USA Invasion Of Iraq: War – March 19, 2003 | Nine Years Later President Obama Ends the Iraq War (VIDEOS)

3CHICSPOLITICO

Posted on March 19, 2012by Ametia

NINE years ago today, March 19, 2003, President George W. Bush and the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA declared “WAR on Terror” and invaded Iraq.

December 18, 2011 President Obama speaks in Fort Bragg about the last troops getting out of Iraq.

3 Chics wanted to HIGHLIGHT this significant anniversary, because, we know the MEDIA isn’t going to do it.

VIDEOS AND MORE HERE

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Iran Nuclear Threat Brings No U.S. Enthusiasm For A Military Strike

Huff Post- Posted: 2/15/12 | Updated: 2/15/12

By- David Wood

WASHINGTON —  The threat of punishing U.S. military strikes underlies Washington’s campaign to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. But there is no enthusiasm evident within the U.S. military for a war many believe would be messy, bloody, unpredictable and ultimately inconclusive.

Seeking to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, President Barack Obama has focused on coordinating international economic pressure against Iran and moved to strengthen economic sanctions just last week. But he warned in the Jan. 24 State of the Union address, “Let there be no doubt: American is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal.”

It’s a truism of diplomacy to never to make a threat that you’re not prepared to carry out. There is no doubt that if ordered, the U.S. military would launch devastating attacks against Iran. Whether such strikes would come along with or instead of Israeli attacks, tactical planning is already under way, as is done routinely for a variety of potential military operations the Pentagon might be ordered to carry out, senior officers said.

“If called upon, I have no doubt that the armed forces of the United States will deal with whatever contingencies might unfold there,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said last week when asked about a possible military confrontation with Iran.

But Gen. Martin Dempsey, the crusty Army general who heads the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told National Journal last month that a war with Iran “would be really destabilizing … I personally believe that we should be in the business of deterring [war] as a first priority,” he said.

The Joint Chiefs are hardly a bunch of shrinking violets. Dempsey commanded the 1st Armored Division for 14 months of hard combat in Iraq and served there another two years directing the training of Iraqi security forces.

MORE HERE

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Tony Blair to face ‘scathing criticism’ from Chilcot inquiry into Iraq war

Tony Blair will face scathing criticism from Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry over his role in the Iraq war, according to reports.

The former prime minister will be held to account for major failings in the war in which 179 British soldiers, 3,500 US soldiers and more than 100,000 Iraqis died, it has been alleged.

He will be criticised for claiming it was ‘beyond doubt’ Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, the Mail on Sunday reported.

Sir John Chilcot’s findings will also criticise Mr Blair for failing to admit to a ‘secret pledge’, allegedly made with former US president George Bush, that he would go to war.

In the report, due out this autumn, Mr Blair will also come under fire for failing to plan to avoid the post-war chaos in Iraq.

Former foreign secretary Jack Straw and ex-Downing Street spin doctor Alastair Campbell are also expected to be criticised.

Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/870992-tony-blair-to-face-scathing-criticism-from-chilcot-inquiry-into-iraq-war#ixzz1TllBQxxz

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Christ Rice: Ca$hing in on Hard Times

Click pic to enlarge

A coleague  just resently recieved this in the mail from the future CEO of this company. We’re excited about moving forward on this and anticipate putting food on the table on a global basis. and as far as promotion goes, all options will be on the table.

When the times get tough, the Oregonians get tougher. This is a sure candidate for a small business loan because it will involve the defense industries that are already in place in the Middle East. They should be able to supply plenty of camel meat with Monsanto’s help. With the genes of rabbits, and a little genetic engineering, there should be plenty of Dromedaries to go around. Monsanto is probably already working on some drought and radiation resistant strains of wadi brush to feed them.

This is our call, fellow Oregonians. We can form cottage industries in all aspects of  this unique food production, from the field to the final market. We will need experts in processing, packaging, advertizing, and delivery of the products. Shouldn’t take long to get this off the ground, with all the rain lately, we might still get in a crop of rice. There will be more on this after our first board meeting. We will also, no doubt, need some executives …G:

hat tip to george

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Why Even Have “Memorial Day?”

