NewsTrust - War in Iraq - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

"Mind Zone": New Film Tracks Therapists Guiding Soldiers Through Traumas of Afghan War

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez - Mar. 16 (Review) - Haaken’s forthcoming documentary, "Mind Zone: Therapists Behind the Front Lines," shows the ethical dilemmas faced by therapists in Afghanistan who guide soldiers through the trauma of war. "The military has relied quite extensively on therapists to kind of help hold people together psychologically in war zones,"

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The costs of war | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

thebulletin.org - By Hugh Gusterson - Sep. 08 (Opinion) - Sobering reflections of the 10 years since 9/11 at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Here's a quote: "Military responses to problems have a way of creating all sorts of new problems. The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy offers an opportunity to reflect on the costs and benefits of the wars the United States initiated against Iraq and Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks. A comprehensive new study, "Costs of War," sponsored by Brown University (and with which I have been affiliated) suggests that the costs have been wildly out of proportion to the benefits." A very thoughtful piece, regardless of your view of the wars

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Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 Strategy Explained

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Gareth Porter - Jun. 10 (Opinion) - Before his murder last month, Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad detailed how al-Qaeda leaders used the 9/11 attacks to induce “cowboy” President George W. Bush to blunder foolishly into the invasions of two Muslim countries, thus advancing an al-Qaeda strategy to discredit the region’s U.S.-connected leaders

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Finishing a Job: Obama Gets Osama

Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - May. 02 (Opinion) - President Barack Obama touched off American celebrations with his Sunday night announcement that U.S. forces finally had killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but that long frustrating hunt might not have been necessary if George W. Bush had rejected neoconservative advice to pivot prematurely from Afghanistan to Iraq in late 2001.

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A more militarized CIA for a more militarized America

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - It's rare for American media outlets to list all of our "wars" this way, including the covert ones (and that list does not even include the newest one, in Libya, where drone attacks are playing an increasingly prominent role as well). But Barack Obama does indeed preside over numerous American wars in the Muslim world, including some that he started (Libya and Yemen) and others which he's escalated (Afghanistan and Pakistan). Because our wars are so often fought covertly, the CIA has simply become yet another arm of America's imperial war-fighting machine, thus making it the perfect fit for Bush and Obama's most cherished war-fighting General to lead (Petraeus will officially retire from the military to take the position, though that obviously does not change who he is, how he thinks, and what his loyalties are).

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The Abu Ghraib Photos You Haven't Seen

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Nick Turse - Apr. 22 (Review) - Riley Sharbonno didn’t round up people. He didn’t carry out any massacres and didn’t witness any. But Sharbonno did go to war. And he did return with memories that were mixed up, messy or missing. Monica Haller helped him to put them back together in a fascinating photo book—a term she eschews, instead calling the project “an object of deployment.” A thick tome of more than 470 pages, “Riley and his story. Me and my outrage. You and us.” is a piece of art and a historical document. It’s a war story and a meditation on memory as well as a rumination on its absence.

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How Koch Industries Makes Billions Corrupting Government

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Lee Fang, Think Progress - Mar. 02 (Opinion) - The Koch's Tea Party libertarianism is actually a thin veneer for the company's long running history of manipulating the market to pad Koch profits.

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$1.2 Trillion: The Real U.S. National Security Budget No One Wants You to Know About

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Chris Hellman - Mar. 01 (Opinion) - If Americans were ever presented with the real bill for the total U.S. national security budget, it would actually add up to more than $1.2 trillion a year.

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"Facts Still Matter ..."

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Bill Moyers - Feb. 15 (Speech) - History Makers is an organization of broadcasters and producers from around the world concerned with the challenges and opportunities faced by factual broadcasting. Bill Moyers was the keynote speaker at the 2011 convention on January 27, 2011, in New York City.

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Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Pentagon's Planet of Bases

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By Nick Turse - Jan. 09 (Opinion) - There are more than 1,000 U.S. military bases dotting the globe. To be specific, the most accurate count is 1,077. Unless it’s 1,088. Or, if you count differently, 1,169. Or even 1,180. Actually, the number might even be higher. Nobody knows for sure.

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2010: The Year In Crazy, Pt. 2

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

This Modern World - By Tom Tomorrow - Dec. 28 (Cartoon) - An incomplete and subjective look at the year in crazy.

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WikiLeaks and the Secrets that Deceive

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Danny Schechter - Dec. 21 (Opinion) - In the days of Stalin’s Russia, not only would dissidents “disappear” but images of officials at the May Day reviewing stands would be erased from photographs when their political stars fell.

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U.S. Orders Diplomats to Stop Telling Truth Until Further Notice

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

borowitzreport.com - By Andy Borowitz - Dec. 02 (Comedy News) - In the first major policy fallout from the WikiLeaks disclosures, the State Department has ordered all U.S. diplomats to “cease and desist telling the truth until further notice.” “We are working overtime to try to make sure that leaks like these don’t happen again,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters. “But until we’ve got the leaks plugged, it’s incumbent on all our diplomats to put on their lying caps.” Secretary Clinton noted that since many US diplomats are major political donors with long careers in the business world, “this shouldn’t be a reach for them.”

