Articles filed under War

Anti-War
At least 31 Iraqis were killed and 14 injured during a relatively quiet day in Iraq. Also, two American soldiers and one Marine assigned to MNF-West were killed during a combat operation in Anbar province.

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Salon
How we got into Iraq is the great open question of the decade, but George Tenet in his memoir of his seven years running the Central Intelligence Agency takes his sweet time working his way around to it. He hesitates because he has much to explain: The claims made by Tenet's CIA with "high confidence" that Iraq was dangerously armed all proved false. But mistakes are one thing, excusable even when serious; inexcusable would be charges of collusion in deceiving Congress and the public to make war possible. Tenet's overriding goal in his carefully written book is to deny "that we somehow cooked the books" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. If he says it once, he says it a dozen times. "We told the president what we did on Iraq WMD because we believed it."

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The Nation
I took a micro-vacation last week--nine hours in Sun Valley before an evening speaking engagement. The sky was deep blue, the air crystalline, the hills green and not yet on fire. Strolling out of the Sun Valley Lodge, I found a tiny tourist village, complete with Swiss-style bakery, multi-star restaurant, and "opera house." What luck--the boutiques were displaying outdoor racks of summer clothing on sale!

But things started to get a little sinister--maybe I had wandered into a movie set or Paris Hilton's closet--because even at a 60 percent discount, I couldn't find a sleeveless cotton shirt for less than $100. These items shouldn't have been outdoors; they should have been in locked glass cases.

Then I remembered the general rule, which has been in place since sometime in the 90s: If a place is truly beautiful, you can't afford to be there.

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Reuters
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Four U.S. soldiers and one Marine were killed in various attacks in Iraq on Sunday, the U.S. military said on Monday.

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Editor & Publisher
NEW YORK A new CBS polls reveals that despite the "surge" in Iraq, more Americans than ever are calling for a U.S. pullout. Two out of three want troops withdrawn now, including 40% who want all troops removed -- a 7% increase since just April. Few newspaper editorials, so far, have called for a pullout of any kind.

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CBS News
Two U.S. soldiers were charged with the premeditated murder of three Iraqis, while 26 people died in American raids in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, the U.S. military said Saturday.

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MSNBC
BAGHDAD - Insurgents launched a deadly coordinated attack on an American combat patrol, the U.S. military said Friday, killing five troops and making this the deadliest quarter for U.S. soldiers in Iraq since the war began.

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MSNBC
BAGHDAD - Five American soldiers were killed and seven wounded in a coordinated attack in southern Baghdad involving a roadside bomb and rocket-propelled grenades, the U.S. military announced Friday.

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Anti-War
What was anticipated in September, the retreat of the old bulls of the Republican Party from the Bush war policy, happened in June. The beginning of the end of U.S. involvement in the Iraq war is at hand.

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Washington Post
BAGHDAD, June 28 -- The U.S. military is investigating the killings of 17 people in a U.S. helicopter attack north of Baghdad a week ago, after residents of the area complained that the victims were not fighters from the group al-Qaeda in Iraq, as the military originally claimed, but members of a village guard force and ordinary citizens.

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Seattle PI
As if four years of fighting in Iraq hadn't already made this point clear, here it is again: We're not getting anywhere over there. And this "surge," this acceleration of fighting the Bush administration has been ballyhooing as a critical step in turning our failures in Iraq into some sort of glowing democratic success, is futile.

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UPI
WASHINGTON, June 27 (UPI) -- The failure of the Bush administration to engage the American public in the war in Iraq may be costing millions of dollars and may ultimately cost the United States the war itself, experts said Tuesday.

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UPI
WASHINGTON, June 27 (UPI) -- The rate at which U.S. troops are being killed in Iraq continued to rise through the second second half of June at an even higher rate than the grim figures for the previous two and a half months.

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Anti-War
At least 126 Iraqis were killed and 118 more wounded during various attacks. Many of the casualties were either militants or Iraqi soldiers. Eight students were kidnapped near Muqdadiyah.

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Open Democracy
In private, Bush administration sub-cabinet officials who have been instrumental in formulating and sustaining the legal "war paradigm" acknowledge that their efforts to create a system for detainees separate from due process, criminal justice and law enforcement have failed. One of the key framers of the war paradigm (in which the president in his wartime capacity as commander-in-chief makes and enforces laws as he sees fit, overriding the constitutional system of checks and balances), who a year ago was arguing vehemently for pushing its boundaries, confesses that he has abandoned his belief in the whole doctrine, though he refuses to say so publicly.

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Truthdig
As the Iraq war that Vice President Dick Cheney created continues to shred American—and many more Iraqi—lives, further documentation has emerged proving that, even during failed wars, the merchants of death profit. No company has profited more from the carnage in Iraq than Halliburton, which Cheney headed before choosing himself as Bush’s running mate. One shudders at the blissful arrogance of this modern Daddy Warbucks, who sees no conflict of interest over the blood-soaked profits garnered by the once-bankrupt division of the company that left him rich.

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Anti-War
That the rhetoric used to justify war against Iraq sounds eerily similar to the case being made to start a war against Iran and Syria is not purely a coincidence. Many of the advocates of a muscular policy against countries regarded as outside the pale or perceived as a threat to Israel come from the same circle of neoconservatives, "resident scholars," and sound-bite experts who move seamlessly from think-tank to advocacy group to academia and back again. The pundits who made the case that led to the Iraq catastrophe are continuing to urge a larger, greater war that would engulf the entire Middle East, though many of them are now arguing that negotiations should precede nuking, if only to prove that diplomacy does not work.

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CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Public support for the war in Iraq has fallen to a new low. Not only that, but Republican support is beginning to waver.

President Bush's troop buildup, or "surge," meant to quell the sectarian violence is now in place.

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UPI
WASHINGTON, June 26 (UPI) -- Substituting the word "Iraq" for "Vietnam" in the text of a declassified 1967 CIA memo shows "eerie parallels" between the two conflicts.

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Washington Post
Is Vice President Cheney old news? Even as a major Post series continues to authoritatively document Cheney's staggering clout within the Bush White House, there are signs that he and his supposed boss have lost control of the Washington agenda when it comes to their principal legacy: the war in Iraq.

As much as Cheney and President Bush would like to keep talking about how to win, that's not a scenario serious policymakers are contemplating.

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Washington Post
Quietly, the real debate over Iraq is beginning.

It's not about whether the United States should pull out troops. That is now inevitable. The real challenge is to figure out the right timetable for withdrawal, whether a residual force should be left there and which American objectives can still be salvaged.

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Baltimore Sun
This is one way to use cluster bombs:

Milan Martic, a leader of the breakaway Serbian Krajina Republic, which sought independence from Croatia during the Yugoslav civil wars, avenged a Croatian assault in May 1995 by directing a cluster bomb attack against Zagreb, the capital. It killed at least seven civilians, and injured hundreds. This month, for that and other crimes, he was sentenced to 35 years in prison by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

This is another way to use cluster bombs:

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MSNBC
TAMPA, Fla. - He lies flat, unseeing eyes fixed on the ceiling, tubes and machines feeding him, breathing for him, keeping him alive. He cannot walk or talk, but he can grimace and cry. And he is fully aware of what has happened to him.

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New York Times
BAGHDAD, June 24 — Iraq faced more troubles on the military and political fronts on Sunday: American commanders expressed doubts about the ability of Iraqi troops to hold the gains made in areas north of the capital last week, and two Sunni Arab blocs boycotted a Parliament session, demanding the reinstatement of the speaker.

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McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD, Iraq _ Despite major ground-air offensives to the north and south of Baghdad, the deadliest place for U.S. troops remains the capital.

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USA Today
A Navy expert in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder says the service is trying to silence him for criticizing the quality of mental health care in the military.

