Iraq and Afghan War Inquiries

UK ordered to hold inquests into civilian deaths during Iraq war

2013-05-24T18:23:00.000-04:00

High court rules that up to 161 allegedly unlawful killings by British military should be subject of coroner-style hearings

24 May 2013 - A series of public inquests should be held into the deaths of civilians who are alleged to have been killed unlawfully by the British military following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the high court has ruled.
In a ground-breaking judgment that could have an impact on how the British military is able to conduct operations among civilians in the future, the court ruled on Friday that up to 161 deaths should be the subject of hearings modelled upon coroners' inquests.
In practice, a series of hearings – possibly amounting to more than 100 – are likely to be held as a result of the judgment, which follows a three-year legal battle on behalf of the Iraqis' families. read more>>>

New Light Shed on CIA Rendition Programme

2013-05-23T10:01:00.000-04:00

New light shed on US government's extraordinary rendition programme

Online project uncovers details of way in which CIA carried out kidnaps and secret detentions following September 11 attacks
22 May 2013 - A groundbreaking research project has mapped the US government's global kidnap and secret detention programme, shedding unprecedented light on one of the most controversial secret operations of recent years.
The interactive online project – by two British universities and a legal charity – has uncovered new details of the way in which the so-called extraordinary rendition programme operated for years in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and the techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to avoid detection in the face of growing public concern.
The Rendition Project website is intended to serve as a research tool that not only collates all the publicly available data about the programme, but can continue to be updated as further information comes to light. read more>>>

What??? 'Now' They Want to Know About the Missing War Records???

2013-05-20T17:53:00.002-04:00

Are they seeking out another scandal and congressional distraction from what they aren't doing, their jobs!?

ProPublica and The Seattle Times Nov. 9, 2012 - Lost to History: Missing War Records Complicate Benefit Claims by Iraq, Afghanistan Veterans

DeLara's case is part of a much larger problem that has plagued the U.S. military since the 1990 Gulf War: a failure to create and maintain the types of field records that have documented American conflicts since the Revolutionary War.

Talk to daddy bush and his son, which is what you should have done long ago instead of rubber stamping these wars of choice!! How can voters think these they've hired have the intellect to be representatives of them let alone the country! Once in they run from the jobs descriptions hired to perform, blaming everyone but themselves, they and the staffs they hire, especially this Miller as majority leader of the House Veterans Affairs Committee!!

Congressmen to Hagel: Where Are the Missing War Records?

May 20, 2013 - The top Republican and Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs are demanding more information from defense Secretary Chuck Hagel about lost Army field records from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the subject of a ProPublica investigation last year.
In an unusually detailed letter sent Friday to Hagel, Reps. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., and Michael Michaud, D-Maine, said the Defense Department’s response to an earlier request about why records are missing — and what the military is doing about it — didn’t go far enough.
“Congress must have a clear understanding of the extent of the lost records in order to safeguard the best interests of our service members and veterans,’’ the letter says. read more>>>

"If military action is worth our troops’ blood, it should be worth our treasure, too — not just in the abstract, but in the form of a specific ante by every American." -Andrew Rosenthal 10 Feb. 2013

Meanwhile as they attack Gen Shinseki why aren't they following through with the early reports about Veterans Administration records while under the previous bush administration and these two present wars:

Army Times Oct. 16, 2008 - VA claims found in piles to be shredded

CNN iReport October 25, 2008 - House Vets' Committee To Probe VA Shredder Scandal

Tampa Bay Times Oct 27, 2008 - Hundreds of VA documents improperly shredded, review finds {Tampa Bay Times search page and series of articles}

CBS News February 11, 2009 - Veterans' Claims Found in Shredder Bins

“Why in 2009 were we still using paper?” VA Assistant Secretary Tommy Sowers “When we came in, there was no plan to change that; we’ve been operating on a six month wait for over a decade.” 27 March 2013

Guantanamo Bay: Inside a Legal Nightmare

2013-05-14T18:04:00.000-04:00

Author Jess Bravin explores the military prison's tangled history in new book 'The Terror Courts'