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To all our veterans past and present, "Thank You" (tribute video)

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

allvoices.com - Nov. 11 (Opinion) -

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Nir Rosen on "Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World"

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Nir Rosen - Nov. 10 (Interview) - Independent journalist Nir Rosen has been covering the Middle East since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. In his new book, Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World, Rosen writes in length about Iraq, the U.S. occupation, the civil war, and how the war affected the broader Middle East, from Jordan to Syria to Lebanon. Rosen also writes about Afghanistan and his time unembedded with the Taliban, as well as the role of independent media and the failures of the U.S. press.

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Washington Post Downplays Iraq War Crimes

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Oct. 27 (Opinion) - The Post editors also sought to shift responsibility for the death toll away from the Bush administration – and themselves – by noting that “the vast majority of Iraqi civilian deaths were caused by other Iraqis, not by coalition forces.” But that argument misses the point understood by the Nuremberg Tribunals – that it is the original war of aggression that unpacks all the other evils of war

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Gen. Hugh Shelton: Bush Officials Pushed For Iraq War 'Almost To The Point Of Insubordination' (VIDEO)

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Gen. Hugh Shelton - Oct. 25 (Interview) - Former Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton says that, during the Bush administration, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and other Pentagon officials pushed to go to war with Iraq "almost to the point of insubordination." "There was a very strong push in those days for us to go into Iraq, and there was absolutely no intelligence, zero, that pointed toward the Iraqis.," he told Christiane Amanpour on ABC's 'This Week' on Sunday.

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WikiLeaks Prepares Largest Intel Leak in US History with Release of 400,000 Iraq War Docs

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Daniel Ellsberg - Oct. 22 (Interview) - The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks is preparing to release up to 400,000 US intelligence reports on the Iraq war. The disclosure would comprise the biggest leak in US history, far more than the 91,000 Afghanistan war logs WikiLeaks released this summer. We speak to the nation's most famous whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the secret history of the Vietnam War in 1971.

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The Internet War

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Link - By Nadim Kobeissi - Oct. 19 (Opinion) - WikiLeaks’s recent release of the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. military history has turned the Internet into a war zone. On one side, WikiLeaks has assembled the brightest and most dedicated hacker-activists in an effort to turn the Internet into a bastion of transparency and information freedom.

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Exclusive: British Novelist John le Carré on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa and His New Novel, "Our Kind Of Traitor"

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By John le Carré , Amy Goodman - Oct. 11 (Interview) - Exclusive: British Novelist John le Carré on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa and His New Novel, "Our Kind Of Traitor"

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Iraq War Veteran Who Rescued Wounded Children in 2007 Apache Attack Describes Emotional Toll of Witnessing Infamous Killings

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Oct. 07 (Interview) - Iraq war veteran Ethan McCord was one of three US soldiers who were on the ground during the Apache helicopter assault on 12 civilians in Baghdad in 2007 that was captured in a video released by WikiLeaks. McCord is seen on the video carrying one of the wounded children in his arms to get medical help.

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Harry Belafonte: Iraq & Afghanistan Wars Are "Immoral, Unconscionable and Unwinnable"

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Harry Belafonte - Oct. 04 (Interview) - "The President's decision to escalate the war in that region alone costs the nation $33 billion," the legendary musician, actor and activist Harry Belafonte said at Saturday's "One Nation Working Together" in Washington. "That sum of money could not only create 600,000 jobs here in America but would even leave us a few billion to start rebuilding our schools, our roads, our hospitals and affordable housing. It could also help to rebuild the lives of the thousands of our returning wounded veterans."

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Tony Benn on Tony Blair: "He Will Have to Live 'Til the Day He Dies with the Knowledge that He Is Guilty of a War Crime"

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Tony Benn, Amy Goodman - Sep. 21 (Interview) - Mr. Blair misled the House of Commons. He told them things which were not true, under instructions from President George W. Bush, and, as a result of that, persuaded the House of Commons to vote for the war. One calculation is that over a million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict. And what was achieved by it? Nothing.

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Militarization of State Dept. Stirs Little Media Interest

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - By Steve Rendall - Sep. 10 (Opinion) - The policy has not changed. It is true that the number of troops are significantly lower than they were at their height of 165,000; it's now down to about 50,000. That's a good thing. Reduction in troops is a good thing. But the notion that this troop reduction somehow means that all combat brigades, let alone combat troops, are out of Iraq is just specious.

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Spinning the US Failure in Iraq

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Aug. 20 (Opinion) - When I watched the last U.S. combat battalions leave Iraq on Wednesday night, I couldn’t help but recall the scene when the last Soviet troops departed Afghanistan on Feb. 15, 1989. In both cases, the two governments soft-pedaled the hard truth about the strategic defeats that the withdrawals represented.

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