Cmdr. Mark Russell, 47, has filed a complaint with the Pentagon's inspector general claiming his chance for career advancement has been blocked. He says he was isolated from the media after describing in a Jan. 17 USA TODAY article a "perfect storm" looming in the military's mental health system.

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New York Times
BY this late date we should know the fix is in when the White House's top factotums fan out on the Sunday morning talk shows singing the same lyrics, often verbatim, from the same hymnal of spin. The pattern was set way back on Sept. 8, 2002, when in simultaneous appearances three cabinet members and the vice president warned darkly of Saddam's aluminum tubes. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," said Condi Rice, in a scripted line. The hard sell of the war in Iraq — the hyping of a (fictional) nuclear threat to America — had officially begun.

America wasn't paying close enough attention then. We can't afford to repeat that blunder now. Last weekend the latest custodians of the fiasco, our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and our new ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, took to the Sunday shows with two messages we'd be wise to heed.

(Paid Subscription Required)

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New York Times
IN November 2005, a group of marines killed 24 Iraqi men, women and children after Sunni Arab insurgents detonated a roadside bomb in Haditha that killed one infantryman and wounded two others. Marine officers assumed the Iraqi deaths occurred during combat and were justified, if regrettable.

More than a year later, in December 2006, the Marine Corps charged three enlisted men with murder in those deaths, as well as four officers with dereliction of duty in failing to determine exactly how and why the Iraqis were killed. All have said they did nothing wrong.

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CBS News
A U.S. soldier in the Multinational Division-Baghdad was killed Saturday when his patrol was attacked with small-arms fire in the southern section of the capital, the U.S. military reported Sunday. No other soldiers were reported wounded in the attack.

North of Baghdad, a Task Force Lightning soldier died Saturday in a non-combat-related incident, the command said. It provided no further details and said the death was under investigation.

Those deaths added to eight previously reported to raise Saturday's death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq to 10.

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Harpers
If you’re not concerned about the prospects for another war in the Middle East in the near future, consider that you may be a sleepwalker.

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USA Today
More than 800 of them have lost an arm, a leg, fingers or toes. More than 100 are blind. Dozens need tubes and machines to keep them alive. Hundreds are disfigured by burns, and thousands have brain injuries and mangled minds.
These are America's war wounded, a toll that has received less attention than the 3,500 troops killed in Iraq. Depending on how you count them, they number between 35,000 and 53,000.

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CBS News
Seven U.S. troops were killed by roadside bombs on Saturday, including four in a single strike northwest of Baghdad, the military said.

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New York Times
IRON MOUNTAIN, Mich., June 19 — The Stars and Stripes in front of the Veterans of Foreign Wars lodge here flies at half-staff because Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm issued a statewide order to lower the flag for 24 hours to honor a Michigan soldier killed in Iraq.

Just blocks away, however, at the veterans’ hospital run by federal officials who say they do not answer to the governor the flag flutters at full staff.

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Washington Post
The major U.S. offensive launched last weekend against insurgents in and around Baghdad has significantly expanded the military's battleground in Iraq -- "a surge of operations," and no longer just of troops, as the second-ranking U.S. commander there said yesterday -- but it has renewed concerns about whether even the bigger U.S. troop presence there is large enough.

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ABC News
Congress is debating whether or not there should be changes in tax code so that the people who run elite investment clubs, called hedge funds or private equity firms, have to pay the same tax rates as the rest of us. But these billionaires are flexing their muscles.

After the elite investment firm the Blackstone Group becomes a publicly traded corporation Friday morning, its chairman and CEO, Stephen Schwarzman, will likely end the day several billion dollars richer.

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Guardian
A US air strike in southern Afghanistan has killed up to 25 civilians, a local police chief said today.

The victims included women, children and a cleric as well as 20 suspected Taliban militants, Mohammad Hussein Andiwal, the Helmand province police chief, said.

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Los Angeles Times
BAGHDAD — U.S. troops working the streets of the capital fear one Iraqi weapon more than others — a copper-plated explosive that can penetrate armor and has proved devastating to Humvees and even capable of severely damaging tanks.

The power of what the military calls an EFP — for explosively formed penetrator, or projectile — to spray molten metal balls that punch through the armor on vehicles has some American troops rethinking their tactics. They are asking whether the U.S. should give up its reliance on making constant improvements to vehicle defenses.

Instead, these troops think, it is time to leave the armor behind — and get out and walk.

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USA Today
A Navy expert in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder says the service is trying to silence him for criticizing the quality of mental health care in the military.

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FPIF
While the American people are seeking a way to bring the troops home from Iraq, the President and his administration are aiming to stay for much longer by redefining “victory” in Iraq once again—this time as a permanent occupier. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters on June first this year that he favors a mutual agreement with Iraq in which “some force of Americans...is present for a protracted period of time....” Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, in charge of daily military operations in Iraq, supported this idea, comparing our involvement in Iraq to our continued military presence in South Korea. This type of “victory” was not what America signed up for as Bush led the nation to war. But even worse, this victory isn’t even realistic.

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UPI
WASHINGTON, June 21 (UPI) -- The acting secretary of the U.S. Army says he is seeing a troubling spike in key morale indicators among soldiers -- suicide, divorces and accidents.

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Independent
The US military today announced the deaths of 14 American troops, including five killed in a single roadside bombing and one whose vehicle was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade.

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Harpers
The dean of the Pentagon press corps, Joe Galloway, says that in light of the disclosures this week of Secretary Rumsfeld’s lies about the Abu Ghraib investigation and how it was stopped short of the obvious conclusions, it’s time now to re-open the investigation and get to the bottom of things:

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Anti-War
This resolution is an exercise in propaganda that serves one purpose: to move us closer to initiating a war against Iran. Citing various controversial statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this legislation demands that the United Nations Security Council charge Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

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Anti-War
Although violence has subsided from the levels seen over the last two days, at least 88 Iraqis were reported killed and 27 Iraqis were wounded. Many of today’s reported deaths are from yesterday’s re-evaluated casualty figures. Also, one British and two American servicemembers were killed in separate incidents today.

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The Nation
Seymour Hersh is at it again. The investigative reporter who breaks stories like they're rotten two-by-fours has a major scoop in the latest issue of The New Yorker. He wraps the piece around exclusive access to Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, the author of the internal report that investigated abuse at Abu Ghraib.

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Guardian
The Pentagon is making plans to extend combat tours to Iraq despite a study showing troops who have undertaken at least one war zone deployment are experiencing serious psychological problems.

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Boston Globe
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department has opted out of at least 10 whistle-blower lawsuits alleging fraud and corruption in government reconstruction and security contracts in Iraq, and has spent years investigating additional fraud cases but has yet to try to recover any money.

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Washington Post
The House yesterday approved plans to halt funding for the development of a new generation of nuclear warheads as House leaders called on the Bush administration to provide a post-Cold War nuclear strategy that would detail the future size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

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PBS
On Dec. 19, 2006, President George W. Bush said for the first time that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq. It was a dramatic admission from a president who had insisted since the start of the war that things were under control.

Now, as the U.S. begins what the administration hopes is the final effort to secure victory through a "surge" of troops, Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.), Col. William Hix, Col. H.R. McMaster, Maj. Thomas Mowle, State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow and other military and government officials talk to FRONTLINE about both the military and political events that have led up to the current "surge" strategy. Endgame is the fifth film in a series of Iraq war stories from FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk, including Rumsfeld's War, The Torture Question, The Dark Side and The Lost Year in Iraq.

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New York Times
BAQUBA, Iraq, June 19 — In more than four years in Iraq, American forces have been confounded by insurgents who have often slipped away only to fight another day. The war in Iraq has been likened to the arcade game of whack-a-mole, where as soon as you knock down one mole another pops up.

