EDITORIALS REGARDING IRAQ

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Can We Let Intelligence Officials Lie Without

Punishment?

By Ray McGovern, TomPaine.com
Posted on January 5, 2007, Printed on January 6, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46322/

Lies have consequences . All those who helped President George W. Bush launch a

war of aggression -- termed by Nuremberg "the supreme international crime" -- have blood

on their hands and must be held accountable. This includes corrupt intelligence officials.

Otherwise, look for them to perform the same service in facilitating war on Iran.

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If in your presence an individual tried to sacrifice an American serviceman or woman,

would you intervene?

Would you at least protest?

What if he had already sacrificed 3,003 of them?

What if he had already sacrificed 3,003 of them — and was then to announce his intention to

sacrifice hundreds, maybe thousands, more?

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The Big Lie Technique

Robert Scheer, Creators Syndicate

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

AT A TIME when approximately 57 percent of Americans polled believe that President

Bush deceived them on the reasons for the war in Iraq, it does seem a bit redundant to

deconstruct the president's recent speeches on that subject. Yet, to fail to do so would be

to passively accept the Big Lie technique -- which is how we as a nation got into this horrible

mess in the first place.

The basic claim of the president's desperate and strident attack on the war's critics this past

week is that he was acting as a consensus president when intelligence information left him no

choice but to invade Iraq as a preventive action to deter a terrorist attack on America. This is

flatly wrong.

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Democracy and Delusion in Iraq

By Larry Johnson,

Thu Dec 15th, 2005 at 08:15:15 AM EDT :: Iraq

With voting already underway in Iraq, we should harbor no illusion about the

ultimate outcome - the Iraqi Shias with the closest ties to Iran will secure the

largest share of the votes. George Bush is right about one thing: this vote is likely

to remake the face of the Middle East. Unfortunately, his vision that Iraq will

become a launching pad for a new era of peace and understanding among the

nations in the region is not only farfetched, but ignores what is actually taking

place on the ground.

A few hundred miles to the west, the radical Muslim Brothers (spiritual kin of the

Wahabis of Saudi Arabia) have secured a historic place in the Egyptian legislature.

Despite intense pressure by the Mubarak government, they rallied their supporters

and got out the vote. At least they heeded Bush's call for democracy. On the northern

border of Iraq, in Turkey, the Islamists also are on the upswing. And let's not forget

Lebanon, where forces with close ties to Iran are consolidating power and influence.

Remember, Hezbollah is no longer a rag tag band of terrorists; instead, it has grown

into a disciplined de facto Army of Lebanon.

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The Insurgents Will Wait Us Out No Matter What --

They Live There!

Cenk Uygur

Donald Rumsfeld said this weekend that withdrawal plans send a message to

the insurgents that if they wait us out, they can prevail. The Bush administration

has said repeatedly that even talking about withdrawing will cause the insurgents

to wait us out. Isn't it obvious that this rationale is devoid of any and all logic?

The insurgents LIVE in Iraq. They're going to "wait us out" no matter what we do!

U.S. commanders in the field have repeatedly said that over 90% the insurgents are

local Iraqis. If we tell them that we are never going to leave, do you think that will

make them fight less against us? And if we were to win the game of waiting them

out, where would they go? Back home? They're already home!

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US Ambassador to Iraq Admits We've Opened

Up a Pandora's Box

Cenk Uygur

United States Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad recently had a very

frank conversation with Newsweek's Michael Hirsh. In this conversation,

he admitted the United States has opened up a Pandora's Box in Iraq which

might create a world with far more problems. He is also the first administration

official to acknowledge the Iraq war might lead to a bigger and more dangerous

regional war in the Middle East.

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'A clear strategy — for disaster'
Posted on Saturday, December 03 @ 09:34:48 EST
 

Ray McGovern

The bromide-heavy speech that President George W. Bush gave Wednesday at

the Naval Academy presents a clear strategy for continued quagmire and eventual

disaster in Iraq. Despite the gathering storm of opposition to the administration's

approach to the war in Iraq, the speech was long on tired cliches and bereft of

new ideas, calling to mind the words of Emerson: "A foolish consistency is

the hobgoblin of little minds."

The problem is that this hobgoblin has consequences. Bush's renewed warning

of a future "Islamic empire from Indonesia to Spain" at first seemed to me as

outlandish as President Ronald Reagan's warning that the Russians planned to

land in Nicaragua in order to invade Texas. Now it seems that Bush's concern

may become self-fulfilling prophecy, since the course he is on could hardly

be better designed to usher in an eventual Islamic, rather than American, "empire."

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Bush in Iraq, Slouching towards Genocide

Despite pretty words about democracy and freedom, George W. Bush’s “victory”

plan in Iraq is starting to look increasingly like an invitation to genocide, the systematic

destruction of the Sunni minority for resisting its U.S.-induced transformation from

the nation’s ruling elite into second-class citizenship.

