Hannah Allam, McClatchy Newspapers: "The British said cheerio back in July, around the same time the Romanians cleared out 'Camp Dracula,' their compound on a US base in southern Iraq. Tonga and Kazakhstan left ages ago, and no one seems to remember if any Icelandic forces ever made it to Iraq. It doesn't matter now, anyway, because as of Friday, former president George W. Bush's 'coalition of the willing' formally ceased to exist, leaving only the US military's 130,000 or so forces to shepherd their Iraqi counterparts through a volatile election season before a full American troop withdrawal that's expected by the end of 2011."
A secret army interrogation unit accused of being responsible for the widespread abuse of Iraqi prisoners is being investigated by the UK Ministry of Defence, it was revealed Friday.
U.S. Killed Detainees During Interrogations in Afghanistan and Iraq
According to the documents, 21 of the 44 deaths were homicides. Eight of the homicides appear to have resulted from abusive techniques used on detainees, in some instances, by the CIA, Navy Seals and Military Intelligence personnel. The autopsy reports list deaths by ""strangulation,"" ""asphyxiation"" and ""blunt force injuries."
Murder For Hire: CIA Reportedly Ordered Blackwater To Murder 9/11 Suspect
By Diana Sweet
In 2004, the CIA sent a team from the private security firm Blackwater, now Xe, to Hamburg to kill an alleged al Qaeda financier who was investigated for years by German authorities on suspicion of links to al Qaeda, according to a little-highlighted element in a Vanity Fair article to be published this month.
You know about those five Blackwater guards who shot up 17 Iraqis in Sept. 2007 for no apparent reason and who recently got their case dismissed by a federal judge on a technicality? Well, the U.S, prosecutors knew their case would go down like the Hindenburg from the get go. (Blackwater has officially changed its name to ‘Xe’ but everybody still calls it ‘Blackwater,’ so we will too.) The prosecutors based their case on statements the Blackwater guards had made in an initial report on the massacre. As government contractors, the guards were required to make those statements. The Constitution protects defendants from having to testify against themselves, so the statements in the required report couldn’t be used in a prosecution. But the prosecution built its case around the statements anyway. … One can’t help but wonder if the prosecutors failed to apply common sense on purpose...
It’s been a long while since anyone has even debated whether ‘victory’ was applicable to the U.S.-led invasion and subsequent seven-year occupation of Iraq. But 2009 was the year that the war’s sad fate in the history books was assured, no doubt leaving hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women to feel as though their sacrifice, and that of their comrades, has been largely unfulfilled by anything remotely resembling ‘one of the great achievements of mankind.’ No, in addition to what the Washington Post called ‘one of the most unpopular wars in American history,’ Iraq was all but officially declared a ‘non-victory’ in the waning days of 2008 by none other than Gen. David Petraeus, now head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), who could hardly be accused of bias against the American cause in Iraq and the Long War...
UK government's former chief scientific adviser says Iraq war was about oil, not weapons of mass destruction - and warns there will be more 'resource wars' to come.
Father of Soldier Killed in Iraq Responds to Blair's BBC Interview
There is no one more qualified than Reg Keys -- whose son Tom was killed in Iraq -- to comment on Tony Blair's admission to the BBC that, if he hadn't used the non-existent weapons of mass destruction to justify a war crime, he would have found another "argument" -- that is, another lie.
A trial would be warmly welcomed by millions - so what happens next?
By Neil Clark
Going to war to change another country's regime is prohibited by international law, while the Nuremburg judgment of 1946 laid down that "to initiate a war of aggression", as Blair and Bush clearly did against Iraq, "is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole".
Tony Blair's £1m-a-year paymaster seeks giant Iraqi oil deal
A Middle Eastern investment fund that pays Tony Blair about £1m a year as an international adviser is in talks to develop one of Iraq's biggest oilfields.
Revealed: Jack Straw's Secret Warning to Tony Blair on Iraq
By Michael Smith
The document begins in a way that now appears eerily prophetic: "The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few ... there is at present no majority inside the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] for any military action against Iraq."
Tony Blair is to be paid at least £200,000 by a City firm accused of profiteering from the financial crisis that brought Britain's banks to their knees.
David Sirota: "This month, a British government report admitted that one of the major rationales for invading Iraq - the claim that Saddam could deploy WMDs in 45 minutes - probably came from a cab driver. Had the public originally been told about this sketchy sourcing, there may have been a more, ahem, forceful mass opposition to pre-emptive war in the Middle East. It's a good lesson about the need for transparency."
[T]he first line agents, the police for example, are only following orders and did not originate the command that ultimately results in a violation of rights. Their supervisors only gave the orders and neither originated the laws that resulted in the orders nor actually implemented the orders. The ultimate source of the laws, the politicians, neither give the orders nor obey the orders. All three links in the chain have found a way to absolve themselves of responsibility. All three of them are invoking a form of the Nuremberg defense...
Mr Maliki's political reputation was built largely on his apparent success in bringing violence levels down following the US troop surge in 2007. Now, this image of a man who could keep Baghdad safe has been tarnished.
Iraqi-American Christians blast U.S. policies in Iraq
Upset and frustrated, about 300 metro Detroiters with roots in Iraq, most of them Chaldeans, gathered Thursday night in a banquet hall in Warren where Michael Corbin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, spoke to the crowd.
The purpose of the Chilcot inquiry is to normalise an epic crime by providing enough of a theatre of guilt to satisfy the media so that the only issue that matters, that of prosecution, is never raised. When he appears in January, Blair will play this part to odious perfection, dutifully absorbing the hisses and boos. All "inquiries" into state crimes are neutered in this way.
Sir John Sawers tells Chilcot inquiry US ignored warnings
Tony Blair's senior diplomat in Baghdad was ignored when he urged the Americans not to sack 25,000 Baathist officials, the Iraq inquiry was told today.
The ex-director of public prosecutions has accused Tony Blair of "sycophancy" towards President Bush. Sir Ken MacDonald called the 2003 Iraq war a "foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions".
Hans Blix warned Tony Blair Iraq might not have WMD
The United Nations' former chief weapons inspector in Iraq told the official inquiry into the war that he had cautioned Tony Blair the month before the 2003 invasion about the possibility that no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) would be found.
In a brief statement at the start of the hearing on Friday, inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot confirmed Mr Brown had taken up an offer to give evidence within the next two months and it is expected he will appear in late February or early March.
UK: Illegal, inevitable — Chilcot inquiry casts new doubts on Iraq war
Guardian [UK]
01/12/10
The government’s justification for launching the Iraq war was dramatically undermined today when two separate inquiries cast new light on the build-up to the invasion. Delivering the first independent assessment of the legality of the conflict, an official Dutch inquiry concluded that ‘the military action had no sound mandate in international law.’ It delivered its findings as details of Tony Blair’s support for the conflict emerged in testimony by Alastair Campbell to the Chilcot inquiry in London. … Campbell revealed that the former prime minister had assured President Bush in a series of private letters during 2002 that Britain would support a US-led war against Iraq...
Trump and His Allies...
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/06/21/trump-and-his-allies-are-clear-and-present-danger-american-democracy?utm_source=daily_newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=daily_newsletter_op
rudkla - 22. Jun, 05:09
The Republican Party...
https://truthout.org/articles/the-republican-party-is-still-doing-donald-trumps-bidding/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=804d4873-50dd-4c1b-82a5-f465ac3742ce
rudkla - 26. Apr, 05:36
January 6 Committee Says...
https://truthout.org/articles/jan-6-committee-says-trump-engaged-in-criminal-conspiracy-to-undo-election/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=552e5725-9297-4a7c-a214-53c8c51615a3