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Telegraph
America launched a big offensive against al-Qa'eda yesterday in territory north-east of Baghdad.

A force of 10,000 American soldiers attacked hideouts across Diyala province and inside its capital, Baquba.

It came as Baghdad was hit by its worst car bombing since April when a device exploded at a mosque, killing 75 people and injuring scores more.

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Telegraph
Private security contractors are being killed in increasing numbers in Iraq as the US military grows more reliant on an industry that operates in the shadows for extra firepower.

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MSNBC
WASHINGTON - The Army is considering whether it will have to extend the combat tours of troops in Iraq if President Bush opts to maintain the recent buildup of forces through spring 2008.

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Anti-War
Although fewer incidents occurred today, at least 166 Iraqis were killed and 258 more were wounded during new attacks. Most of the casualties were from a major bombing in central Baghdad. In Diyala province, U.S. forces are conducting a new security operation that has already killed several militants. Also, four American servicemembers deaths were reported today.

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Anti-War
It's a popular notion: TV sets and other media devices let us in on the violence of war. "Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens," President Bush told a news conference more than three years ago. "I don't. It's a tough time for the American people to see that. It's gut-wrenching."

But televised glimpses of war routinely help to keep war going. Susan Sontag was onto something when she pointed out that "the image as shock and the image as cliché are two aspects of the same presence."

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CounterPunch
The surprise decision by the Bush regime to replace General Peter Pace as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been explained as a necessary step to avoid contentious confirmation hearings in the US Senate. Gen. Pace's reappointment would have to be confirmed, and as the general has served as vice chairman and chairman of the Joint Chiefs for the past 6 years, the Republicans feared that hearings would give war critics an opportunity to focus, in Defense Secretary Gates words, "on the past, rather than the future."

This is a plausible explanation. Whether one takes it on face value depends on how much trust one still has in a regime that has consistently lied about everything for six years.

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Anti-War
At least 71 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 204 were wounded during the latest attacks. Scores were killed or wounded during two major battles between militia and security forces in southern Iraq. Meanwhile, Sunni families are being forced to flee Baghdad under threat of death. Also, a MND-B soldier was killed when his patrol encountered an IED in southern Baghdad.

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Truthdig
All troops, when they occupy and battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are swiftly placed in what the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton terms “atrocity-producing situations.” In this environment, surrounded by a hostile population, simple acts such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke or driving down a street means you can be killed. This constant fear and stress leads troops to view everyone around them as the enemy.

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BBC
Seven children were killed in a US-led coalition air strike against a suspected al-Qaeda hideout in eastern Afghanistan, the coalition has said.

A statement said that a number of militants were also killed in the raid in Paktika province near Pakistan.

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Los Angeles Times
IS THE U.S. Army too small?

The Democrats vying to succeed George W. Bush think so. Presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama all promise, if elected, to expand our land forces. Clinton has declared it "past time to increase the end-strength of the Army and Marines." Edwards calls for a "substantial increase." Obama offers hard numbers: His program specifies the addition of 92,000 soldiers.

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Washington Post
What's an Iraqi life worth? How about an Iraqi car?

For the U.S. military in Iraq, it may be roughly the same.

A report released late last month by the Government Accountability Office examines the practices and rules guiding condolence payments that the U.S. military can distribute to families of Iraqi civilians killed "as a result of U.S. and coalition forces' actions during combat."

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Washington Post
The near-blind eye the United States has turned to the humanitarian crisis now unfolding from the Iraq war threatens to undermine any hope for real peace and security in that region for years and perhaps decades to come. The displacement of 4 million Iraqis to date -- one in seven of the country's citizens -- is the largest the Middle East has known since 1948.

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Washington Post
Congress is moving to change the direction of the Bush administration's nuclear weapons program by demanding the development of a comprehensive post-Sept. 11, 2001, nuclear strategy before it approves funding a new generation of warheads.

"Currently there exists no convincing rationale for maintaining the large number of existing Cold War nuclear weapons, much less producing additional warheads," the House Appropriations Committee said in its report, released last week, on the fiscal 2008 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill. The full House is expected to vote on the measure this week.

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New York Times
“I was kicking down doors, driving Humvees,” is the terse way Rob Timmins summarizes a year in Iraq. His description of his new job — roaming the American home front trying to get Americans to care about other returning soldiers — is more complicated. “The Support Our Troops magnets on people’s cars will eventually come off, and 5, 10 years from now, who will remember the veterans?” asks the 25-year-old Mr. Timmins, outspoken as the Staten Island bartender he used to be.

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Huffington Post
According to the White House -- and to the dwindling number of Congressional dead-enders still backing the war in Iraq -- we have to wait until September to be able to judge whether President Bush's escalation strategy has been a success.

Well, I've just returned from September and I can tell you two things:

1) I've seen the future and it doesn't work.

2) The administration will lie and claim that it does.

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New York Times
UNITED NATIONS, June 16 — The search for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction appears close to an official conclusion, several years after their absence became a foregone one.

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Seattle PI
That wars yield collateral damage is something we know, but tend not to dwell upon. It's just too horrible to think of. The worst of the worst of those unbearable thoughts has to be what becomes of the children, who, it seems, pay the highest price for whatever conflict in the midst of which they find themselves.

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Guardian
Britain's highest court is to hear a case which could force the government to hold an independent inquiry into the way the attorney general reached his conclusion that the war in Iraq would be lawful. The law lords have agreed to hear an appeal by the mothers of two soldiers killed in Iraq, who argue that the government violated their sons' right to life by rushing into war on inadequate legal grounds.

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Washington Post
Conditions in Iraq will not have improved sufficiently by September to justify a draw-down of U.S. military forces, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said today.

Asked if he thought the job assigned to an additional 30,000 troops deployed as the centerpiece of President Bush's new war strategy would be completed by then, Gen. David H. Petraeus replied "I do not, no. I think that we have a lot of heavy lifting to do."

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Anti-War
Curfews were lifted today in Baghdad and Basra. At least 74 Iraqis were killed or found dead and another 56 were wounded during various incidents. Also, three American soldiers were killed and one was wounded in separate incidents yesterday.

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Editor & Publisher
NEW YORK In a front-page in today's Washington Post, Steve Fainaru reveals, "Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives."

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Guardian
Tony Blair agreed to commit British troops to battle in Iraq in the full knowledge that Washington had failed to make adequate preparations for the postwar reconstruction of the country.
In a devastating account of the chaotic preparations for the war, which comes as Blair enters his final full week in Downing Street, key No 10 aides and friends of Blair have revealed the Prime Minister repeatedly and unsuccessfully raised his concerns with the White House.

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Lew Rockwell
The drumbeat for war against Iran has begun again, led by Sen. Joe Lieberman, the independent Democrat from Connecticut, and the usual pro-Israel crowd. Lieberman seems to be under the impression that the U.S. can bomb Iran and not get into a full-fledged war.

Well, we know all about cakewalks and how they turn into long, bloody and dreary marches.

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Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the nation's top military officer, told superiors last month that he would not retire voluntarily, forcing the Bush administration to make a public declaration last week that it had decided to replace Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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CBS News
Mental health disorders are snowballing as more and more soldiers and Marines are sent back for repeat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports.

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UPI
WASHINGTON, June 15 (UPI) -- The rate at which U.S. troops are being killed in Iraq continued to rise through the first half of June at an even higher rate than the grim figures for April and May.

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Anti-War
Curfews already in place have remained in effect or been extended. Basra instigated it own curfew following a shrine bombing there. These curfews have kept the violence to a minimum or at least made it difficult to report on any that is occurring. At least 38 Iraqis were killed and nine injured during events today. Also, the U.S. military report on the deaths of four American servicemembers in separate events.