May 13, 2013 - As the hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay enters its fourth month and pressure to close the prison mounts, it's easy to forget that Guantanamo is not only a detention facility but also the site of a unique legal experiment that has no direct precedent in U.S. history. At times, it can be difficult to keep track of the tangled mess of authorities claimed, cases appealed and lives destroyed with Guantanamo at its center. Those looking for clarity on these issues have a new, important resource in author Jess Bravin's book "The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay", which tells the story of the evolution of Guantanamo's legal universe in captivating detail, and provides the reader with a clear picture of just how we arrived at this bizarre moment in our history. read more>>>

She Ran a Secret CIA Prison in Thailand

2013-05-13T09:13:00.001-04:00

Woman who ran secret prison bypassed as top spy

May 7, 2013 - One of the CIA's highest-ranking women, who once ran a CIA prison in Thailand where terror suspects were waterboarded, has been bypassed for the agency's top spy job.
The officer, who remains undercover, was a finalist for the job and would have become the first female chief of clandestine operations.
As one of the last remaining senior CIA officers who held leadership roles in the agency's interrogation and detention program, however, she was a politically risky pick. read more>>>

UK human rights record under pressure from UN torture panel

2013-05-10T08:57:00.000-04:00

Rendition, torture and mistreatment of prisoners tackled by UN in Geneva with UK's 'non-answers' singled out for criticism

9 May 2013 - The UK has faced tough questions this week from a UN panel closely scrutinising the UK's human rights record, following a series of disclosures about involvement in so-called extraordinary rendition and torture in the years following the 9/11 attacks.
Over two days in Geneva, the UK delegation went before the UN committee which monitors the implementation of the international convention against torture to face hundreds of questions covering a range of issues including: complicity in abusive interrogation; renditions to Libya; the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq; and the stalled official British inquiry into the treatment of terrorism suspects.
Almost every state faces regular examination by the UN's Committee against Torture, although the UK's appearance has been delayed for a number of years following its late submission of documentary evidence. read more>>>

CCR Goes to Court to Argue Abu Ghraib Crimes

2013-05-09T14:01:00.000-04:00

May 9 2013 - Tomorrow, May 10th, CCR {Center for Constitutional Rights} has an important oral argument in our case, Al Shimari v. CACI, against private military contractor CACI for war crimes - including torture - at Abu Ghraib, where CACI provided interrogation services. CCR and our co-counsel represent four survivors of torture, all of whom were held at the so-called “hard site” in Abu Ghraib.

Seeking Corporate Accountability for Crimes at Abu Ghraib

Flowers at the entrance to a cell block at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, where inmates were tortured while under American control, on Saturday, February 21, 2009. (Photo: Jehad Nga / The New York Times)
29 April 2013 - Nine years ago today, photos from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were released to the public. The images are indelible: Groups of prisoners, naked except for hoods covering their heads are piled on top of one another; soldiers grin and give thumbs-up to the camera; one holds a naked prisoner on a leash. In the most infamous photo, a hooded man balances on a cardboard box, arms outstretched, electrical wires attached to his hands.
Lesser known than the torture at Abu Ghraib is who was running it. As military investigations and court martial records have shown, private civilian contractors expressly instructed soldiers and civilian interpreters to "soften up" prisoners - code for torture and abuse. While some of the low-level soldiers involved in the abuses were punished, nine years after the notorious photos exposed these crimes to the world, the civilian interrogators who ordered the abuse have not been prosecuted. They have not even been investigated. Instead, the companies that supplied the interrogators and interpreters continued to reap billions in federal contracts and saw their stock prices rise. read more>>>

Iraq's 'Trivial Amount of Weapons of Mass Destruction' (WMD)

2013-05-07T10:17:00.001-04:00

Blair knew Libya bigger threat than Iraq WMDs

Apr 8, 2013 - Hitherto unseen evidence given to the Chilcot Inquiry by British intelligence has revealed that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was told that Iraq had, at most, only a trivial amount of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and that Libya was in this respect a far greater threat.
Intelligence officers have disclosed that just the day before Blair went to visit President George W. Bush in April 2002, he accepted this but returned a "changed man" and subsequently ordered the production of dossiers to "find the intelligence" that he wanted to use to justify going to war. read more>>>

