Iraq War // Current TV

Voice in the Wilderness: Lives and Money Will Be Saved When Hillary Clinton Leaves Office.

Hillary, check your passport, it should say American. However, you fight harder for... more

charkeseharvey
added this
5 days ago
|
1 comment

Golden Globe Awards to Honor 1 Million Dead Iraqis

HOLLYWOOD, CA-- The 2012 Golden Globe Awards this Sunday will take a moment to honor... more

adamluebke
added this
30 days ago
|
0 comments

WHACKO-TV NEWSPAPER ROLL TIDE

Everyone is talking about the protester; winner of the man of the year in Time... more

dwightdouglas
added this
1 month ago
|
0 comments

Christopher Hitchens Has Died | Obits, Musings, Photos, Videos

Washington Post... . Christopher Hitchens dies; Vanity Fair writer was a... more

EthicalVegan
added this
1 month ago
|
116 comments

Iraq celebrates U.S. withdrawal

Iraqis burned American flags, brandished banners and thronged the streets of the... more

JanforGore
added this
1 month ago
|
16 comments

Remembering Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

The death of Christopher Hitchens on Thursday night, of complications from esophageal cancer at the age of 62, ended one of the greater intellectual careers of the last 40 years. Born in Portsmouth, England, and educated at Balliol College, Oxford, Hitchens started his career as a Trotskyite at “The New Statesman,” working along with noted authors, Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, who would become his lifelong friends. In the early 1980s, he moved to the United States, becoming a citizen in 2007, and began working for liberal magazine “The Nation,” writing some of his earliest attacks on the conservative government and American foreign policy.

A prolific author, Hitchens left behind a massive body of critical writing, with more than a dozen books and hundreds of essays targeting everyone from the British Monarchy to Bill Clinton to George Orwell to God, usually with wit and more often than not, vicious and cutting remarks. Even those who hated his politics could not help but admire his skill as a writer and ability to craft a sharp turn of phrase, and many called him a friend.

Perhaps his most famous book was “The Missionary Position,” a scathing attack on Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity church, an organization that he called a cult. Hitchens described Mother Teresa as a “fraud” and accused her of glorifying poverty to enrich herself and the Catholic church, rather than truly helping the poor. The book infuriated Roman Catholics around the world, as well as politicians and celebrities who he claimed had used the charity and her reputation to mask their own evil deeds.

A later work, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger,” accused the former Secretary of State of “war crimes,” and argued that Kissinger should be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture” for his involvement in atrocities in Southeast Asia and Central America. As a critic of the Bush administration’s use of torture, Hitchens filmed himself being waterboarded to demonstrate the cruelty of the practice. Hitchens claimed that, “The official lie about this treatment … is that it 'simulates' the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning.”

Hitchens had an enviable career arc that began with his own brand of fiery journalism at Britain’s “New Statesman” and then made its way to America, where he wrote for everyone from “The Atlantic” and “Harper’s” to “Slate and “The New York Times Book Review.” He was a legend on the speakers’ circuit, could debate just about anyone on anything and won innumerable awards.

Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer, a troublemaker and was a gift, if it dare be said, from God.

This piece includes color photographs, a photo-gallery and two documentary short films.

http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/remembering-christopher-hitchens-1949-2011/The death of Christopher Hitchens on Thursday night, of complications from... more

disembedded
added this
1 month ago
|
0 comments

The Iraq War Ends

"You will leave with great pride - lasting pride-secure in knowing that your... more

EmperorThan
added this
1 month ago
|
1 comment

McCain on Iraq withdrawal: ‘We risk losing everything that we gained’

By David Edwards Thursday, December 15, 2011 For Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the end... more

KB723
added this
1 month ago
|
58 comments

Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq

I am not sure which is worse, that justice never took with the investigation or that... more

CaptSutter
added this
1 month ago
|
0 comments

US President Barack Obama has marked the end of the Iraq war with a speech at Fort Bragg

President Barack Obama: "You have shown why the US military is the fighting force... more

LOrion
added this
1 month ago
|
0 comments

Blagojevich gets 14 years, but what about these guys?

Blagojevich just got 14 years in prison. He wheeled and dealed to leverage... more

joeeddy
added this
2 months ago
|
1 comment

The Antiwar Comic: How Many Times?

Will we ever treat the veterans right?

TonyDiGerolamo
added this
3 months ago
|
0 comments

Billions Lost in Secret Federal Reserve Funding of Iraq War

(But if you steal a lighter from the 7-11, you will go to jail!) Since the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, the New York Federal Reserve has been shipping tens of billions of dollars to the government and central bank of Iraq, ostensibly for reconstruction and resumption of governmental services after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Between 2003 and 2008, over $40 billion in cash was secretly shipped in trucks from the New York Federal Reserve compound in East Rutherford, New Jersey to Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, where they were then flown by military aircraft to Baghdad International Airport. In just the first two years, the shipments of dollar bills weighed a total of 363 tons.

But much of that money was stolen, misappropriated, and simply lost. Despite Congressional hearings and reports, official inquiries from Washington to Baghdad, an investigating special inspector general’s office and Department of Defense, nobody knows exactly what happened to the bulk of the money. Likely destinations of the stolen fiat, secretly printed out of thin air to fund the US government’s illegal war and occupation in Iraq, went towards intricate contracting schemes, corrupt Iraqi and American officials, and brash, blanket appropriations in war torn Iraq.

The shipments followed a detailed route, documenting by the minute who was in custody of the money, until it reached the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) official in Baghdad who arranged for them to get to the Central Bank of Iraq in downtown Baghdad. That responsibility was fulfilled by one man, a naturalized American citizen of Lebanese descent who was born in Saudi Arabia working as a civilian contractor for the US military. Only his first name has been released: Basel. He was the last to see the bales of cash before they entered the Central Bank of Iraq.

The flow of money between the Iraqi government and central bank and the New York Federal Reserve did not end in 2008. Rather, it continues to this day, albeit reportedly in smaller amounts. “We don’t have access to the Federal Reserve account to know how much money actually came out of the Fed,” said Jason Venner, the inspector general’s chief auditor. “They won’t tell us.”

The government of Iraq continues to pour portions of the profits from its renewed oil industry into its accounts at the Fed in New York, called the “Oil Proceeds Receipts Account” that serves as a cash reserve for the Iraqi Central Bank. Just this passed April, the Iraqi government informed the UN security council about a new account it is setting up with the Fed to replace the Development Fund for Iraq account established at the beginning of the war.

The issue of the tens of billions of dollars – at least that portion of the total which has been made public – being sent to Iraq for what the US and Iraqi governments call reconstruction and then being lost, stolen, unaccounted for, etc. is indeed a criminal level of recklessness and negligence. But another aspect of these shady giveaways is perhaps more fundamental. At the beginning of the Iraq War, the US government secretly commissioned the New York Federal Reserve to create money in order to covertly fund the war and the newly-crafted client regime in Iraq. The American people were not informed, Congress was in the dark, and the total amounts and the beneficiaries involved are to this day being kept secret.

This clandestine collaboration of unaccountable public-private institutions colluding to facilitate warfare and secure profits in the process understandably leads to questions of the legitimacy of these institutions. The Federal Reserve system has long been tied to the most egregious genre of violence perpetrated by the state, that is war. Yet hardly any support in Congress exists to impose restrictions and accountability on the Federal Reserve, and the institution itself seems entrenched beyond the grip of those most affected by its policies. Both Americans, and Iraqis.

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/10/25/billions-lost-in-secret-federal-reserve-funding-of-iraq-war/(But if you steal a lighter from the 7-11, you will go to jail!) Since the beginning... more