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USA Today
National Guard units in 31 states say four years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan have left them with 60% or less of their authorized equipment, a USA TODAY review found.

Eighteen of those 31 states report having half or fewer of the vehicles, aircraft, radios, weapons and other items they are authorized to have for home-front uses, the 50-state review found.

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OpEd News
Some times I lose the hope and at that moment my mind starts negative thinking. However, my religion and my belief has forbidden me from negative thinking and advises me to be patient. But I am not so strong and some time my nerves broke down.

In my life, several times, I have thought to become a suicide bomber. I am also guilty to even think of such a big crime like suicide bombing, but mainly, I will put the responsibility on the rulers for forcing me to think negatively.

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USA Today
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid caused a stir Thursday when he said Gen. Peter Pace failed in his job of providing Congress a candid assessment on the Iraq war and that he was concerned Gen. David Petraeus might be guilty of the same.

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Boston Globe
BAGHDAD --Five U.S. soldiers died in Iraq, the U.S. military announced Friday, including three who were killed in an explosion near their vehicle.

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USA Today
WASHINGTON (AP) — Overwhelmed by the number of soldiers returning from war with mental problems, the Army is planning to hire at least 25% more psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers.

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Washington Post
Here's a surprise: Remember how we were told that if we just waited until the fall, we'd see that George W. Bush's "surge" was working in Iraq? Well, now it turns out that we shouldn't expect answers in September after all.

White House spokesman Tony Snow was purposeful on Wednesday in stomping, trampling, tap-dancing upon and otherwise giving a definitive beat-down to any expectations of a serious, fact-based reassessment of Iraq policy in the fall. Never mind that the White House raised those expectations in the first place.

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Pottersville
Strictly translated, it’s the Latin origin of the common phrase “Let the buyer beware.” However, since it’s been applied to sight-unseen online shopping and “pre-owned” cars to the war in Iraq, the informal translation of caveat emptor had evolved into, “Every sucker deserves a bad outcome.”

Of course, buying a used war such as the one between us and Iraq the insurgency terrorists whoever (oh, what a fast little bitch she was in the beginning, eh?) long after the wheels had fallen off come with its own unique risks. Diplomatically, this jalopy of a war, jump-started back to life by insane neoconservative gas attendants posing as ASE-certified mechanics has actually brought down our property values. The neighbors are beginning to complain about the racket it makes, the stench of burned flesh and the acrid smoke. It runs on a mixture of empty, hot air and human blood. In fact, it passes everything but a blood bank.

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New York Times
The Bush administration and military leaders in Washington are always claiming that they will do anything to support American troops fighting in Iraq. That makes it all the more infuriating to learn that, for more than two years, the Pentagon largely ignored urgent requests from field commanders for better armor-protected vehicles that could have saved untold lives and limbs.

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Freezer Box
It seems as if everyone and their defense contractor is arguing about missile defense these days. Among the questions at the center of the storm: Are the Americans being honest about the purpose of this as yet unproven system against a hypothetical threat? Are the Russians overreacting to the system's potential impact on their strategic deterrent? Will the thing ever even work? Is that Al Qaeda we hear laughing? And are there better uses for the world's attention and $100 billion?

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FPIF
With primary election season in full swing, Democratic Party candidates have begun trying to distinguish themselves from each other and from the Republicans. The Iraq War has been one such dividing issue. Liberal groups like MoveOn.org praised both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for “showing real leadership” because they “stood up and did the right thing” by voting against the recent Iraq/Afghanistan war-funding bill. The main fight in Congress over the bill was whether or not to include a timeline for troop withdrawal from Iraq.

But the issue of Afghanistan was not on the table. Neither the version Clinton and Obama supported nor the one they rejected had any stipulations on the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan. Both versions continued funding for the operation as is.

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ABC News
The world's most powerful nations have lost more than a third of their military battles against much weaker nations since World War II, despite the fact that their opponents were seriously outgunned and outmanned. That has caused many to wonder why powerful states lose limited wars.

Patricia Sullivan, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, began grappling with that issue several years ago while working on her doctorate at the University of California, Davis, and she thinks she has come up with at least part of the answer.

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Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — For the first time since the Iraq war began, the Army is notifying thousands in a special category of reservists that they must report this summer for medical screening and other administrative tasks.

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AlterNet
"Cease fire. Friendlies! I am Pat fucking Tillman, dammit," shouted former pro football player turned Army Ranger Pat Tillman as a hail of bullets pierced the darkening Afghani sky. "CEASE FIRE! FRIENDLIES! I AM PAT FUCKING TILLMAN! I AM PAT FUCKING TILLMAN!"

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Huffington Post
After wrongly supporting George W. Bush's strategic blunder of attacking Iraq, and continuing to support Bush's failed policies after the invasion, Senator Joe Lieberman made irresponsible comments this weekend regarding military action against Iran.

On CBS's Face the Nation, Lieberman said, "If [the Iranians] don't play by the rules, we've got to use our force, and to me, that would include taking military action to stop them from doing what they're doing."

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CounterPunch
The war on Iraq won't be remembered for how it was waged so much as for how it was sold. It was a propaganda war, a war of perception management, where loaded phrases, such as "weapons of mass destruction" and "rogue state" were hurled like precision weapons at the target audience: us.

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CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate Democrats will once again try to impose timetables for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Tuesday.

Reid said Democrats will use a defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2008 as a vehicle to revive two Iraq timetable amendments that they pushed unsuccessfully during a fight over Iraq funding in May.

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Democracy Now
Last week a military panel recommended that Marine Sergeant Adam Kokesh have his honorable discharge revoked for wearing his uniform during an anti-war protest. We also speak with Private First Class Evan Knappenberger. On Thursday, he wrapped up an eight-day, 24-hour vigil in Bellingham, Washington to protest the military's stop/loss policy.

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Anti-War
Ten days before the vote in the U.S. Senate to authorize a preemptive war against Iraq, a 90-page classified version of the National Intelligence Estimate, containing numerous qualifications and dissents on Iraq's weapons capabilities, was made available to all 100 senators.

It was the most comprehensive analysis by America's intelligence agencies. Only six of the senators read it.

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Los Angeles Times
LOSING HURTS MORE than winning feels good. This simple maxim applies with equal power to virtually all areas of human interaction: sports, finance, love. And war.

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CNN
The risk of suicide among male U.S. veterans is double that of the general population, according to a study published Monday.

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The Nation
Here's the strange thing: Since 2001, our media has been filled with terrifying nuclear headlines. The Iraqi bomb (you remember those "mushroom clouds" about to rise over American cities), the North Korean bomb, and the Iranian bomb have been almost obsessively in the news.

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Alternet
Three years have passed since most Americans came to the conclusion that the Iraq war was a "mistake." Reporting the results of a Gallup poll in June 2004, USA Today declared: "It is the first time since Vietnam that a majority of Americans has called a major deployment of U.S. forces a mistake." And public opinion continued to move in an antiwar direction. But such trends easily coexist with a war effort becoming even more horrific.

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Anti-War
Britain’s next prime minister, George Brown, visited Baghdad on a day of light violence. Throughout the country, 12 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 10 were wounded during attacks. Coalition forces did not fare so well. Four Americans were killed and six were wounded during a bridge bombing south of Baghdad. Also, an incident in Anbar province may have left more Americans dead or injured.

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Seattle PI
By trying to argue that Americans should be prepared for generations of troop presence in Iraq -- along the lines of peacekeeping in Korea -- the Bush administration inadvertently has signaled the depths of its confusion. The White House has no viable plan for encouraging Iraqis to take responsibility for themselves, for winning allies in the Middle East or for rallying support at home.

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Anti-War
During attacks mostly directed at Iraqi security forces, 55 Iraqis were killed and 143 more were wounded. Turkey shelled Kurdish locations inside Iraq again, but no casualties were reported. Two American servicemembers were also reported killed.