"Guantanamo, it's very, very illogical"

2013-05-06T15:17:00.000-04:00

Former Detainee Talks Of Desperation In Guantanamo Bay

May 04, 2013 - Omar Deghayes is one of hundreds of former detainees who have been released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay over the past several years.
Arrested in Pakistan in 2002, Deghayes, a Libyan citizen, was held as an enemy combatant until his release in December 2007. No charges were ever filed against him.
There are 166 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, . Some are now even being force-fed to keep them alive.
In his years as a detainee, Deghayes went on three hunger strikes. He tells Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin that the strikes were often prompted by something drastic that happened in the prison.
"If you're so angry and depressed, you just can't feel you want to eat food," he says. "That's how it starts." read more>>>

Guantánamo Prisoner's Memoirs

2013-05-05T14:40:00.000-04:00

Guantánamo Prisoner's Memoirs Offer Rare First-Person Account of Torture

04/30/2013 - A detailed and harrowing first-person narrative of a prisoner's experiences in Guantánamo is available to the public for the first time: Slate today published a three-part series of excerpts from The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi. The excerpts were culled from a manuscript hundreds of pages in length, which Slahi provided his attorneys, a pro bono team of ACLU and other lawyers. After being classified for years, Slahi's memoirs – of arrest, rendition, torture, and imprisonment without charge or trial – are finally seeing the light of day, albeit with some redactions.
The excerpts open at the U.S. Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, shortly before Slahi was sent to Guantánamo in August 2002. read more>>>

Iraq A Decade After

2013-05-02T14:14:00.001-04:00

War leaves lasting impact on healthcare

2 May 2013 (IRIN) - Of all the areas of Iraq’s development that were affected by the US-led invasion 10 years ago, healthcare has probably taken the biggest hit.
The impact of the 2003 invasion and subsequent conflict on Iraq’s healthcare system has been well-documented. (Check out consistent coverage of the health consequences of Iraq’s conflict by the Lancet medical journal here.) The conflict shattered Iraq's primary healthcare delivery, disease control and prevention services, and health research infrastructure. Attempts to resurrect Iraq's healthcare system remain hindered by a number of factors, including fragile national security and lack of utilities like water and electricity.
Much of the damage incurred in the first few years of the invasion continues to have an impact today. read more>>>

A decade after US-led forces toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, IRIN examines the impact of the occupation on basic living standards.

Australia's First Widow of the Iraq War Demands Inquiry

2013-05-02T09:23:00.001-04:00

Iraq war widow demands inquiry

April 27, 2013 - Australia's first service widow of the Iraq war has called for an inquiry into the nation's involvement in the 10-year conflict.
Kellie Merritt says Australian and American political leaders ''exaggerated, cherry-picked and manipulated'' intelligence to strengthen the case for invading Iraq in 2003.
Ms Merritt's husband, Flight Lieutenant Paul Pardoel, a former member of the RAAF, died along with nine others when their British RAF Hercules transport plane was shot down by insurgents over Iraq's Tigris River eight years ago.
Restating her calls for an inquiry into Australia's involvement in the invasion and subsequent war, Ms Merritt said lessons should be learnt from the death of her husband and other military personnel and civilians killed in Iraq. read more>>>

The Sisterhood's Hunt for Bin Laden

2013-05-02T07:16:00.000-04:00

Quickly abandoned main missions of why we sent our Military into that region after 9/11 with almost full support of the Country as the drums beat to invade Iraq, they continued the hunt in this mission!

