Adam Kokesh served in Fallujah as a Marine, then got in
hot water for appearing at an anti-war protest in uniform. This weekend, he was brutalized by US Park police for silently dancing at the Jefferson Memorial as part of a small flash mob. The event was captured on
video, which is fascinating and surreal.
posted by eugenen
on May 28, 2011 -
241 comments
The Iraq War: was there even a decision? "Perhaps most revealing ... is what is missing--any indication whatsoever from the declassified record to date that top Bush administration officials seriously considered an alternative to war. In contrast there is an extensive record of efforts to energize military planning, revise existing contingency plans, and create a new, streamlined war plan." The
National Security Archive at George Washington University has released a set of documents from the US and British archives related to the Iraq war:
Part I,
Part II,
Part III.
Political scientist
Russell Burgos (who served in Iraq):
... there is indeed a kind of inevitability about the confrontation, but it was an inevitability created by domestic politics rather than 9/11. In my estimation, the origins of the "path to war" are found in the Republican Revolution of 1994; I will suggest that from 1996 to 2000, Iraq policy was not about Iraq - it was about an increasingly strident partisan attack on President Bill Clinton in which "Iraq" was not a subject of deliberate policy but was a synecdoche for "Clinton's failure."
Historian
Robert Jervis also comments. Via
H-DIPLO.
posted by russilwvong
on Oct 19, 2010 -
42 comments
On Wikipedia, Cultural Patrimony, and Historiography. "The Iraq War: A Historiography of Wikipedia Changelogs" is a twelve-volume set of all changes to the Wikipedia article on the Iraq War. The twelve volumes cover a five year period from December 2004 to November 2009, a total of 12,000 changes and almost 7,000 pages. The set is part of a project exploring history and historiography facilitated by the internet, and visualising information, opinion, narrative and discussion, by James Bridle.
posted by shakespeherian
on Sep 7, 2010 -
38 comments
"In the days surrounding the invasion of Iraq,
cover sheets...began adorning top-secret intelligence briefings produced by [former defense secretary] Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon. The sheets juxtaposed war images with inspirational Bible quotes and were delivered by Rumsfeld himself to the White House, where they were read by the man who, after September 11, referred to America's war on terror as a 'crusade.'"
[more inside]
posted by ericb
on May 17, 2009 -
82 comments
The military surge in Iraq is failing. Sure, violence in the country is down significantly, but that's as much due to the
Sunni Awakening, which
began significantly before the surge got going in
2007. Unfortunately, everyone, particularly the McCain campaign, seems to have forgotten that the goal of the surge was to provide political stability, and it
totally hasn't.
[more inside]
posted by Caduceus
on Sep 10, 2008 -
32 comments
In his new book, '
The Way of the World' "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind claims that, after the Iraq war began, the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein, in an attempt to tie Hussein to the 9/11 attacks."
* Suskind
writes: "'It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq' and that Iraq bought yellowcake uranium from Niger with the help of al Qaeda. Suskind also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official "that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion." After the fake letter was released in late 2003, press outlets reported it as evidence of a Saddam/al Qaeda link. "Now, if this is true, that blows the lid off al Qaeda—Saddam," said Bill O’Reilly at the time.
[more inside]
posted by ericb
on Aug 5, 2008 -
127 comments
New Allegations Have Surfaced that the US Is Effectively Holding Iraq's Oil Revenues
Hostage to Force through a Proposed Long-Term Strategic Alliance, Raising New
Questions about the US' Committment to an Independent, Self-Governing Iraq. The Deal,
Which in its Current Form is Said to Provide for an Indefinite American Military Presence and Blanket Immunity from Iraqi Law for All American Troops and Civilian Contractors, Is Understandably Not All That Popular with
Many Iraqi Citizens. Iraqi Lawmakers Have Also
Expressed Doubts about the Deal. (IRAQ WAR/POLITICS FILTER.)
posted by saulgoodman
on Jun 6, 2008 -
79 comments
In honor of the 5-year anniversary of the Iraq War, PBS'
Frontline presented a fantastic 2- part special on the issue this past Monday and Tuesday. It is now available in it's entirety online along with interview transcripts from senior officials, a video timeline of the war, and battlefield stories from soldiers.