I’m going to start this post out properly. This is a day meant to honor fallen veterans, so let’s do that first.

This is a list of United States Armed Forces members killed in Afghanistan in the month of May, 2011.

Army Pfc. William S. Blevins

Army Pvt. Andrew M. Krippner

Army Pvt. Thomas C. Allers

Army Sgt. 1st Class Clifford E. Beattie

Army Pfc. Ramon Mora Jr.

Army Cpl. Brandon M. Kirton

Army Staff Sgt. David D. Self

Army Spc. Bradley L. Melton

Army Pvt. Lamarol J. Tucker

Army Pvt. Cheizray Pressley

Army Spc. Brian D. Riley Jr.

Army Sgt. Robert C. Schlote

Army Sgt. Amaru Aguilar

Marine Lt. Col. Benjamin J. Palmer

Marine Sgt. Kevin B. Balduf

Army 1st Lt. Demetrius M. Frison

Army Sgt. Ken K. Hermogino

Army Spc. Riley S. Spaulding

Army Sgt. Kevin W. White

Does this bother you? It makes me sick to my stomach. It bothers me even more that we officially crossed the 6,000 dead mark in May of 2011 (Iraq and Afghanistan combined) and nobody noticed. We officially stand at 6,014; I do not have the latest death listed here because the name of the latest dead soldier has not been released, as far as I can tell.

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Politicking In The Mos Eisley Cantina

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Monday 25 April 2011

by: Davidson Loehr, Truthout

Our economic and political mess became more clear once I realized that most of the important political deals take place in the Mos Eisley Cantina. You know the scene from the first “Star Wars” movie in 1977: a dark, smoky bar located somewhere in a twilight zone: a liminal and lawless hideout where the ethically reprehensible is the norm.

We know our elected officials don’t do their political work up in the daylight of our world, because none of the big ticket laws they pass have anything to do with what the majority of our citizens want. There are differences between the two political parties, but they’re differences of degree, not kind. How can it be that the people we elected to serve us routinely sell us out to the highest bidders?

The majority of US citizens are against our illegal invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, and our bombing of Libya to remove Qaddafi, the brutal dictator we have coddled for decades. And a majority of our citizens would also be against our other four military operations – in Yemen, Pakistan, the Horn of Africa and Columbia – if they knew about them. Most of us were not fooled when President Obama said he unilaterally authorized bombing Libya because his heart bled for the half million citizens Qaddafi will probably kill – though for the past week, it seems we’ve stopped caring. If our hearts really bled that easily for the slaughter of innocents, why didn’t we invade countries that had no oil? And if we think the death of a half million innocents is repugnant enough to demand preventative action, what about President Clinton’s sanctions against Iraq, which caused the deaths of half a million Iraqi children? When asked on US television if she [Madeline Albright, US secretary of state] thought that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children from sanctions in Iraq was a price worth paying, Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.” (See here.)

The majority of our citizens want our soldiers brought home now. As John Kerry said to our House Foreign Relations Committee in 1970 about the ongoing Vietnam War: “How do you ask someone to be the last person to die for a mistake?” Today’s answer seems to be that members of Congress do it without much genuine emotion, because wars – whether right or wrong – are immensely profitable for some of the corporations whose lobbyists woo our representatives in dark places. And few if any of their children are going to be in those wars.

MORE HERE

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Militarized Conservatism and End(s) of Higher Education

