton Latest Venture In Iraq
Stomach-turning: A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident. Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a … Read More
Arming The Enemy
Stunning incompetence: The report details a massive failure in government procurement revealing little accountability for the billions of dollars spent purchasing military hardware for the Iraqi security forces. For example, according to the report, the military could not account for 12,712 out of 13,508 weapons, including pistols, assault rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers and machine guns. Let’s be clear about … Read More
Say What?
Senate Minority Mitch McConnell (R-KY), on U.S. casualties in Iraq: "Nobody is happy about losing lives but remember these are not draftees, these are full-time professional soldiers." Oh, well. That makes it okay, I guess.
Do Military Families Support The War?
Nope: Nearly six out of every 10 military families disapprove of Bush’s job performance and the way he has run the war, rating him only slightly better than the general population does. And among those families with soldiers, sailors and Marines who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 60% say that the war in Iraq was not worth the cost, … Read More
Is This What They Meant By “Shock And Awe”?
As if the threat of getting blown up is bad enough, our soldiers in Iraq have to contend with uniforms with — I am not making this up — "crotch durability problems"….
Goalposts Moved When You Weren’t Looking
In Iraq: With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections. Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the … Read More