The Sunnis, an Islamic sect that makes up about 35 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people,

are being confronted with a stark choice, either accept subordination to the less-educated

Shiite majority or face the devastation of Sunni neighborhoods, the imprisonment of many

Sunni males and the deaths of large numbers of the Sunni population.

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Cut Our Losses

Jack Murtha is as tough as they come

By BOB HERBERT

Op-Ed Columnist

Washington ? Jack Murtha is as tough as they come, but he's seen enough of

the misguided, mismanaged, mission impossible war in Iraq to know that

it's not sustainable, not worth the continued killing and butchering and

psychological maiming of thousands of American G.I.'s.

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'First Light'
Posted on Friday, November 25 @ 08:57:08 EST

Chris Floyd, The Moscow Times

Last week, America's troubled sleep was shattered by a trumpet blast of truth sounding

deep in Washington's corridors of power, where the rule of the Lie has held sway for

so long. This intrusion of reality into the bloodstained fantasyland of the Bush Regime

comes late in the day for the moribund Republic -- perhaps too late -- but it has struck

a mighty blow against the Lie's adherents, driving them into spasms of hysterical panic,

like rats exposed suddenly to the light.

The unlikely instigator of this historic upheaval was U.S. Representative John Murtha, the

73-year-old conservative Democrat and war hawk, one of many "opposition" leaders who

once strongly backed President George W. Bush's murderous folly in Iraq. Murtha, a

Vietnam vet, has been a stalwart of the military-industrial complex for decades, supporting

U.S. wars around the world and showering legislative largess on the weapons industry --

which has obligingly kicked back lobbying contracts to his kin and friends, The Los Angeles Times reports.
 

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Rep. Cynthia McKinney: 'The Republicans have done a

heinous thing — Stop playing politics, get the troops out now'
Posted on Sunday, November 20 @ 09:13:40 EST
 

Rep. Cynthia McKinney, CounterPunch

[The following is the text of Rep. McKinney's floor remarks on the November 18

debate over the "Murtha" withdrawal resolution.]

The Republicans in this House have done a heinous thing: they have insulted one of the

deans of this House in an unthinkable and unconscionable way.

They took his words and contorted them; they took his heartfelt sentiments and spun

them. They took his resolution and deformed it: in a cheap effort to silence dissent in the

House of Representatives.

The Republicans should be roundly criticized for this reprehensible act. They have

perpetrated a fraud on the House of Representatives just as they have defrauded the American people.

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'Cheney is vice president for torture'

Fri Nov 18 2005

A former CIA director has claimed that torture is condoned and even approved

by the Bush government.

The devastating accusations have been made by Admiral Stansfield Turner who

labelled Dick Cheney "a vice president for torture".

He said: "We have crossed the line into dangerous territory".

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Sweet Victory: United Methodist Church Calls

For Withdrawal

It's one thing when former high-ranking members of your own
Administration come out against your war. It's another thing when two-
thirds of the country calls the invasion and occupation a mistake.
It's really something when your own church issues a statement urging
you to pull out the troops now.

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Cheney, Libby and the Mess They Made
John Nichols

Tue Nov 1, 2005
The Nation -- Much of official Washington remains focused on the issues --
legal and political -- that have arisen from the indictment of I. Lewis
"Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney who was a
principal architect of the administration's approach to Iraq before and after the
invasion and occupation of that distant land. This is as it should be: Libby and
his former boss need to be held accountable for leading this country's military
forces into a quagmire that has cost more than 2,000 American lives and tens
of thousands of Iraqi lives.
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Notes From Underground: Exposing the Maw of Bush's Gulag

Quietly, firmly, relentlessly, the good captain laid out the list of atrocities 

committed at the order of the enemies of freedom: "Death threats, beatings, 

broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, 

hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment."

A catalogue of depravity, all of it designed – with diabolical sophistry – by 

self-exalted men cloaking their violent perversions with sham piety and righteous 

sputum. This was terrorism on a grand scale, chewing up the innocent and guilty alike.

The good man in question is of course Captain Ian Fishback, the born-again 

U.S. Army officer who has blown the whistle on the systematic abuse of captives 

rounded up in George W. Bush's Terror War. Fishback, frustrated after 17 

months of trying to get the above atrocities investigated through official channels, 

finally turned to Human Rights Watch – and top Republican senators – seeking 

redress for the bloody dishonor that Bush has brought upon America .

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Permanent Occupation

By Rep. Barbara Lee September 29, 2005

If you are inclined to believe the president, we will be in Iraq , in his

words "as long as necessary, and not a day longer." Members of the

Bush administration, including the president, have been at pains to

dispel any notion that they have plans for a permanent military presence

in Iraq .

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