Militarized Conservatism and End(s) of Higher Education

Tuesday 5 April 2011

by: Henry A. Giroux, Truthout

The Pathologies of War

There can be little doubt that America has become a permanent warfare state.(1) Not only is it waging a war in three countries, but its investment in military power is nearly as much as all of the military budgets of every other country in the world combined. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute states, “The USA’s military spending accounted for 43 per cent of the world total in 2009, followed by China with 6.6 per cent; France with 4.3 per cent and the UK with 3.8 per cent.”(2) The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost Americans a staggering $1 trillion to date, second only in inflation-adjusted dollars to the $4 trillion price tag for World War II.”(3) Pentagon spending for 2011 will be more than $700 billion. To make matters worse, as Tom Englehardt points out, “We dominate the global arms trade, monopolizing almost 70% of the arms business in 2008, with Italy coming in a vanishingly distant second. We put more money into the funding of war, our armed forces and the weaponry of war than the next 25 countries combined (and that’s without even including Iraq and Afghan war costs).”(4) Moreover, the United States maintains a massive ring of military bases and global presence around the world, occupying “over 560 bases and other sites abroad”(5) and deploying over 300,000 troops abroad, “even as our country finds itself incapable of paying for basic services.”(6) In spite of how much military expenditures drain much-needed funds from social programs, the military budget is rarely debated in Congress or a serious object of discussion among the public. Rather than avoid squandering resources and human lives on foreign wars, we avoid “the realities and costs of war.”(7)

War is now normalized even as the United States becomes more militarized, moving closer to a national security state at home and an imperial/policing power abroad. Military historian Andrew Bacevich is right in arguing, “The misleadingly named Department of Defense serves in fact as a Ministry of Global Policing.”(8) War has become central to American character, but what is often unacknowledged is that its perpetual wars abroad are increasingly matched by a number of wars being waged on the domestic front. Such a disconnect becomes clear in the refusal of politicians, anti-public intellectuals and the general public to acknowledge how the federal deficit has been run up by our military adventures. As Frank Rich argues, “The cultural synergy between the heedless irresponsibility we practiced in Iraq and our economic collapse at home could not be more naked. The housing bubble, inflated by no-money-down mortgage holders on Main Street and high-risk gamblers on Wall Street, was fueled by the same greedy disregard for the laws of fiscal gravity that governed the fight-now-play later war[s]” in Iraq and Afghanistan and more recently in Libya.(9) Similarly, as the spirit of a hyper-militarized America bleeds into everyday life, politics increasingly becomes an extension of war, and right-wing, liberal and conservative politicians eagerly embrace a militaristic approach to policy and the need to cleanse the social order of any institution, mode of dissent, social group and public sphere willing to question its state of permanent war and its militarized and unchecked embrace of economic Darwinism. These foreign and domestic wars are not unrelated, given that they are waged in the interests of right-wing militarists, neoconservatives, liberals and corporate moguls – all of whom have a political and economic stake in such military incursions abroad and wars at home. Wars make the economic elite even richer just as they undermine civil liberties, public services and public dissent. A hyper-militarized America has not only fueled violations of executive power, it has also promoted armed conflicts that are directly related to an economic crisis that has produced a wave of political extremism in the United States, while furthering the rise of a punishing state that places the burdens of the current economic crisis on the backs of the poor. We seem to have no trouble in spending money for the production of organized violence designed to kill people, but we have little money to spend on education, health care, or other serious social problems facing the United States. As one educational journal pointed out:

This juxtaposition of robust war spending and inadequate support for education highlights the moral bankruptcy of political and economic leaders who seem to find endless piles of money to kill people abroad but not much to educate them at home. And, of course, the relationship is plain: The more dollars spent on war, the fewer available for human needs – whether alternative energy, food stamps, in-home elder care, public libraries or keeping teachers in their classrooms.(10)

MORE HERE

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Wikileaks: Top Brass warns of putting troops & civilians in “harms way”

Wikileaks recieved excellent coverage on CNN last night, including inteviews with Daniel Elsberg, Pentagon Papers, John Sloboda, the Iraq Body Count’s co-founder, and Phil Shiner of the U.K.-based Public Interest Lawyers.

John Sloboda, the Iraq Body Count’s co-founder, told reporters that the names of civilian victims are among the details included in the documents. “Almost every log tells a story, and far too often, this is a previously unknown story of human suffering and death,” he said. Sloboda said the meticulous records kept by the U.S. military and published by WikiLeaks will be a valuable tool in investigating civilian casualties in the Iraq war.

Phil Shiner of the U.K.-based Public Interest Lawyers, a firm specializing in international and human rights law, told reporters that some information in the documents would be the subject of legal action in the United Kingdom. He alleged the documents revealed details about unlawful killings of civilians, indiscriminate attacks against them and unjustified use of lethal force.
“There must now be a judicial inquiry into all these deaths,” he said.

Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, responsible for leaking the U.S. government’s top secret study on the Vietnam War in 1971, attended the press conference and praised Assange.
“I want very much to congratulate all of you who are mining this material to learn what we could have learned if it had come out earlier,” Ellsberg said.

Group: Investigate reports of torture in Iraq WikiLeaks documents

By the CNN Wire Staff
October 23, 2010 10:50 p.m. EDT

London, England (CNN) — Human Rights Watch on Saturday urged the Iraqi and U.S. governments to launch investigations into reports of torture and detainee abuse after the WikiLeaks website published thousands of classified military documents detailing the war in Iraq.

The release includes evidence that Iraqi security forces tortured and killed prisoners, the group said. Human Rights Watch called on the Iraqi government to prosecute those responsible.

It also urged the U.S. government to look into whether its forces broke international law by transferring thousands of detainees to Iraqi custody despite what Human Rights Watch called “the clear risk of torture.”

“These new disclosures show torture at the hands of Iraqi security forces is rampant and goes completely unpunished,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s clear that U.S. authorities knew of systematic abuse by Iraqi troops, but they handed thousands of detainees over anyway.”

Also Saturday, anti-war activists said at a news conference that the WikiLeaks release revealed that 15,000 more Iraqi civilians died during the conflict than previously thought.

source:

CNN
Wikileaks
Democracy Now

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Biden Visits Iraq To Mark Formal End To U.S. Combat

Biden Visits Iraq To Mark Formal End To U.S. Combat

LARA JAKES and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA | 08/30/10 11:22 AM |

BAGHDAD — Vice President Joe Biden returned to Iraq Monday to mark this week’s formal end to U.S. combat operations and push the country’s leaders to end a six-month postelection stalemate blocking formation of a new government.

Wednesday’s ceremony will signal a shift toward a greater U.S. diplomatic role as the military mission dwindles seven years after the American invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Underscoring the shift, officials said Biden will make a new appeal to Iraqi leaders, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, to end the political deadlock and seat a new government. March 7 parliamentary elections left Iraq without a clear winner, and insurgents have exploited the uncertainty to hammer Iraqi security forces in near-daily attacks.

Biden and al-Maliki will meet Tuesday morning “to discuss the political situation and withdrawal, and Iraqis taking over responsibility for security,” the prime minister’s adviser, Yasin Majeed, told The Associated Press.

It was the vice president’s sixth trip to Iraq since he was elected and, officially, he came to preside over a military change-of-command ceremony. On Wednesday, Gen. Ray Odierno ends more than five years in Iraq and hands over the reins as commander of U.S. forces here to Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin. Austin also has served extensively in Iraq, most recently as commander of troop operations in 2008-09.

But the Sept. 1 ceremony also marks the start of the so-called “Operation New Dawn” – symbolizing the beginning of the end of the American military’s mission in Iraq since invading in March 2003.

Just under 50,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq – down from a peak of nearly 170,000 at the height of the 2007 military surge that is credited with turning the tide in Iraq as it teetered on the brink of civil war. Additionally, U.S. troops no longer will be allowed to go on combat missions unless requested and accompanied by Iraqi forces.

MORE HERE

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The US isn’t leaving Iraq, it’s rebranding the occupation

Obama says withdrawal is on schedule, but renaming or outsourcing combat troops won’t give Iraqis back their country

Seumas Milne, The Guardian/UK, August 5, 2010

For most people in Britain and the US, Iraq is already history. Afghanistan has long since taken the lion’s share of media attention, as the death toll of Nato troops rises inexorably. Controversy about Iraq is now almost entirely focused on the original decision to invade: what’s happening there in 2010 barely registers.

That will have been reinforced by Barack Obama’s declaration this week that US combat troops are to be withdrawn from Iraq at the end of the month “as promised and on schedule”. For much of the British and American press, this was the real thing: headlines hailed the “end” of the war and reported “US troops to leave Iraq”.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The US isn’t withdrawing from Iraq at all – it’s rebranding the occupation. Just as George Bush’s war on terror was retitled “overseas contingency operations” when Obama became president, US “combat operations” will be rebadged from next month as “stability operations”.

Continues >>

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