The True Un-Hollywood Story of a Sisterhood's Hunt for Bin Laden

May 1, 2013 - The second anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death brings a revealing new account of what it took to get him. The HBO documentary "Manhunt" by filmmaker Greg Barker, based on the book by journalist Peter Bergen, joins a two-year blizzard of books and films, each purporting to tell the inside story of the hunt for the elusive terrorist and the al-Qaida network he built.
It's a vivid contrast to the Hollywoodized account in "Zero Dark Thirty," the controversial film by Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow. "Zero Dark Thirty" devotes its first third to re-enacting the interrogations of detainees, some using brutal methods like waterboarding, and turns over the last third on a heart-stopping dramatization of the SEAL raid on the Abbottabad compound. (The film strongly suggested that brutal interrogation of detainees produced the crucial links that nailed bin Laden.) Given short shrift was the painstaking, hard-to-dramatize work that linked the two. read more>>>

AIR DATE: May 1, 2013 - At the CIA, a 'Sisterhood' of Analysts Who Helped Find Bin Laden

SUMMARY Cindy Storer and Nada Bakos were part of a majority female team of CIA intelligence analysts -- dubbed "The Sisterhood" -- who contributed to the effort to locate Osama bin Laden. Margaret Warner talks with Storer and Bakos about their intensely detailed work and frustrations with having that work sometimes ignored or belittled. Transcript>>>

Watch A 'Sisterhood' of Analysts Who Helped Find Bin Laden on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

The Women Behind the 'Manhunt' for Osama Bin Laden

May 1, 2013 - Cindy Storer and Nada Bakos were working for the CIA when the airplanes struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. But the hunt for terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden didn't start that day. read more>>>

Trailer

bushco Iraq Propaganda 'revisionism' Set in Stone

2013-05-02T06:01:00.000-04:00

Bush spins Iraq decision in library exhibit

Rachel Maddow shares footage of the Iraq invasion portion of the Decision Points Theater exhibit in the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in which visitors are ostensibly.....

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

'Special kind of propaganda' at Bush library

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, (ret.), former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, talks with Rachel Maddow about the lies the Bush administration told to bring the U.S. into war in......

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Iraq and It's People 10 Years On

2013-04-22T14:44:00.001-04:00

Iraq 10 years on: Are the taps flowing?

22 April 2013 (IRIN) - For much of the past decade, Iraqis have cursed about two things: ‘maya’ and ‘kahraba’ - water and electricity.
These are more than petty complaints; they have become a benchmark by which Iraqis judge progress in their country. A recent survey by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) found that 42 percent of 2,000 Iraqis surveyed considered basic services - like water and electricity - among the top two concerns they want the current government to address.
In 2011, more than one-quarter of the population had access to water from the general network for less than two hours a day, and nearly half the population rated the quality of water services in their area as bad or very bad, according to the Iraq Knowledge Network (IKN), a survey of nearly 30,000 households conducted by the Ministry of Planning’s Central Statistics Organization, the Kurdistan Regional Statistics Office and the UN. read more>>>

Iraq 10 years on: Blistering black-outs

22 April 2013 (IRIN) - The electricity supply system in Iraq has suffered from decades of neglect and lack of new investment, according to the UN.
It has also suffered from previous wars: the Gulf War, for example, rendered all but two of Iraq’s 20 power-generating plants unoperational, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1991. Six months after the end of the war, Iraq had regained about two-thirds of its pre-war output, the report said, but a decade of sanctions made it difficult to replace spare parts and import supplies for repairs.
By 2003, the government had managed to provide acceptable levels of electricity supply to Baghdad, but other governorates received less than the capital. read more>>>

Iraq 10 years on: The humanitarian legacy

22 April 2013 (IRIN) - Ten years after US forces took over Iraq, opinions on the progress made are as polarized as ever.
On one side, the Iraqi and American governments argue, the gains have been significant.
“Despite all the problems of the past decade, the overwhelming majority of Iraqis agree that we are better off today than under Saddam’s brutal dictatorship,” Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki wrote in a 9 April opinion piece in the Washington Post, marking 10 years after the fall of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
Paul Wolfowitz, who served as the US Deputy Secretary of Defence between 2001 and 2005, wrote the same day in Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that given the hardships under Hussein, “it is remarkable that Iraq has done as well as it has thus far.”
Others are more circumspect in evaluating these gains, looking to the 1980s - under Hussein’s rule - as a time when Iraqi society was much further ahead. read more>>>

The Guantanamo Bay Hunger Strike

2013-04-22T08:55:00.000-04:00

Gitmo Has To Close!!!!

