Category: Iraq

What is NATO’s New Mission in Iraq? By Salman Rafi Sheikh

2 Comments

20 January 2019 — New Eastern Outlook

The newly launched ‘NATO Mission in Iraq’ has a clear geo-political underpinning to it which aims to disturb the delicate edifice of peace that Russia, Turkey and Iran have been building for last two years or so. Although the new mission has been announced at a time when the US president has already announced a potential withdrawal of US troops from Syria, the new mission rather explains the counter-narrative of ‘no policy change’ that the various US officials have been building ever since Trump’s announcement of troop withdrawal. The new NATO Mission in Iraq is thus a plan according to which the US is going to shift its base of regional geo-politics from Syria, where the Russians, Turks and Iranians have already established their own stronghold, to Iraq, a country that has still not recovered from the damages inflicted on it first by the US invasion and then by ISIS. Iraq, accordingly, is going to become the new theatre of regional geo-politics.

Continue reading →

Is Trump Starting His Own War, Finally? By Melkulangara BHADRAKUMAR

Leave a comment

12 January 2019 — Strategic Culture Foundation

At the end of last year, on December 5, Baghdad was the venue of an intriguing conference when the recently established NATO Mission in Iraq (NMI) conducted an “introduction Event” at the Iraqi Ministry of Defence. According to the press release issued by the NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command in Naples, the conference was attended by “key leaders from across the Iraqi Security and Defence sector, including the Iraqi Chief of Staff, General Othman Al-Ghanimi” and by representatives coming from various international partner missions, organizations and entities such as the Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, the European Union Advise Mission in Iraq, the United Nations Assistance Mission Iraq, and the Office of Security Cooperation-Iraq and Diplomatic Missions.

Continue reading →

Trump’s Syrian Gambit Again Exposes Australian Foreign Policy Bankruptcy By James O’Neill

2 Comments

30 December 2018 — New Eastern Outlook

The decision by US President Donald Trump to withdraw US troops from Syria clearly caught Australian political, military and intelligence leaders by surprise. Despite claims of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that Australia and the US were “joined at the hip” the link is clearly metaphorical and does not extend to actual consultation.

Continue reading →

Trump stages visit to Iraq amid mounting crisis over Syria troop withdrawal By Bill Van Auken

Leave a comment

27 December 2018 — WSWS

US President Donald Trump staged a surprise visit to an American airbase in western Iraq Wednesday in what appeared to be an attempt to both mollify intense criticism within the military-intelligence apparatus of his decision to pull troops out of Syria, and to reassert his commitment to continued US military operations in the Middle East.

Continue reading →

'Shock and Awe' Celebrates Reporters Who Got It Right By Gunar Olsen

Leave a comment

28 July 2018 — FAIR

It’s now conventional for corporate media pundits and centrist politicians to acknowledge that their support for the US invasion of Iraq was misguided. Most excuse their pro-war record on the grounds that there was no available alternate narrative to the Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. How could they have known any better?

But as FAIR has long noted (Extra!, 3–4/03), this “we were all wrong” narrative doesn’t hold up. There were, in fact, a few corporate journalists who got it right when everyone else was getting it wrong.

Continue reading →

‘Shock and Awe’ Celebrates Reporters Who Got It Right By Gunar Olsen

Leave a comment

28 July 2018 — FAIR

It’s now conventional for corporate media pundits and centrist politicians to acknowledge that their support for the US invasion of Iraq was misguided. Most excuse their pro-war record on the grounds that there was no available alternate narrative to the Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. How could they have known any better?

But as FAIR has long noted (Extra!, 3–4/03), this “we were all wrong” narrative doesn’t hold up. There were, in fact, a few corporate journalists who got it right when everyone else was getting it wrong.

Continue reading →

Iraq, Massacre of a Country: “A War on Terror” when you are the Terrorist

Leave a comment

9 April 2018 — Global Research

Iraq, Massacre of a Country: “A War on Terror” when you are the Terrorist

By Felicity Arbuthnot, April 09, 2018

“How can you make a war on terror when you are actually the terrorist?” (Unknown.)

America’s 2003 assault on Iraq, already devastated by thirteen years of sanctions, infrastructure destruction consequently unrepaired from the 1991 bombing was, in the ridiculous annals of names the US military gives to their slaughter-fests, entitled: “Shock and Awe.” Continue reading →

Plagiarism and Iraq’s WMDs: British Intelligence Iraq Dossier Relied on Recycled Academic Article By Glen Rangwala

Leave a comment

23 March 2018 — Global Research

Below is the text presented by Dr. Rangwala to the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs 

It was presented in June 2003, in the wake of the invasion and occupation of Iraq

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmfaff/813/813we18.htm

Continue reading →

“The Sloppy Dossier”: Plagiarism and “Fake Intelligence” Used to Justify the War on Iraq: Copied and Pasted from the Internet into an “Official” British Intel Report By Glen Rangwala and Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Leave a comment

23 March 2018 — Global Research

Fifteen years ago, the illegal invasion of Iraq. March  21, 2003.

While the Chilcot Inquiry report was released in 2016, it is worth noting that most of the dodgy dossier evidence pertaining to Tony Blair and George W, Bush was available before the onset of the Iraq war in March 2003.  

Dr. Glen Rangwala

Damning evidence refuting Colin Powell’s  official intelligence report was revealed by Cambridge Lecturer Dr. Glen Rangwala on  Britain’s Channel 4 TV on February 6, 2003, on the day following Secretary of State Colin Powell’s historic Iraq WMD presentation to the UN Security Council:  Continue reading →

Cost of UK air and drone strikes in Iraq and Syria reach £1.75 billion By Chris Cole

Leave a comment

26 February 2018 — Drone Wars

Analysis of figures released in response to Freedom of Information requests by Drone Wars UK indicate that the UK has spent £1.75bn on armed air missions against ISIS in Iraq and Syria since August 2014. It should be noted that the overall cost of UK military operations in Iraq and Syria will be much higher.

Continue reading →

The Russian meddling fraud: Weapons of mass destruction revisited

Leave a comment

20 February 2018 — WSWS

Fifteen years ago, on February 5, 2003, against the backdrop of worldwide mass demonstrations in opposition to the impending invasion of Iraq, then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell argued before the United Nations that the government of Saddam Hussein was rapidly stockpiling “weapons of mass destruction,” which Iraq, together with Al Qaeda, was planning to use against the United States.

Continue reading →