NewsTrust - War in Iraq - Most Recent Stories

6 Shocking Ways Capitalism Is Failing Working America

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Les Leopold - Feb. 01 (News Analysis) - Capitalism is coming apart at the seams and the middle-class is paying the price.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.3 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Iraqis Voice Outrage as Haditha Massacre Trial Ends In No Jail Time for Accused U.S. Marines

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 26 (News Report) - The last of the U.S. marines charged in the 2005 Haditha massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, received no jail time after he pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty and avoiding charges of involuntary manslaughter. Under his sentencing, Wuterich now faces a maximum penalty of a demotion to the rank of private. The victims, including women and children, were killed when the marines burst into their homes and shot them dead in their nightclothes. Wuterich allegedly led the Haditha massacre and was the last defendant to face charges. Six other marines have had their charges dropped or dismissed, while another soldier was acquitted. "[Iraqi] outrage is perfectly understandable," says Tim McGirk, the Time magazine reporter who broke the story on the Haditha massacre. "Here is a case where so many Iraqis were killed, women and children, old men, and yet, what's happened? Most of the charges have been dismissed, and Wuterich was basically given a slap on the wrist." [includes rush transcript]

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Western Oil Firms Remain as US Exits Iraq

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Dahr Jamail - Jan. 09 (News Report) - hile the US military has formally ended its occupation of Iraq, some of the largest western oil companies, ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, remain. On November 27, 38 months after Royal Dutch Shell announced its pursuit of a massive gas deal in southern Iraq, the oil giant had its contract signed for a $17bn flared gas deal. Three days later, the US-based energy firm Emerson submitted a bid for a contract to operate at Iraq's giant Zubair oil field, which reportedly holds some eight million barrels of oil.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Police: Iraq War Veteran Suspected Of Killing Park Ranger Found Dead

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - Jan. 03 (News Report) - A plane searching the remote wilderness for Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, on Monday discovered his body lying partially submerged in an icy, snowy mountain creek with snow banks standing several feet high on either side.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Could Iraq descend into a civil war again? - CSMonitor.com

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Christian Science Monitor - By Dan Murphy - Dec. 20 (News Report) - The scars of Iraq's painful bloodletting are deep, and a powerful disincentive against a return to open warfare. But Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is moving against Sunni Arabs, his political enemies.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Iraqi Women's Activist Rebuffs U.S. Claims of a Freer Iraq: "This Is Not a Democratic Country"

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 16 (News Report) - Yanar Mohammed, president of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, joins us to discuss the impact of the nearly nine-year U.S. occupation, particularly on Iraqi women. "The Iraqi cities are now much more destroyed than they were five years ago," Mohammed says. "At the same time, we have turned to a society of 99 percent poor and 1 percent rich due to the policies that were imposed in Iraq." Moahmmed decries the repression of Iraqi protesters that joined the Arab Spring in a February 25th action. "The women are the biggest losers in all of this. We went to the Iraqi squares, we demonstrated, but got oppressed in ways that are new to Iraqi people. Anti-riot police of the American style was something that we witnessed there ... This is not a democratic country." [Rush transcript to come. Check back soon.]

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Costs of War: Tens of Thousands Dead, Billions Spent, and a Country Torn Apart

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 16 (Special Report) - Over the past nine years, the U.S. invasion and occupation has left a bloody toll on Iraqi civilians and foreign troops. Nearly 4,500 U.S. troops died, and another 32,000 were wounded. An accurate toll of Iraqis killed may never be known. Iraq Body Count says at least 104,000 Iraqi civilians have died, while some studies put have put the death toll at over one million. We speak to Catherine Lutz, Brown University professor and co-director of the "Costs of War" research project at the Watson Institute for International Studies. "The costs have really been staggering," Lutz says. "We know that Congress appropriated $800 billion over the years for the Iraq War. But the true costs, of course, go much farther than that, starting with the people of Iraq, who have lost lives in the hundreds of thousands." [includes rush transcript]

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq: "In Terms of Destroying Iraq, It's 'Mission Accomplished'"

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 16 (News Analysis) - The U.S. military may be leaving Iraq, but the U.S. government is not. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad is the largest in the world, and thousands of private contractors will fill the role of the departing U.S. troops. We begin our coverage of the U.S. withdrawal with Sami Rasouli, the founder and director of the Muslim Peacemaker Teams in Iraq, who joins us from the city of Najaf. Invoking George W. Bush's infamous declaration after the fall of Baghdad, Rasouli says, "In terms of destroying Iraq, it's really 'mission accomplished.'" [includes rush transcript]

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Ron Paul: 9/11 Prompted "Glee" in Bush Administration

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Brian Montopoli - Dec. 10 (News Report) - epublican presidential candidate Ron Paul said Thursday evening that Bush administration officials were gleeful after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks because it gave them a pretext to invade Iraq. "Just think of what happened after 9/11. Immediately before there was any assessment there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq," the Texas Republican told a group of mostly young backers in Iowa. He went on to suggest officials are now setting the stage for an invasion of Iran.