While it's bad enough that this country abandoned the main missions, with cheers from the majority, of why we sent our military into that region thus destroying another country and it's people and spreading the hatreds of our policies with our terror that now has reached to the younger generations, who were but little kids when it all started, Guantanamo is the Very Real Symbol of this Nations now reality. In All Our Names, who not only once prided itself as being a law abiding and human rights advocate of justice for all, leading and helping in writings of International Law, and condemning others, still doing same for their violations of, it's a rallying point for even more hatreds that build from same now long run policies set forth over a decade ago!!

Over half of Gitmo prisoners join hunger strike – military official

April 21, 2013 - The number of inmates taking part in the Guantanamo Bay hunger strike has reached 84, which is just over a half of the prison’s population, US military officials have stated, as reported by AP news agency.
The hunger strike in the infamous US detention center is steadily growing with 32 detainees joining other protesters refusing to eat in just the past few days.
A military spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Samuel House said that 16 of the 84 prisoners are being force-fed, while five have been hospitalized.
However, the lives of those hospitalized men are not under threat, the official assured in a statement. read more>>>

The Lost Briton of Guantanamo

2013-04-21T09:48:00.000-04:00

He's been cleared - but had a devastating secret about MI6 and the Iraq invasion which means he can never be freed

20 April 2013 - The last UK prisoner at America’s infamous terror jail camp at Guantanamo Bay is guarding a devastating secret: he witnessed the torture of another detainee in an Afghan interrogation unit which led to the crucial, bogus ‘intelligence’ that sparked Britain and America’s invasion of Iraq.
Shaker Aamer, 44, a father of five from Battersea, South London, has been a prisoner for more than 11 years even though he has never been charged – and has twice been cleared for freedom by the US.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that America wants to silence him permanently by saying he can only leave Guantanamo for Saudi Arabia, the country he left at the age of 17. But his lawyers say if he goes there he would be forbidden from speaking in public or seeing his British wife and children – and would end up in another jail. read more>>>

America’s Torture Years

2013-04-20T13:53:00.000-04:00

A detailed look at America’s torture years

Apr 20 2013 - For the past two years, I’ve been part of a bipartisan task force assembled by the Constitution Project to examine American detainee treatment policies since the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.
The 500-page book we have just published is the most comprehensive and detailed account yet available of what has been done in all our names at CIA black sites, Guantanamo and detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is based on public record information and dozens of interviews conducted in the United States and overseas.
The truth of what took place should shock everyone’s conscience.
Yes, we brutally tortured a whole lot of people. Yes, torture was approved at the very highest levels of our government. Yes, it was illegal. Yes, no one above flunky level has been accountable for any of it. Yes, torture appears not to have produced intelligence that saved lives. Yes, we at times tortured the wrong people. Yes, we don’t care. Yes, torture can never be justified, period. Yes, people who do the actual wet work pay a heavy price.
Yes, we don’t care.
An especially baffling part of America’s trip to the dark side was how the CIA’s secret rendition program made itself available to Libya’s dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. Many of the CIA’s prisoners were snatched abroad, bundled onto CIA jets and taken to black-site prisons for special treatment that was illegal in the U.S. read more>>>

Bush-era Torture 'Done in All Our Names'

2013-04-17T08:11:00.000-04:00

Bush-era torture use 'indisputable,' Guantanamo must close, task force finds

16 April 2013 - An independent task force issued a damning review of Bush-era interrogation practices on Tuesday, saying the highest U.S. officials bore ultimate responsibility for the "indisputable" use of torture, and it urged President Barack Obama to close the Guantanamo detention camp by the end of 2014.
In one of the most comprehensive studies of U.S. treatment of terrorism suspects, the panel concluded that never before had there been "the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody."
"It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture," the 11-member task force, assembled by the nonpartisan Constitution Project think tank, said in their 577-page report.

Constitution Project Report on Detainee Treatment Click on graphic to download full 577pdf Report

Or visit Constitution Project Report on Detainee Treatment Concludes U.S. Engaged in Torture to download individual sections of the report.

AIR DATE: April 16, 2013 Report Finds 'Indisputable' Proof That U.S. Tortured Detainees After 9/11

SUMMARY
After a two-year investigation, bipartisan legal research and advocacy group the Constitution Project released a report confirming that the United States engaged in torture after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Jeffrey Brown talks to two of the report authors, former congressman James Jones and retired Army Brig. Gen. David Irvine. Transcript>>>

Watch Report Finds Proof That U.S. Tortured Detainees After 9/11 on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

A cut from the above discussion and transcript, highlighting a point of spin in trying to justify the bushco damaging ideology:

JEFFREY BROWN: David Irvine, former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told the AP when the report came out that this report is -- quote -- "completely divorced from reality." The procedures were, in his words, "lawyered and lawyered again and lawyered again."
DAVID IRVINE: I think if anyone takes time to read the report, they will be overwhelmed by the volume of episodes where representatives of our government, our military brutally, brutally tortured many, many people, not just people who were among the worst of the worst, as they had been characterized, but often people who were guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The claim that this was lawyered to death is an interesting claim, because we have had years and years and decades of experience successfully interrogating prisoners in tactical and strategic interrogations. We have never had to rely on this kind of approach to get the information that we needed to get to protect the country.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, speaking of the information -- well, I'm sorry. Go ahead.
JAMES JONES: Well, I was just going to say the lawyering part is one of the criticisms we have.
In past wars, they say that the generals ran the war. The lawyers ran this war to a great extent. And the way -- by suspending the Geneva Conventions, which we have adhered to for years, by violating the Convention Against Torture, which President Reagan himself proposed and the Congress passed, and the lawyers tinkering with that in such a way that they didn't replace it with anything, and so the chain of command, the procedures that would have been in place were basically obliterated because of lawyering.

The Iraqi Woman Who Spoke to the World About War

2013-04-15T07:57:00.002-04:00

Baghdad blogger returns to mark war anniversary

April 12, 2013 - The Iraqi woman, known as ‘Riverbend’ has returned to the internet and written her first article on her weblog since October 2007, for what she says is “probably the last time.”
Writing to mark the ten year anniversary of the Iraq war, she is angry and despairing. Asking what have people learned over the last decade, she replies, “Lucky ones die a ‘normal’ death… A familiar death of cancer, or a heart-attack, or stroke. Unlucky ones have to be collected in bits and pieces. Their families trying to bury what can be salvaged and scraped off of streets that have seen so much blood, it is a wonder they are not red.” read more>>>

Earlier related post of Riverbends return.

Aussies Want Howard Tried as War Criminal

2013-04-14T18:38:00.000-04:00

Aussies call for trial of Iraq war criminals

Apr 14, 2013 - Australians remain remorseful over what they call the war crimes committed by the US-led forces, especially Australia in Iraq which have taken many lives and displaced a lot of people.
Despite anger from the public, the Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard recently stated he had no regrets in invading Iraq in 2003.
Despite Mr Howard’s beliefs, the US-led invasion has caused instability in the region and continuous loss of civilian lives. read more>>>

War News Radio from Swarthmore College

2013-04-14T07:10:00.000-04:00

10 Years Since Iraq

April 11th, 2013 - In this month’s show, we commemorate the 10 year anniversary of the war in Iraq through a look at the country’s past, present and future and the impact the U.S. invasion has had throughout. First, we reconnect with a member of War News Radio’s founding staff to re-examine a piece she produced in 2006. Next, we talk to four Iraqis living in Baghdad about their thoughts on the war and why it continues to linger. Then, we hear about a group stationed in Iraq to promote peace and human rights. Finally, we find out why the question of when the war began is almost as hard to answer as when it will end.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Forward Thinking

April 11th, 2013 - This month on War News Radio, “Forward Thinking”, we first discuss the future of Iraq in light of the ten year anniversary this past March. Then, we hear about a Philadelphia-based peace group protesting research on drone technology. Finally, we hear a Rwandan genocide survivor’s perspective on justice, forgiveness, and life in America.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Baghdad Burning: Riverbend Posts after Very Long Silence

2013-04-13T15:55:00.000-04:00

... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...

Ten Years On...