Bush's War
posted by auralcoral
on Mar 26, 2008 -
100 comments
"I'm dead. That sucks, at least for me and my family and friends. But all the tears in the world aren't going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss. (If it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions.)"
Blogger Andrew Olmsted was killed in Iraq yesterday. He had been guest-posting at Obsidian Wings as G'Kar. hilzoy of ObWi has cross-posted his final message
there as well.
[more inside]
posted by maudlin
on Jan 4, 2008 -
56 comments
You'll go by the phone kiosk and you'll hear young men having these very strange, almost surreal arguments or discussions with their wives over something like, "Hey the garage is leaking, how do we fix that?" And what she maybe doesn't understand is, maybe that guy just got ambushed, like half an hour ago, and he's shaking from the adrenaline, and he's just calling her just to hear a familiar voice, and she's like, "We gotta get the sprinklers fixed." And he's like, "Oh, OK ... . I love you." He just wants to get back to the ground. And that's what makes me angry, is what all of this is doing to these very young families. It just makes me mad. It makes anybody mad.
—
Henry Rollins,
interviewed in TNR (reg required, free) on his frequent USO visits to Afghanistan and Iraq.
posted by Ethereal Bligh
on Apr 13, 2007 -
59 comments
How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits: His deafness, memory problems and depression caused were not caused by a rocket attack he survived in Ramadi, but by a pre-existing personality disorder. Well, according to the Army medical staff, that is. (
via)
posted by knave
on Apr 4, 2007 -
35 comments
A four-year-old girl (YouTube 1:26) is interviewed about her views of various hypothetical budgetary allocations. It is called "A SOTU Response," but it isn't really directly related to the SOTU.
Via Plastic.
posted by textilephile
on Jan 30, 2007 -
44 comments
US Military Papers open fire on Rummy. Tomorrow, the Army Times -- and all other Military Times papers, including Navy and Air Force Times -- will run an editorial calling for Donald Rumsfeld to tender his resignation or be fired, due to his gross incompetence in handling the Iraq quagmire.
posted by lazaruslong
on Nov 5, 2006 -
70 comments
Never Coming Home is about the families of five young men killed in Iraq.
Slate presents a short documentary that focuses on the bereavement of the parents, or in one case, a brother. This portrait of grief and sacrifice is brought to life through the use of still photography and the recorded voices of family members.
posted by ND¢
on Jun 12, 2006 -
24 comments
Prone to Violence FROM THE French Revolution to contemporary Iraq, the beginning phase of democratization in unsettled circumstances has often spurred a rise in militant nationalism. Democracy means rule by the people, but when territorial control and popular loyalties are in flux, a prior question has to be settled: Which people will form the nation? Nationalist politicians vie for popular support to answer that question in a way that suits their purposes. When groups are at loggerheads and the rules guiding domestic politics are unclear, the answer is more often based on a test of force and political manipulation than on democratic procedures.
posted by Postroad
on Jan 7, 2006 -
17 comments
Bush and Blair slated by Pinter George W Bush and Tony Blair must be held to account for feeding the public "a vast tapestry of lies" about the Iraq war, writer Harold Pinter said.
[Postroad: but then, what do artists know about politics?]
posted by Postroad
on Dec 7, 2005 -
41 comments
Whistle-Blower or Troublemaker, Bunny Greenhouse Isn't Backing Down Another trouble maker can't keep her mouth shut !Bunny Greenhouse was once the perfect bureaucrat, an insider, the top procurement official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Then the 61-year-old Greenhouse lost her $137,000-a-year post after questioning the plump contracts awarded to Halliburton in the run-up to the war in Iraq. It has made her easy to love for some, easy to loathe for others, but it has not made her easy to know.
posted by Postroad
on Oct 19, 2005 -
23 comments
