War in Iraq // Current TV

The US Role in Iraq has Officially Ended

don't ever need to return...

cedricrice
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1 month ago
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Truth Again Finds Light

Yet, former CIA asset had been squelched and held in Federal Prison. Certainly,... more

justadad
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12 months ago
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3 comments

WikiLeaks' Most Terrifying Revelation: Just How Much Our Government Lies to Us

Wikileaks has shown that our government and military form a 'vast lying machine' that perpetrates mass murder in our name.

January 3, 2011

Do you believe that it is in Americans' interest to allow a small group of U.S. leaders to unilaterally murder, maim, imprison and/or torture anyone they choose anywhere in the world, without the knowledge let alone oversight of their citizens or the international community? And, despite their proven record of failure to protect America -- from Indochina to Iran to Iraq -- do you believe they should be permitted to clandestinely expand their war-making without informed public debate? If so, you are betraying the principles upon which America was founded, endangering your nation, and displaying a distinctly "unamerican" subservience to unaccountable authority. But if you oppose autocratic power, you are called to support Wikileaks and others trying to limit U.S. Executive Branch mass murder abroad and failure to protect Americans at home.

These two issues became officially linked for the first time when former U.S. Afghan commander General Stanley McChrystal explicitly stated that the murder of civilians increases rather than decreases the numbers of those committed to killing Americans, and actually implemented policies -- since reversed by General Petraeus -- to reduce U.S. murder of civilians. McChrystal said that “for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies." By so doing he made it clear that killing civilians is not only a moral and war crimes issue, but -- in today's interdependent world -- also threatens U.S. national security.

As important as is the issue of free speech, it is the question of whether the U.S. Executive is in fact protecting the American people through its mass murder abroad that really lies at the heart of the Wikileaks controversy. Executive Branch officials justify persecuting and threatening to murder Assange on the grounds that he has damaged U.S. "national security." If McChrystal is right, however, it is the past decade of U.S. Executive mass murder in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, now revealed beyond any doubt by Wikileaks, that is the real threat to U.S. national security.

The chilling fact is this: whether you believe that September 11, 2001 was due to incomprehensible fanaticism or genuine grievances, it seems likely that U.S. leaders’ murder of countless Muslims since 2001 will cause the next 9/11 should, God forbid, it occur, The recent suicide-bomber in Sweden who came perilously close to succeeding taped a message saying "so will your children, daughters, brothers, and sisters die, like our brothers, sisters, and children die." Similar sentiments were voiced by the Times Square bomber, and it is likely that those responsible for future American deaths will also be motivated by revenge for the hundreds of thousands of Muslims for whose deaths U.S. leaders are responsible since 2001.

This is not, of course, to justify such attacks. Any attacks on civilians, whether by the Taliban or General Petraeus, are totally unjustified and crimes of war. But if the issue is how best to enhance U.S. national security, it is critical to rationally discuss the most prudent and sensible means of preventing further attacks -- which in this case is to stop creating huge numbers of people who want to kill Americans. If General McChrystal is correct, every American should tremble at the long-term danger to America caused by the last decade of U.S. war-making in the Muslim world. If only 1/100th of 1% of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims are moved to want to attack America because of America's post-9/11 killing of Muslim civilians, for example, the U.S. Executive will have created a pool of 160,000 Muslims devoted to murdering Americans.

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http://www.alternet.org/story/149393/wikileaks_most_terrifying_revelation:_just_how_much_our_government_lies_to_usWikileaks has shown that our government and military form a 'vast lying... more

gerardange
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1 year ago
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WIKILEAKS, The Year 2010 in Review (60min Interview Video)

2010 can be defined as the year of WikiLeaks. The whisteblowing website first made... more

gerardange
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1 year ago
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1 comment

This billionaire literally showered this singer with millions of dollars.

This money flossing billionaire threw millions of dollars on a singer. He said to be... more

Tweeter_Topics
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1 year ago
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Obama Plays Down Plan for Iraq Troop Presence Beyond His Self-Imposed 2011 Deadline

As the last U.S. combat brigade in Iraq prepared to leave the country and cross the... more

SkeeterVT
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1 year ago
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Over $1 Trillion Now Alloted by Congress For Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

Obama Signs War Funding Bill President Obama has signed into legislation a war... more

ninthstate
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1 year ago
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Returning Home from War

"Deployed in Iraq I was deployed in Iraq in September 2009 for my first... more

NankinYP
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1 year ago
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Blackwater Guards Helped CIA with Raids

Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the... more

Future_America
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2 years ago
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BARACK OBAMA'S NOBEL PEACE PRIZE FOR 2009

CLICK LINK FOR MORE INFO http://getwititmagazine.com/2009/12/10/1536/

GetWitIt
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2 years ago
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Obama and War; O-GOD,..."say hellooooooooo to the new Boss,.....same as....."

