Tag Archives | Iraq

Malaysian War Crimes Tribunal Finds Bush and Cheney Guilty

By on May 15, 2012 in News 9

Kuala LumpurOh, if only it were the Hague. Or better yet, the U.S. Supreme Court. I guess it’s a start, though. Via Common Dreams:

Former President George W Bush, his vice president, Dick Cheney, and six other members of his administration have been found guilty of war crimes by a tribunal in Malaysia.

Bush, Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and five of their legal advisers were tried in their absence and convicted on Saturday.

Victims of torture told a panel of five judges in Kuala Lumpur of their suffering at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the evidence, Briton Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee, said he was beaten, put in a hood and left in solitary confinement. Iraqi woman Jameelah Abbas Hameedi said she was stripped and humiliated in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Transcripts of the five-day trial will be sent to the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, the United Nations and the Security Council.

… Read the rest

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Blackwater ‘Gone Wild’ in Iraq: ‘The Warrior Class’ (Videos)

By on April 19, 2012 in News 5

Blackwater Xe AcademiVia Harper’s:

The April 2012 issue of Harper’s Magazine includes “The Warrior Class,” a feature by Charles Glass on the rise of private-security contractors since 9/11. The conclusion to the piece describes a series of videos shown to Glass by a source who had worked for the private-security company Blackwater (now Academi, formerly also Xe Services) in Iraq. Clips and photos from the videos are shown below, introduced by Glass’s descriptions:

The first [video], identified as “Baghdad, Iraq, May–­September 2005,” showed Blackwater convoys racing through town. Suddenly, the door of a Blackwater SUV opened and a rifle fired at passing traffic. “They opened the door,” my companion said. “You should never break the seal.”

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Whistleblower Who Predicted Retaliation Gets Axe from State Deptartment

By on March 19, 2012 in News 3

We Meant WellAre we entering a “post-legal” era? Via Common Dreams:

In September of last year, Peter Van Buren, a 24 year veteran at the State Department and author of the book We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, wrote a piece for the online journal TomDispatch entitled, “The Only Employee at State Who May Be Fired Because of WikiLeaks: Me”. Last week, that piece took on prophetic qualities when the State Department initiated official proceedings to fire Van Buren. The move was leaked by Van Buren himself to the Washington Post.

According to the Post, the charges against him are based on a 25-page investigation of Van Buren that the State Department concluded last December. He said he was not aware of the probe until the report was provided to him with his termination notice. From the Post:

Now the State Department is moving to fire [Van Buren] based on eight charges, ranging from linking on his blog to documents on the whistleblowing site WikiLeaks to disclosing classified information.

… Read the rest

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Don’t Be Fooled By Kony 2012, It’s Tony 2012 We Need To Get Our Own War Criminal Blair

By on March 10, 2012 in News 13

Tony 2012Aaron Kiely writes on Stop The War Coalition:

Over 65 million people have watched the Kony 2012 video. How convenient for distracting attention from our home grown war criminals like Tony Blair.

We need a Tony 2012 campaign to hold Tony Blair to account for the lies he told in taking Britain into an illegal war in Iraq which killed over one million people, made millions more refugees and devasted the country.

Rosebell Kagumire, a Ugandan blogger, responds to the US social media campaign Kony 2012: ‘White Man’s Burden’ for the Facebook generation? The ‘Kony 2012’ campaign is calling for more military intervention into Africa and follows US President Barack Obama’s decision last October to deploy 100 troops to Uganda with the aim of “removing” Joseph Kony from the picture.

As Jody McIntyre has rightly pointed out: “It is clear that the United States of America are intent on re-colonising Africa, directly and militarily, and the ‘Kony 2012’ video is a cleverly produced piece of propaganda to further this aim.” …

Read More: Stop The War Coalition… Read the rest

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US Soldier Says He Was ‘Told to Lie’ About Iraqi Killings

By on January 15, 2012 in News 3
A picture taken at the scene of the Haditha killings shows several dead Iraqis who were killed by Marines.

A picture taken at the scene of the Haditha killings shows several dead Iraqis who were killed by Marines.

Have they always taught soldiers to piss on dead people, or was it a special directive Cheney and Rumsfeld came up with?  Via Al Jazeera English:

A US soldier has told a military jury in California how his commander killed five Iraqi civilians in the western al-Anbar province in 2005 and then asked him to lie about it.

At a trial stemming from one of the Iraq war’s most controversial episodes, Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz testified on Wednesday, the third day of Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich’s court martial.

Wuterich was Dela Cruz’s squad leader, who Dela Cruz said gunned down the Iraqis after they pulled up in a car near the scene of a bombing in which a US marine had died.