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Pottersville
When it came out some time ago that the Department of Defense had begun chasing wounded Iraq war veterans with bill collectors because they’d left equipment on the battlefield, that we’d been shortchanging guardsmen on their back pay and that doctors at Fort Carson were screwing other wounded veterans out of their hard-earned disability benefits by classifying their war injuries as “pre-existing conditions”, large patches of the blogosphere were enraged.

But imagine losing a loved one in Iraq, asking the Department of Defense for answers that could explain these deaths and then being slapped with a $10,000,000 suit by the DoD. That would be even more outrageous, wouldn’t it, an outrage that should inflame the entire blogosphere on both sides and be picked up by the MSM?

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CounterPunch
More than 3,500 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq, at least a million Iraqis are dead and wounded, and an estimated four million Iraqis have fled their homes because of Bush Administration lies, Congressional complicity, and the public's fear, ignorance, and skewed patriotism. Finally, finally, a majority of Americans now oppose this war and believe that our country is on the wrong path. They voiced this opinion with their votes in November.

Yet, most of the Republican candidates for president have just said that we were justified in attacking Iraq and they, also, endorse the use of tactical nuclear weapons on Iran. War, war, and more war. No regrets. War is the stimulant that gets them through the day. And faith in their religious convictions is affirmation that their high is mighty.

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MSNBC
WASHINGTON - The high hurdles faced by congressional Democrats in their efforts to end the Iraq war make electing a Democratic president in 2008 the best way to finish the conflict, Democratic party chairman Howard Dean said Saturday.

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CounterPunch
"Little Boy" and "Fat Man" were the names given to the first two nuclear weapons ever dropped on civilian populations. Japan was the target. It happened toward the end of World War II.

Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima from a B-29 bomber, piloted by US Army Air Force Col. Paul W. Tibbets, who named his plane "Enola Gay" in honor of his mother, the night before the atomic attack.

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Thomas Paine's Corner
In a statement made available through the country’s Foreign Office, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khursheed Mahmood Kasuri chastised the “international community” for the “abandonment” of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989. In his estimation, it was this attitude that created the conditions which eventually culminated in the rise of the Taliban, the hosts of al-Qaeda.

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Boston Globe
JERUSALEM --Military action is one of the options in dealing with Iran's nuclear program, Israel's deputy prime minister said Saturday, after discussing the issue with senior U.S. officials.

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Washington Post
BAGHDAD, June 8 -- The worst month of Lt. Col. Dale Kuehl's deployment in western Baghdad was finally drawing to a close. The insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq had unleashed bombings that killed 14 of his soldiers in May, a shocking escalation of violence for a battalion that had lost three soldiers in the previous six months while patrolling the Sunni enclave of Amiriyah. On top of that, the 41-year-old battalion commander was doubled up with a stomach flu when, late on May 29, he received a cellphone call that would change everything.

"We're going after al-Qaeda," a leading local imam said, Kuehl recalled. "What we want you to do is stay out of the way."

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McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Three months after additional U.S. troops began pouring into Baghdad in the most recent effort to stanch violence in Iraq's capital, military observers are fretting that the same problems that torpedoed last summer's Baghdad security plan are cropping up again.

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Thomas Paine's Corner
According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, during the Iraq war, 56 percent of soldiers and Marines (henceforth I will use the term “soldiers” to include members of all branches, both male and female) have killed another human being, 20 percent admit being responsible for noncombatant deaths, and 94 percent had seen bodies and human remains.[i] According to Colonel Charles Engel, MD, MPH, director of the deployment health clinical center at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, between 15 and 29 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

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CounterPunch
American soldiers have been fighting and dying in Iraq since 2003, and Americans do not know why.

All the reasons President Bush gave us for his war are false. Bush said he invaded Iraq "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people."

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CQ Politics
Time will tell whether the new White House war czar was putting on a show for Senate Democrats yesterday or whether he represents a real shift in direction for a president prepared to yield on his Iraq policies.

Army Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute stunned senators with his candor on many fronts, probably ensuring his confirmation next week.

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AlterNet
The following article is by the lawyers representing the families of four American contractors who worked for Blackwater and were killed in Fallujah. After Blackwater refused to share information about why they were killed, the families were told they would have to sue Blackwater to find out. Now Blackwater is trying to sue them for $10 million to keep them quiet.

Raleigh, NC -- The families of four American security contractors who were burned, beaten, dragged through the streets of Fallujah and their decapitated bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River on March 31, 2004, are reaching out to the American public to help protect themselves against the very company their loved ones were serving when killed, Blackwater Security Consulting.

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Los Angeles Times
CAMP PENDLETON — A staff sergeant testified Thursday that he was ordered to destroy grisly pictures of women and children killed by Marines so that the images would not be part of a statement being prepared for an investigative officer and a magazine reporter.

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Anti-War
UNITED NATIONS - Faced with an unwinnable five-year war in Iraq, the United States may be looking towards the United Nations to extricate it from the growing military quagmire, according to diplomats and political analysts.

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Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — In another sign that congressional Republicans are losing patience with the White House war strategy, two GOP senators Thursday got behind new legislation designed to encourage the Bush administration to reduce U.S. military involvement in Iraq.

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Huffington Post
The Democrats in Congress wring their hands, gnash their teeth and wail that there was nothing they could do but cave in and vote to continue funding the war in Iraq. After all, that crafty George W. Bush had maneuvered them into a corner and they didn't have the votes to override his veto.

Horse manure.

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Pottersville
In Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney completely misrepresented how we ended up in Iraq. Later, Mike Huckabee mistakenly claimed that it was Ronald Reagan’s birthday.

Guess which remark The Washington Post identified as the “gaffe of the night”?

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CounterPunch
In 2002, Donald Rumsfeld famously called the detainees at Guantánamo "the worst of the worst." General Richard B. Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned they were "very dangerous people who would gnaw hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17 to bring it down." These claims were designed to justify locking up hundreds of men and boys for years in small cages like animals.

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Time
The last thing that war-torn Iraq needs right now is another war, but that may be what it's about to get. Thousands of Turkish soldiers are massed at the border with Kurdish-controlled Northern Iraq, possibly preparing to make good on Ankara's threat to cross the border and deal with the radical Kurdish militants of the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, which has waged a decades long separatist insurgency inside Turkey.

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USA Today
WASHINGTON (AP) — The three-star general picked by President Bush to become his personal war adviser suggested on Thursday that pressuring the Iraqis to take on more responsibility may not work.

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Anti-War
An experienced British officer serving in Iraq has written to the BBC describing the invasion as "illegal, immoral, and unwinnable," which, he says, is "the overwhelming feeling of many of my peers." In a letter to the BBC's Newsnight and MediaLens.org he accuses the media's "embedded coverage with the U.S. Army" of failing to question "the intentions and continuing effects of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation."

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Anti-War
At least 95 Iraqis were killed and 60 were wounded during attacks which including a car bombing near a shrine in Baghdad. Six more GIs were killed in action, bringing the tally of U.S servicemembers who have died serving in Iraq to 3503 deaths.

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Informed Comment
Rudy Giuliani maintained during the Republican debate that "It's unthinkable to leave Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq and be able to fight the war on terror."

If he means by "war on terror" the counter-terrorism struggle against al-Qaeda and kindred groups, then it was in fact unthinkable successfully to fight them and also invade Iraq.

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Lew Rockwell
The war in Iraq is lost. This fact is widely recognized by American military officers and has been recently expressed forcefully by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq during the first year of the attempted occupation. Winning is no longer an option. Our best hope, Gen. Sanchez says, is "to stave off defeat," and that requires more intelligence and leadership than Gen. Sanchez sees in the entirety of our national political leadership: "I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time."

