Saturday, Nov 01st
Last update08:10:46 AM GMT
War Glance
In his new book, former Secretary of State Colin Powell provides what may be the most authoritative confirmation yet that there was never a considered debate in the George W. Bush White House about whether going to war in Iraq was really a good idea.
“By then, the President did not think war could be avoided,” Powell writes. “He had crossed the line in his own mind, even though the NSC [National Security Council] had never met -- and never would meet -- to discuss the decision.”
Most Americans greeted the end of the Iraq War the same way they responded to the beginning of it—with a shrug and a yawn. The List, a documentary screening this week at the Tribeca Film Festival, is a timely reminder of what’s still at stake, and that the war there isn’t over for our allies just because we’ve mostly departed.
In many ways, actually, it’s just begun for them, as they flee or hide from their past—from us. For me, the film resonated because of a man named Suge Knight.
Washington has pledged in a newly agreed strategic pact to help defend Afghanistan militarily for at least a decade after the country formally takes control of its own security, an Afghan official said Monday.
The draft agreement signed on Sunday also says the U.S. will only take such actions with Afghan agreement. The United States also pledged it will not launch attacks on other countries from Afghan soil, according to sections of the accord read out in parliament by Afghan National Security Adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta.
US covert and overt criminal Wars of Aggression caused 20-30 million deaths of human beings since World War 2, according to the outstanding documentation of James Lucas of Countercurrents.org. The US use/support of armed attacks is documented in 37 countries, and in direct violation of treaties after both world wars (Kellogg-Briand and UN Charter) to forever end armed attacks unless first attacked by another nation’s government.
US officials "sexed up" Mr Janabi's drawings of mobile biological weapons labs to make them more presentable, admits Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, General Powell's former chief of staff. "I brought the White House team in to do the graphics," he says, adding how "intelligence was being worked to fit around the policy".
"Curveball", the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war.
Today is the ninth anniversary of the devastating saturation bombing, by the US, of Baghdad, a city that was home to nearly 6 million Iraqis . This strategy, labeled SHOCK and AWE, was designed to rapidly overwhelm the Iraqis so that they could not possibly mount a defense against the terrifying might of the US military.
What followed was the illegal, immoral, and horrific invasion of Iraq, a nation that never at any time had posed a threat to the United States. The next eight years of senseless war were based on a series of lies created and repeated by the Bush/Cheney regime and its PNAC members. These lies were designed to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to their lives.
Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are the highest they've been since the invasion, according to the latest statistics from the United Nations creating the highest total since 2006 for civilian deaths - the continued annual rises has seen over 12,793 killed in the past six years.
In the light of the horrific attacks on a village by an American soldier over the weekend, the data brings fresh focus on the Nato operation there.
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