In all, 24 Iraqi civilians including women and children were killed in the revenge attacks – 19 in several houses along with the five men who pulled up in a car in the town of Haditha on November 19, 2005.

… Read the rest

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The Road to the Iraq War Will Happen Again

By on December 19, 2011 in News 16

Saddam CapturedThe power of the corporate media to deceive the people is simply astonishing, but, mind you, it depends on an already distracted, ignorant, semi-passive multitude whose marching values have been carefully cultivated.

In 2003 we went into Iraq under scandalously false pretexts, guns blazing—bragging about our ability to deliver “shock and awe” with impunity (the mark of the bully) and with one goal in mind: to rob and rape that country blind of its riches. The official excuse was that Iraq and Saddam were mortal threats that had to be neutralized.

Within a matter of weeks if not days, the official line—adopted without missing a beat by the entire punditocracy—was that we had gone in “to save Iraq”, “make it a democracy,” and all the rest of the self-serving claptrap we use over and over again to justify our uber-criminal behavior.  With a straight face the official voices declared that those who had the audacity to resist our criminal violence were ingrates.… Read the rest

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Post-American Iraq By The Numbers

By on December 16, 2011 in News 20

golfAs we pull our troops out following eight years in Iraq, Barack Obama earlier this week called it a “moment of success” that came at heavy cost — “nearly 4,500 Americans made the ultimate sacrifice.” The president made no mention of the cost to Iraqis, so Juan Cole has this to add:

Population of Iraq: 30 million

Percentage of Iraqis who lived in slum conditions in 2000: 17

Percentage of Iraqis who live in slum conditions in 2011: 50

Number of the 30 million Iraqis living below the poverty line: 7 million.

Number of Iraqis who died of violence 2003-2011: 150,000 to 400,000.

Orphans in Iraq: 4.5 million.

Orphans living in the streets: 600,000.

Number of women, mainly widows, who are primary breadwinners in family: 2 million.

Iraqi refugees displaced by the American war to Syria: 1 million

Internally displaced persons in Iraq: 1.3 million

Proportion of displaced persons who have returned home since 2008: 1/8

Rank of Iraq on Corruption Index among 182 countries: 175

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Final Bill For US War In Iraq Will Be $4 Trillion

By on December 15, 2011 in News 8

Iraq_header_2Just so you know, that’s $4,000,000,000,000. Christopher Hinton explains for Marketwatch:

The nine-year-old Iraq war came to an official end on Thursday, but paying for it will continue for decades until U.S. taxpayers have shelled out an estimated $4 trillion.

Over a 50-year period, that comes to $80 billion annually.

Although that only represents about 1% of nation’s gross domestic product, it’s more than half of the national budget deficit. It’s also roughly equal to what the U.S. spends on the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency combined each year.

Near the start of the war, the U.S. Defense Department estimated it would cost $50 billion to $80 billion. White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was dismissed in 2002 after suggesting the price of invading and occupying Iraq could reach $200 billion.

“The direct costs for the war were about $800 billion, but the indirect costs, the costs you can’t easily see, that payoff will outlast you and me,” said Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at American Progress, a Washington, D.C.

… Read the rest

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The U.S. Military’s Sexual Assault and Rape Epidemic

By on October 25, 2011 in News 24

MilitarySarah Lazare reports in Al Jazeera:

As the war in Afghanistan passes its ten-year mark, sexual assault runs rampant within the ranks, with an estimated one in three female service members raped during their service, according to at least one peer-reviewed study. This is in a military where women comprise more 11 per cent of active duty service members deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and more than 15 per cent of the total military, with at least 200,000 active duty women currently serving. This epidemic also affects men: 60 per cent of women serving in the National Guard and Reserve, along with 27 per cent of men, are estimated to have experienced Military Sexual Trauma (MST). Perpetrators rely on a chain of command that appears to offer virtual impunity for sexual assaults committed against lower-ranking service members.

Military reports and Congress-appointed task forces acknowledge that sexual assault within the military is widespread.

… Read the rest

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President Obama: All U.S. Troops Out of Iraq by End of Year

By on October 21, 2011 in News 30

SaddamVia MSNBC:

President Barack Obama announced on Friday that all U.S. troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year. The president made the announcement at a White House briefing following a private video conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

“As promised the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, the war in Iraq will be over,” Obama said.

More than 4,400 American military members have been killed, and another 2,000 wounded since the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003.

The two countries have been negotiating over whether the United States would leave behind up to several thousand military trainers after year-end, or if all remaining troops would depart as planned by Dec. 31. The main sticking point has been legal immunity for any U.S. forces that remain.

… Read the rest

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