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Time
"Listen, I understand Republicans and Democrats in Washington have differences over the best course in Iraq," President Bush said on April 16, in an attempt to appear flexible. "That's healthy. That's normal. And we should debate those differences." Nonsense. The President has no interest in debating anything.

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UPI
WASHINGTON, June 5 (UPI) -- As Carl Von Clausewitz wrote, the goals or objectives of states at war tend to change over time. In 18th century cabinet wars, princes who were losing wisely reduced their objectives to what was attainable, while those who were winning were usually sufficiently prudent not to want too much. Wise statesmen such as Prince Otto von Bismarck kept their governments' objectives in check even during successful wars in the 19th century.

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Der Spiegel
The first verdicts are expected to be handed down soon in a trial that has shocked the United States. The defendants are seven Marines, three of them charged with executing 24 civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha. The massacre was one of the greatest setbacks in the Americans' battle for hearts and minds in Iraq.

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Time
In the early days of the Iraq war, the analogy of choice for the Bush administration was the post-World War II occupations of Japan and Germany. They had been bitter enemies of the United States; were both destroyed in a merciless world war; and eventually turned into peaceful, democratic allies of the first order. Anyone who said democracy couldn't come at the barrel of a gun was denying the obvious.

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Anti-War
The Bush administration has decided its new model for a long-term solution in Iraq is Korea. It's an attempt to stifle the inevitable comparisons of the Iraq quagmire to Vietnam and a way to justify the eventual reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq (to take the heat off Republican candidates in the 2008 elections), while retaining a substantial U.S. military presence by establishing three or four long-term major military bases. The plan would ultimately be a disaster for the United States.

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Guardian
At moments of great peril in the past century, American leaders such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F Kennedy managed both to protect the American people and to expand opportunity for the next generation. What is more, they ensured that America, by deed and example, led and lifted the world - that we stood for and fought for the freedoms sought by billions of people beyond our borders.

Today, we are again called to provide visionary leadership. This century's threats are at least as dangerous as and in some ways more complex than those we have confronted in the past.

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Daily Kos
Just a year ago, on Father's Day, several of my friends and I stood at the entrance to a shopping mall in Los Angeles and read out the names and hometowns of the 2500 American soldiers, marines, and sailors who had by that time been killed in the Iraq war and occupation.

This coming weekend, sad to say, we'll be doing this again. It will take longer because 1000 more are dead.

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One Thousand Reasons
Okay. Let's talk about troops. Everybody's doing it. We're bombarded round-the-clock with "support the troops...fund the troops...bring the troops home...surge the troops...use the troops for Commander Guy photo opps..." Congress is embroiled in a ghoulish "troop" food fight that has gone on far too long. Democrats say Republicans demoralize and dishonor the troops by sending them into an unwinnable war built on lies. Republicans counter that, by suggesting the war is lost, Democrats demoralize and dishonor the troops by calling them "losers."

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Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — Democratic congressional leaders, whose efforts to force a withdrawal from Iraq were stymied last month, plan a summer of repeated Iraq-related votes designed to force Republican lawmakers to abandon the White House before the fall.

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The Nation
Here's something that didn't come up at Sunday's Democratic debate? Under what authorization did President Bush order a military strike on Somalia this past Friday-- essentially widening the "war on terror"?

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CBS News
The U.S. military on Sunday reported 14 U.S. soldiers killed in the past three days, including four in a single roadside bombing in Baghdad and one who was struck by a suicide bomber while on a foot patrol southwest of the capital.

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Reuters
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Six U.S. soldiers were killed in five separate attacks across Iraq on Saturday, the U.S. military said on Sunday, days after it recorded its deadliest monthly toll in more than two years.

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Independent
It is time, I suppose, to lift a small glass to justice. For the first time in the US or Britain, someone may at last be sent to prison for their part in the great WMD deception that led us into this never-ending war in Iraq - in the judgement of not a few historians, the greatest foreign-policy blunder in American history. Except, sadly, it isn't as simple as that.

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New York Times
Whenever and however American troops withdraw from Iraq, a flood of wounded and psychologically damaged veterans will present the nation for decades to come with costly needs that already are overwhelming government services.

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Boston Globe
IN THE $100 billion war funding bill that Congress recently approved , one element won praise from lawmakers and President Bush alike: the bill's benchmarks. These are meant to be measurable indications of progress by Iraq's government toward such goals as security, reconciliation among religious and ethnic factions, economic reforms (particularly in the oil sector), and honest, effective governance. Setting benchmarks for a troubled enterprise might make sense to American business consultants. But the benchmarks in the war funding bill will not prompt the Iraqi government to do things it does not want to do, or cannot do.

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Washington Post
On Aug. 13, 2002, the CIA completed a classified, six-page intelligence analysis that described the worst scenarios that could arise after a U.S.-led removal of Saddam Hussein: anarchy and territorial breakup in Iraq, a surge of global terrorism, and a deepening of Islamic antipathy toward the United States.

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Washington Post
As U.S. troops push more deeply into Baghdad and its volatile outskirts, Iraqi insurgents are using increasingly sophisticated and lethal means of attack, including bigger roadside bombs that are resulting in greater numbers of American fatalities relative to the number of wounded.

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Scotsman
MERCENARY chiefs are urgently reviewing rules dictating when they can use force in Iraq, amid growing fears that another confrontation between private security operators and police could explode into a bloodbath.

Days after four British bodyguards and their client were snatched by bogus police from the streets of Baghdad, the bosses of private security firms have admitted there is now a "serious risk" of shoot-outs between "mercenary" officials and Iraqi security forces.

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Yahoo News
LONDON (AFP) - There is "no way" the war in Iraq can be won by the United States and its allies, a former British Army commander said Friday as he called for the troops to be withdrawn.

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Harpers
How is the Iraq War unlike every other war fought in America’s history? Among other things, in that it is a war pursued by the United States with private soldiers – an enormous number of them, though thanks to that massive fog-machine at the Pentagon, we still can’t say exactly how many.

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Reuters
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The number of civilians killed in Iraq jumped to nearly 2,000 in May, the highest monthly toll since the start of a U.S.-backed security crackdown in February, according to figures released on Saturday.

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Washington Post
What are you supposed to do, according to supporters of the Iraq war, if you think that the war is a dreadful mistake? Suppose you are a member of Congress, elected by constituents who also, like most Americans, according to opinion polls, oppose the war. Is there any legitimate action you can take? Or must you simply allow the war to go on and let young Americans die in what you regard as a bad cause? What are your options?

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New York Times
LOS ANGELES, June 1 — California is poised to become the first state to ask voters whether they favor an immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

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New York Times
WASHINGTON, June 1 — American commanders are expressing frustration at the increasing death toll in Iraq caused by makeshift explosives, which have killed 80 percent of the Americans who died in combat over the last three months, despite the billions of dollars being spent to fight the threat.

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Washington Post
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., June 1 -- In the week after Marines killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, an angry group of townspeople went to the local military base alleging a "crime of war" and demanding an investigation, a military prosecutor said Friday.

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Washington Post
As the U.S. military sends more troops into Baghdad for stays of 15 months or longer, some Iraqi army soldiers participating in the same counterinsurgency operation are serving under a rotation schedule officially lasting just three months, according to senior officers at the Pentagon and Multi-National Force-Iraq.

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CNN
(CNN) -- A U.S. Navy destroyer off the coast of northern Somalia Friday fired on a suspected al Qaeda operative believed to have been involved in the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, sources confirmed to CNN.

There was no immediate word on the results of the attack, which was carried out using one of the destroyer's 5-inch guns.