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Fact-check: South Carolina Debate

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson, Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley - Nov. 13 (Fact Check) - We found several exaggerations and misstatements in the latest Republican presidential candidates’ debate. Romney issued a hollow threat to take China’s currency manipulation to a world body that doesn’t actually deal with overvalued money, and he claimed federal spending consumes more of the nation’s economic output than it really does. … More >>

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

End O'Potamia

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Show - By Jon Stewart - Oct. 25 (Comedy News) - Republicans have different reasons for disliking Barack Obama's radical decision to do the thing George Bush signed an agreement to do.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

AP: U.S. drops keeping troops in Iraq

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - Oct. 15 (News) -

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Afghanistan and Iraq wars not worth fighting, say a third of US veterans

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Oct. 05 (News Report) - One in three US veterans of the post-9/11 military believes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting, and a majority think ...Poll finds pride in military, but not for Afghanistan, Iraq wars

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

How Washington Creates Global Instability

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Nick Turse - Sep. 19 (News Analysis) - It’s a story that should take your breath away: the destabilization of what, in the Bush years, used to be called “the arc of instability.” It involves at least 97 countries, across the bulk of the global south, much of it coinciding with the oil heartlands of the planet. A startling number of these nations are now in turmoil, and in every single one of them -- from Afghanistan and Algeria to Yemen and Zambia -- Washington is militarily involved, overtly or covertly, in outright war or what passes for peace.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

A decade later, returning to the scene of something unfathomable - latimes.com

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Steve Lopez - Sep. 11 (Special Report) - A columnist goes back to Lower Manhattan, where in 2001 he got a close-up look at the destruction of 9/11. He's reminded anew that we all have a stake in what happened that day and in the days that followed.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

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

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

WikiLeaks: Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head, U.N. says

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

McClatchy - By Matthew Schofield - Sep. 01 (News Report) - A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Violence Spikes in Iraq as U.S. Considers Ways to Extend Occupation Past December Deadline

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Aug. 19 (News Report) - Today, roughly 46,000 U.S. troops remain in the country, along with more than 64,000 private contractors. This week, as Iraq suffers its deadliest violence of the year, there is increasing speculation that the Obama administration will extend its occupation of the war-ravaged nation. Earlier this month, the Iraqi government authorized talks on whether to approve keeping thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq beyond a withdrawal deadline of December 31.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

What Does Lowballing the Number of Dead Iraqi Civilians Tell Us About Ourselves?

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Russ Wellen - Jul. 25 (News Analysis) - Over a period of about two weeks in May, I encountered in major news media three separate references to the number of people who had died in the Iraq war. Anderson Cooper, on his CNN show, Steven Lee Myers in the New York Times Magazine and Brian MacQuarrie in the Boston Globe all pegged the number in the tens of thousands, sometimes adding “at least.” . . . The “tens of thousands” mantra is peculiar because even the most conservative calculation—that provided by Iraq Body Count, a British NGO—is now more than 100,000.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.6 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Mixed Signals on US Troops in Iraq

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Gareth Porter - Jul. 16 (News Analysis) - Anti-American Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has stood in the way of proposals to extend U.S. troop presence in Iraq beyond the end of this year, and some of his backers have attacked American forces as a reminder of the looming deadline. But Gareth Porter reported for Inter Press Service that Sadr may be sending mixed signals.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

U.S. Wars Leave 225,000 Dead, Cost $4.4 Trillion: Study

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Agence France-Presse - Jul. 02 (News Report) - U.S. wars launched since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have left 225,000 dead and cost up to $4.4 trillion, according to a new study by university researchers. The study published by Brown University this week focused on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and counter-terrorism campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen, which came in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

PTSD Affecting U.S. Soldiers More Than British

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Miller-McCune - By Michael Scott Moore - Jun. 23 (Research) - Combat stress is still a murky and sometimes taboo element of soldiering, but one of the strangest discoveries is that the strain isn’t evenly spread among vets from different countries. For example: A far higher percentage of American soldiers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder after combat in Iraq and Afghanistan than British soldiers do.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Former CIA Agent Glenn Carle Reveals Bush Admin Effort to Smear War Critic Juan Cole

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jun. 22 (News Report) - Former top CIA counterterrorism officer Glenn Carle has revealed the Bush administration sought damaging personal information on Juan Cole, an academic and prominent critic of the Iraq war, in an attempt to discredit him. Carle says the Bush White House made at least two requests for intelligence about Cole, whose blog "Informed Comment" rose to prominence after the Iraq invasion. Carle refused to carry out the request. In a joint interview, Carle and Cole join us to discuss the explosive revelation and why Cole is now calling for a congressional investigation. "I think I was targeted because this was a propagandistic administration … full of people who thought they could pull the wool over the American people’s eyes," says Cole.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Iraq hunting $17 billion missing after U.S. invasion

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Reuters - By Waleed Ibrahim - Jun. 19 (Breaking News) - Iraq's parliament is chasing about $17 billion of Iraqi oil money it says was stolen after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and has asked the United Nations for help to track it down.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Missing Iraq money may have been stolen, auditors say

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Paul Richter - Jun. 13 (News) - U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion, sent by the planeload in cash and intended for Iraq's reconstruction after the start of the war.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer