Marking the twentieth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, The New York Times ran a feature-length article titled, “20 Years On, a Question Lingers About Iraq: Why Did the U.S. Invade?” The piece acknowledges some harsh realities about the war, while dodging questions about its legality and the imperial motivations that fueled it. This is par for the course for the paper of record, which has a decades-long history of sidestepping damning questions about the war. More

The U.S. rush to war against Iraq 20 years ago marked the worst strategic decision of any U.S. president in history, and the worst intelligence scandal as well.  But the New York Times and the Washington Post would have you believe that the lack of “planning and staffing” was central to our failure.  Neither newspaper mentioned the long series of intelligence lies and distortions that marked the run-up to the war nor did they refer to the obvious war crimes that were committed with the support of the White House, the Department of Justice, and the Central Intelligence Agency. More

One of the problems with commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War is that the Iraq War didn’t start 20 years ago. It had been going on for more than a decade before Shock and Awe. First there was Pappy’s Bush’s invasion, followed by Bill Clinton bombing Iraq once every three days of his 8-year term and ratcheting down a sanctions regime that squeezed the life out of more than one million Iraqis, nearly all civilians. Clinton found that there more efficient and secret ways to kill. Pretending that the Iraq War started with Bush and Cheney is politically convenient for liberals and Democrats, even though many of them voted for the Bush’s regime change war (before they voted against it, in Kerry’s words). Even Bernie Sanders supported the Iraq War when Clinton was doing the bombing and imposing starvation on children, voting three times for the overthrow of Saddam as the “independent socialist member of Congress from Vermont. More

Biden might well want to rescue his reputation by ending the Assange prosecution travesty. What happens if Biden does nothing? Assange stays in jail, and Biden goes down in history as a president who muzzled a free press. If he does extradite, history’s verdict will be even harsher – it will portray him as the rabid executioner of freedom of expression. But if Biden ends the case, he gets credit for his efforts to promote the first amendment, something his predecessor hypocritically trashed; and by halting this prosecution once and for all, Biden may well secure a place in the ages as a free speech champion. Does he care? More