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In These Times
Over the last few weeks, Iraq coverage in the U.S. media has focused on funding. On May 1, Bush vetoed the Iraq spending supplemental because it would necessitate an “artificial withdrawal.” Then last week, Democrats, while simultaneously declaring victory, caved in to Bush’s aggression and provided more war-funding than he requested. Congress’ lone requirement was mandating benchmarks for the Iraqi government, however, the funds will be available regardless of Iraqi governmental performance. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continued the anti-war rhetoric, saying “I think the president’s policy is going to unravel now,” but the words seem empty.

Away from the media’s gaze toward partisan politics, however, a much more significant story was developing in Baghdad that essentially went unreported. On May 8, a majority of Iraq’s parliament signed a petition demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops.

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Los Angeles Times
SOMETHING WAS missing from my local Memorial Day parade.

There were soldiers, sailors, World War II veterans, firefighters, Girl Scouts, soccer players, marching bands, flag-draped floats and even a festive contingent from the Board of Education. But there was no float memorializing the hundreds of civilian contractors killed in Iraq.

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The Nation
Here is a stark consequence of the human costs of the Iraq war. It was reported Thursday that because so many Fort Lewis soliders are being killed in Iraq, the Washington State army base says it will no longer hold individual memorial services. Starting today, Fort Lewis will hold one memorial a month for all dead soldiers.

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Boston Globe
WASHINGTON -- The percentage of high-quality recruits entering the Army is the lowest in 10 years, an indication that the force is struggling to attract top-grade enlistees -- and a troubling sign for the Pentagon, which is waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and plans to add 90,000 ground troops to its ranks within the next five years.

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Anti-War
Despite President George W. Bush's victory last week in his protracted battle with Congressional Democrats for unconditional funding for the Iraq war at least through September, his administration appears to have given up hope that it can maintain his "surge" strategy well into next year and even beyond.

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ABC News
Just when it looked like things in Iraq couldn't get worse, a new threat is emerging -- from Turkey. And it's creating a huge headache for U.S. policymakers.

Impatient at continued attacks against Turkey by the Kurdish guerilla group PKK (Kurdish Workers' Party), whose members are based mostly in northern Iraq, Turkey has moved troops and tanks close to the border with Iraq. Iraqi newspapers have expressed concerns that Turkey may be planning to cross the border in pursuit of the PKK guerrillas.

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Slate
It's no news that George W. Bush and his handlers don't know much about history, but their latest stab at pretending otherwise is among their most ludicrous.

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USA Today
WASHINGTON (AP) — Valerie Plame, the former undercover CIA officer whose 2003 exposure touched off a leak investigation, is accusing the government of delaying publication of her new book.

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Huffington Post
Public confirmation that the White House sees an American military presence in Iraq without end is the single greatest motivating and recruiting tool given to insurgents in the history of the war, and must be recanted.

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FPIF
The Democratic Party’s Congressional leadership capitulation to the Bush administration’s request for nearly $100 billion of unconditional supplementary government spending, primarily to support the war in Iraq, has led to outrage throughout the country. In the Senate, 37 of 49 Democrats voted May 24 to support the measure. In the House, while only 86 of the 231 Democratic House members voted in favor of the supplemental funding, 216 of them voted in favor of an earlier procedural vote designed to move the funding bill forward even though it would make the funding bill’s passage inevitable (while giving most of them a chance to claim they voted against it).

The claims by Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) and other Democratic leaders unconditional funding was necessary to “support the troops” and to “not leave them in harm’s way” is a lie.

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Salon
May 2007 is winding up as the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq in nearly three years. Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno today attributed the spike in U.S. deaths to a "combination" of a resurging insurgency and the changing tactics of the president's "surge."

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Anti-War
As the last of the 20,000 troops ordered to Iraq in President Bush’s "surge" arrived, May ended as the third deadliest month for troops stationed there. At least 123 American servicemembers died, including three more who the U.S. military today reported as killed. Also, 39 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 61 Iraqis were wounded during violent attacks.

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Washington Post
The White House, long irritated by the frequent use of Vietnam as a metaphor for Iraq, embraced its own analogy yesterday: South Korea.

There's an undeniable attraction to holding up America's military presence in South Korea as a model for Iraq: Our soldiers stationed there aren't dying in large numbers every month.

But in other ways, the analogy is troubling. And flawed. And dangerous. And telling.

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MSNBC
BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber hit a police recruiting center in Fallujah on Thursday, killing at least 25 people and wounding 50, police said. U.S. forces backed by helicopter gunships clashed with suspected al-Qaida gunmen in western Baghdad in an engagement that lasted several hours.

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Harpers
No U.S. senator has made more trips out to Iraq than Joe Lieberman. He’s a fixture out there. The regular junket has been a part of his campaign to be “Mr. Iraq” in the Senate. About a year ago, when I was working in Baghdad, I listened to a young captain vent about the all the time and energy the Army was forced to expend on the regular visits of CODELs – Congressional delegations. “I guess our democratic process requires it. But I really wish these dopes would open their eyes and actually learn something, rather than use Iraq as a backdrop for speeches that fit in to some preconceived political strategy.” I later asked: who were you taking around? And the answer: Joe Lieberman.

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Washington Post
President Bush said publicly last Thursday what his top aides have been discussing privately for weeks. He talked about a transition to "a different configuration" in Iraq after the surge of U.S. troops is completed this summer. When pressed on whether he was talking about a post-surge Plan B, Bush answered: "Actually, I would call that a plan recommended by Baker-Hamilton, so that would be a Plan B-H."

Let's make sure we've got that right: This would be the same Baker-Hamilton plan whose authors were lampooned by the conservative New York Post in December as "surrender monkeys"? The same Baker-Hamilton report that seemed to be all but buried by Bush's January embrace of a surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Iraq?

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Workers World
In a maneuver stunning for its cynicism, Democrats in Congress, fearful of the ire of their anti-war constituents, found a way to support President George Bush and provide continued funding for the war in Iraq while claiming that they were voting against the war.

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Boston Globe
LAST FALL, President Bush unceremoniously dumped the findings of the Baker-Hamilton report in favor of one last "surge" of troops in Iraq to bring the insurgency under control. Now, however, parts of the report are being touted in the White House as a guide to how to manage Iraq during a future withdrawal of troops. These include training Iraqi forces, reducing combat operations, except against Al Qaeda and in efforts to secure Iraq's borders, as well as attempting to obtain vital Iranian and Syrian cooperation in the process, now tentatively underway.

The reasons are not difficult to understand.

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Washington Post
While the rest of us enjoyed our holiday, 10 more Americans were killed in Iraq on Memorial Day -- adding to the human toll of that accursed war.

This summer threatens to bring more such grim days as the expanded ground forces move deeper into Baghdad neighborhoods and terrorists plant their diabolical explosive charges along the roads in outlying provinces where they know U.S. convoys will pass.

But the end is coming into view -- not soon enough to spare every precious life, but sooner than President Bush and Vice President Cheney may wish.

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Salon
DAMASCUS, Syria -- Thousands of torches rise and fall in unison as a chorus of voices roars, "We are with you, Bashar." The throng of young people heaves toward Umayyad Square in downtown Damascus, in a strictly choreographed ritual meant to show the world how much they love Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

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Seattle PI
When it comes to the war in Iraq, it turns out there weren't many known unknowns (as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld so poetically put it in his 2002 work, "Known Knowns, Known Unknowns and Other Funny Stories").

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Christian Science Monitor
Washington - One senior officer calls it a "moral imperative," and others see it as a no-brainer, but four years into a deadly war, there are only some 350 blast-resistant trucks protecting US troops in Iraq. Officials inside and outside the military want to know why.

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Salon
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, on an unannounced visit to Iraq today, declares: "Overall, what I'd say I see here today is progress, significant progress, from the last time I was here in December. And if you can see progress in war, that means you're headed in the right direction."