April 9, 2013 marks ten years since the fall of Baghdad. Ten years since the invasion. Since the lives of millions of Iraqis changed forever. It’s difficult to believe. It feels like only yesterday I was sharing day to day activities with the world. I feel obliged today to put my thoughts down on the blog once again, probably for the last time.
In 2003, we were counting our lives in days and weeks. Would we make it to next month? Would we make it through the summer? Some of us did and many of us didn't.
Back in 2003, one year seemed like a lifetime ahead. The idiots said, “Things will improve immediately.” The optimists were giving our occupiers a year, or two… The realists said, “Things won’t improve for at least five years.” And the pessimists? The pessimists said, “It will take ten years. It will take a decade.”
Looking back at the last ten years, what have our occupiers and their Iraqi governments given us in ten years? What have our puppets achieved in this last decade? What have we learned?
We learned a lot. read more>>>

Hopefully she will continue to update her life, a life rarely seen by many but lived by many others, with use of her blog, letting us follow her in writings, started back in the beginning of the destruction in terror of her country. She holds the ability to be brutally honest and understanding of the realities, to many have lost that as she points out. May you be safe Riverbend and some-day's find as peaceful for you've lived in many that have been brutal in what humans can and do do to each other, and for what!

They Got Their War of Hubris On the Credit Card, Still is, Both Wars!

2013-04-11T09:58:00.001-04:00

And quickly abandoning why we even sent our military into that Region and all the Missions of!

"If military action is worth our troops' blood, it should be worth our treasure, too; not just in the abstract, but in the form of a specific ante by every American." -Andrew Rosenthal 10 Feb. 2013

The time has come to pay the bill

11 April 2013 - As we come to the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, it’s a good time to look at the effects that the decisions made by the George W. Bush administration and the 107th Congress have had on America.
In a November 2011 opinion piece for Forbes Magazine, Bruce Bartlett, President Ronald Reagan’s former domestic policy adviser, said of Republican lawmakers, “They like starting wars and don’t like paying for them.”
He then goes on to eviscerate George Bush and the Republicans for refusing to raise taxes for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and instead choosing to cut taxes.
“Nothing is more important in the face of war than cutting taxes.” House Majority Leader Tom Delay said at the time.
What a departure from previous lawmakers and previous war policy. A sampling of statements by lawmakers in the past reflect this fact; read more>>>

Baghdad revisited,

2013-04-10T08:08:00.000-04:00

10 years after the fall of Saddam

09/04/2013 - Baghdad is a city ravaged by a decade of war and insurgent attacks, making the news for spates of violence. But for the city's 7 million inhabitants, it is where they work, go to the theatre, love and marry. FRANCE 24 takes a look at daily life in the capital.
Violence has profoundly changed the face of Baghdad. It was one of the most important capitals of the Middle East, as well as one of the richest in the region. Today, the Iraqi capital appears to be lacerated by concrete walls. Each district is fortified, partitioned by the police and the army. Checkpoints cause huge traffic jams, while heavily armed men make their way through snaking lines of vehicles equipped with explosive detectors.

Iraq has one of the largest security forces in the world; the Interior Ministry employs around 500,000 people. Every street corner offers a familiar sight of Kalashnikov-toting policemen in bulletproof vests monitoring the traffic from their armored Hummers. These weapons and walls lend Baghdad a post-apocalyptic atmosphere.
On the morning of March 19, 2013, residents of this sprawling city situated on the Tigris River were reminded about the necessity of this heavy security presence.
Al Qaeda is marking the tenth anniversary of the 2003 US invasion. read more>>>

A decade after Saddam Hussein's statue falls: A tale of two memories

April 9, 2013 - Americans will debate the wisdom or the folly of the war in Iraq. In a recent poll, opponents of the war outnumbered supporters 54 percent to 38 percent.
April 9, 2013 marks the tenth anniversary of one of the most symbolic moments in the Iraq War -- the fall of Saddam Hussein's statue in central Baghdad.
But the event is remembered very differently by two men who were present that day.
Three weeks into the war, Marine Sgt. Ed Chin got the order: Help the Iraqis celebrating in Baghdad's Firdos Square topple the statue of Saddam Hussein. read more>>>