Obama’s War: The Reaction
The neocons and the war liberals are on board---(you know who you are)
by Justin Raimondo, December 04, 2009

I'm actually pretty surprised to see that many liberals and progressives are not climbing on board Obama’s war wagon – notably Rachel Maddow, who made a stinging criticism of the escalation by comparing the rhetoric of the Bush administration and that of the New Obama, concluding that the latter had adopted and even extended the essence of the "Bush Doctrine," the morally indefensible idea that we have to strike at targets that might possibly pose a threat to U.S. national security some time in the indefinite future. Her subsequent interview with counterinsurgency guru John Nagl, however, was strictly softball – but, hey, whaddaya expect. This is MSNBC, after all.

Speaking of which: in reporting the president’s escalation speech, Keith Olbermann was clearly embarrassed, like a father whose child has just crapped his pants in the middle of Walmart. His dispirited voice, the staged "debate" between lefty-blogger Cenk Somebody-or-Other and some Democratic Party "strategist"-cum-hack ("We can agree to support Obama while disagreeing about specific policies," announced Olbermann, somewhat too earnestly) – it was all very telling, not to mention hilarious.
A good number of Obama’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders are to be found on the neoconservative Right: we have David "Axis of Evil" Frum, who said we shouldn’t expect Churchillian rhetoric because it is not 1940 (what an admission for a neocon to make, surely a first!). National Review’s editors agreed: "Churchillian it was not." Yet they endorsed the president’s policy prescriptions, for the most part, while disdaining his tone (not bloodthirsty enough for their tastes). Bill Kristol, one of the intellectual architects [.pdf] of the Iraq war, opined in the pages of the Washington Post that, despite the speech’s flaws – notably the mention of a "too cute by half" deadline for the beginning of U.S. withdrawal – he is over the moon that Obama has "embraced the use of military force as a key instrument of national power." The Weekly Standard editor cited an exchange between a reporter and a senior U.S. official who was asked about Iran’s insistence that the Obama surge in Afghanistan is the same as the previous Bush surge in Iraq. The official replied that Obama’s war is being fought to protect the U.S. and its allies: "It’s easy to understand Iran’s perspective perhaps that there is some continuity here in the U.S. policy. That’s because the interest is consistent." Avers Kristol: "’The interest is consistent.’ That’s the heart of the matter. It’s encouraging that Obama seems to understand this fact."

The essential continuity of American foreign policy in the age of Obama is something the neocons have been joyfully anticipating since the Dear Leader took office: recall that joint conference between the pro-Obama Center for a New American Security, the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, and Kristol’s Foreign Policy Initiative, which celebrated what the participants presciently perceived as Obama’s hawkishness.

This continuity is not acknowledged, however, by Obama’s liberal supporters.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/12/03/obamas-war-the-reaction/Obama’s War: The Reaction The neocons and the war liberals are on board---(you... more

remanns
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2 years ago
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Gen. Odierno: May not be possible to declare victory in Iraq

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It isn't clear whether the United States will ever be able to... more

bansheewail
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2 years ago
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55 comments

Feds Say Blackwater 'Intended to Kill' Iraqi Civilians

The US government’s allegations back-up the explosive testimony of two former... more

Future_America
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2 years ago
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1 comment

G.I. Jane Breaks the Combat Barrier

Before 2001, America’s military women had rarely seen ground combat. Their jobs kept them mostly away from enemy lines, as military policy dictates.

But the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, often fought in marketplaces and alleyways, have changed that. In both countries, women have repeatedly proved their mettle in combat. The number of high-ranking women and women who command all-male units has climbed considerably along with their status in the military.

“Iraq has advanced the cause of full integration for women in the Army by leaps and bounds,” said Peter R. Mansoor, a retired Army colonel who served as executive officer to Gen. David H. Petraeus while he was the top American commander in Iraq. “They have earned the confidence and respect of male colleagues.”

Their success, widely known in the military, remains largely hidden from public view. In part, this is because their most challenging work is often the result of a quiet circumvention of military policy.

Women are barred from joining combat branches like the infantry, armor, Special Forces and most field artillery units and from doing support jobs while living with those smaller units. Women can lead some male troops into combat as officers, but they cannot serve with them in battle.

Of the two million Americans who have fought in these wars since 2001, more than 220,000 of them, or 11 percent, have been women.

Despite longstanding fears about how the public would react to women coming home in coffins, Americans have responded to their deaths and injuries no differently than to those of male casualties, analysts say. That is a reflection of changing social mores but also a result of the growing number of women — more than 356,000 today — who serve in the armed forces, including the Reserves and the National Guard, 16 percent of the total.

Not all combat jobs are the same. Handling field artillery or working in Bradleys, for example, are jobs more suited to some women than light infantry duties, which can require carrying heavy packs for miles.Most women in the military express little, if any, desire to join the grueling, testosterone-laden light infantry. But some say they are interested in artillery and armor.

Any change to the policy would require Congressional approval, which lawmakers say is unlikely in the middle of two wars. But women in the military and their allies want their performance in combat to count for something.

“We have crossed that line in Iraq,” said Representative John M. McHugh, Republican of New York and the nominee for Army secretary. “Debate it all you want folks, but the military is going to do what the military needs to do. And they are needing to put women in combat.”Before 2001, America’s military women had rarely seen ground combat. Their jobs... more