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Consortium News
It’s an old military adage that bad intel can get soldiers killed, but it now turns out that false talking points may be even more lethal, a lesson that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney continue to teach the world as the death toll mounts in Iraq.

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CounterPunch
President Bush can meet with family friend, Prince Bandar while Vice President Cheney meets with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, but neither leader are able to meet with Cindy Sheehan and the mothers who ask to know why their children have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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The Nation
Two years ago, on May 30, 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney said of the violence in Iraq: "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

The comment came in response to a question from CNN's Larry King.

That's the line everyone remembers from the interview.

What people don't remember is Cheney's response to King's inquiry about when US troops would come home from Iraq.

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The Nation
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign would like voters to forget that she supported the war in Iraq. "Senator Clinton ☼ believes things are not going well [In Iraq], wants to begin phased withdrawal, wants to end the war," her spokesman Howard Wolfson told MSNBC on Friday.

It wasn't always that way.

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Anti-War
Euripides said that "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." First there was the madness of cornering Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora and letting him go. Then there was the launching of the meaningless Global War on Terror, which turned most of the world against the United States, empowered al-Qaeda, and actually helped to increase the number of terrorists. And finally there was democracy promotion and Iraq. Democracy promotion has only aided Islamists battling against the hated regimes that run their countries, and Iraq is now truly the "central front" for combating terrorists in a ruin of a country where terrorism never existed before the Americans arrived.

Here at home there is the madness of the Department of Homeland Security

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Salon
May 30, 2007 | Memorial Day is a lovely day in America, a day of reunion in small towns, where people drive up to the cemetery on Monday morning and file in, old-timers carrying lawn chairs, and even if you've missed a few years, people will come over and shake your hand and thank you for coming. You don't have to dress up or support the war in Iraq. You just come, and afterward there's hot dogs and potato salad at the Legion Club.

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Reuters
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The U.S. military said coalition and Afghan troops killed six Taliban and arrested four in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, though a provincial official and residents said the casualties were villagers.

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Washington Post
Of all the absurdities attending our unending war in Iraq, the greatest is this: We are fighting to defend that which is not there.

We are fighting for a national government that is not national but sectarian, and has shown no capacity to govern. We are training Iraq's security forces to combat sectarian violence though those forces are thoroughly sectarian and have themselves engaged in large-scale sectarian violence.

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Lew Rockwell
Has Congress given George Bush a green light to attack Iran?

For he is surely behaving as though it is his call alone. And evidence is mounting that we are on a collision course for war.

Iran has detained several Iranian-Americans, seemingly in retaliation for our continuing to hold five Iranians in Iraq.

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Independent
There are 44,000 private security contractors in Iraq, forming what the US Senate dubbed the "largest private army in the world".

About 21,000 of those private guards are British - approximately three times the total number of British troops in the country.

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CounterPunch
The tax dollar funded photo op of Bush landing on an aircraft carrier all dressed up in a flightsuit to announce Mission Accomplished was a desperate attempt to give the illusion that Bush actually did serve his country in the military and to bolster his image as a self-described "war president."

This country is now paying a heavy price for Bush's lack of military experience, and his taunting invitation of "bring it on," that has resulted in a never ending stream of challengers traveling to Iraq to teach our loudmouth President a lesson.

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The Nation
As part of its much belated inquiry into the prewar intelligence, the Senate intelligence committee released a 229-page report on Friday on the intelligence produced by U.S. intelligence agencies on what could be expected to occur in Iraq following a U.S. invasion. No surprise: the intelligence community foresaw the likelihood of chaos and trouble inside and outside Iraq.

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Anti-War
U.S. forces took a heavy toll on Memorial Day with ten servicemember deaths; another soldier was killed in Balad on Saturday. May is the bloodiest month for U.S. forces since 2004 with at least 115 deaths.Several Westerners and their bodyguards were abducted in a daring attack in Baghdad. Also, at least 83 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 111 were wounded in other violent events.

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The Nation
The decision of Congressional Democrats to hand George Bush a blank check to maintain a war they were elected to end has frustrated a lot of Americans -- even the until-now indefatigable Cindy Sheehan.

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of slain soldier Casey Sheehan whose 2005 decision to camp out in Crawford, Texas, until George Bush heard her complaints about the war made her a hero to activists around the world, is one of them.

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Time
(Baghdad)—The U.S. military said at least eight soldiers were killed in Iraq on Memorial Day. An American helicopter went down in restive Diyala province, killing two soldiers.

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Lew Rockwell
One thing that really gets my goat is all these Iraqi insurgents and militia running around with AK-47 Kalashnikovs! AK-47s aren’t stamped "Made in the USA!"

As every Tom, Dick and Harry knows, AK-47s are manufactured in Russia, China and a whole host of interesting places. And, they are pieces of junk! Go ahead, drop the damn thing in the sand, kick it under your bed for a year and forget it. While it will spray out 700 rounds a minute and kill and maim a lot of people, the AK-47 is not a precision firearm.

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Washington Post
The debate over the Iraq war broke out along Arlington National Cemetery's Roosevelt Drive, in a sea of headstones before a gallery of the dead, just down the road from where President Bush had concluded his Memorial Day speech minutes before.

Three congressional interns -- hot, tired and in awe of the crowds and the pageantry -- were leaving, trying to sort through what it all meant. One, Julia Villamizar, a 20-year-old from Miami, said it was difficult for her to see U.S. soldiers in Iraq as "heroes." She admired them and didn't want them to die. But she did not see the Iraqis as enemies. "I guess I don't see the people in Iraq as villains," she said.

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First Post
The US is considering introducing a limited military draft if it is to keep its present force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pentagon advisers have warned British colleagues. Next month, US forces in Iraq will peak at around 170,000, and GIs in the new units are being told they could be on operations for at least 15 months.

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CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A new biography of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has once again raised the issue of whether members of Congress read a key intelligence report before the 2002 vote to authorize war in Iraq.

Clinton did not read the 90-page, classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, according to "Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton."

In order for members of Congress to read the report, they had to go to a secure location on Capitol Hill. The Washington Post reported in 2004 that no more than six senators and a handful of House members were logged as reading the document.

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Guardian
Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq three years ago, said yesterday she was stepping down from her role as the figurehead of the US campaign against the war.

"This is my resignation letter as the 'face' of the American anti-war movement," she wrote in a sometimes bitter diary entry on the website Daily Kos. "I am going to take whatever I have left, and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children, and try to regain some of what I have lost."

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Boston Globe
WASHINGTON -- Confronted with strong opposition to his Iraq policies, President Bush decides to interpret public opinion his own way. Actually, he says, people agree with him.

Democrats view the November elections that gave them control of Congress as a mandate to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq. They're backed by evidence; election exit poll surveys by The Associated Press and television networks found 55 percent saying the U.S. should withdraw some or all of its troops from Iraq.

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Harpers
What do you do when it turns out you waged a war predicated on a series of lies, and the war’s going badly to boot? Well, to paraphrase the worst secretary of defense in America’s history, if you’re not happy with the reality you’ve got, you just go and manufacture a new one.

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Salon
In his February 2003 speech at Drake University, Howard Dean set forth all of the reasons he opposed the imminent invasion of Iraq. In doing so, Dean identified this specific deficiency in the "debate" over the invasion:

We have been told over and over again what the risks will be if we do not go to war.
We have been told little about what the risks will be if we do go to war.

Dean then went on to warn of the many risks of invading -- almost all of which have transpired, and almost none of which were even acknowledged by most war proponents.

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Pottersville
“In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war.” That’s what President Bush said last year, in a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

Those were fine words, spoken by a man with less right to say them than any president in our nation’s history. For Mr. Bush took us to war not with reluctance, but with unseemly eagerness.

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