By David Swanson
While George W. Bush is apparently proud of everything he’s ever done, Tony Blair came dangerously close to facing reality this weekend when he admitted there were “elements of truth” in the view that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the principle cause of the rise of ISIS (among other catastrophic results of that invasion).

By David Swanson, teleSUR 
The National Security Archive has posted several newly available documents one of them an account by Charles Duelfer of the search he led in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, with a staff of 1,700 and the resources of the U.S. military.

By David Swanson
Iraqis were attempting the nonviolent overthrow of their dictator prior to his violent overthrow by the United States in 2003. When U.S. troops began to ease up on their liberating and democracy-spreading in 2008, and during the Arab Spring of 2011 and the years that followed, nonviolent Iraqi protest movements grew again, working for change, including the overthrow of their new Green Zone dictator. He would eventually step down, but not before imprisoning, torturing, and murdering activists—with U.S. weapons, of course.

By David Swanson
Was the United States compelled to attack Afghanistan and Iraq by the events of 11 September 2001?  A key to answering that rather enormous question may lie in the secrets that the U.S. government is keeping about Saudi Arabia.

By David Swanson
(Article updated 31 Jan 2015)
This cable https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/GX44-47.pdf was submitted as evidence by the prosecution in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a trial in which Sterling was convicted on entirely circumstantial evidence of leaking to a reporter that the CIA had given nuclear weapons part plans (with flaws added) to Iran. The cable makes crystal clear that the CIA proposed to do the same with Iraq.

Brian Hayes, Fine Gael Dublin MEP, has been appointed as the Vice President of the European Parliament's Iraq Delegation.

By David Swanson
How did they imagine they'd get away with it, claiming that Iraq had vast stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and even nuclear weapons? Defectors had made clear the chemical and biological weapons (some of them provided by the United States) had been destroyed. Inspectors had searched almost every inch of Iraq and said they'd get to the last few inches if given a few more days. Iraq was screaming that it had no such weapons.

Bombing Islamic State forces is no answer to the sectarian violence sweeping across the Middle East, the Irish Anti-War Movement said in a statement today.

By Matthew Rothschild
In assessing President Obama’s latest escalation in Iraq, it’s worth asking a few basic questions, writes Matthew Rothschild, senior editor at Progressive.org.

Back In Iraq: We Only Want To Save You
By Danny Schechter
New York, New York: Welcome back to Iraq—complete with our ever present WMD's—Weapons of Mass deception
Suddenly, the country we never wanted to have to think about again is back in the news and on our military agenda. So, after a few denials that troops would not, never, and no way be sent, sure'nuff, U.S, boots are back on the ground, but to play a very different "mission".

By David Swanson
1. It's not a rescue mission.
The U.S. personnel could be evacuated without the 500-pound bombs.  The persecuted minorities could be supplied, moved, or their enemy dissuaded, or all three, without the 500-pound bombs or the hundreds of "advisors" (trained and armed to kill, and never instructed in how to give advice—Have you ever tried taking urgent advice from 430 people?).  The boy who cried rescue mission should not be allowed to get away with it after the documented deception in Libya where a fictional threat to civilians was used to launch an all-out aggressive attack that has left that nation in ruins.  Not to mention the false claims about Syrian chemical weapons and the false claim that missiles were the only option left for Syria—the latter claims being exposed when the former weren't believed, the missiles didn't launch, and less violent but perfectly obvious alternative courses of action were recognized.  If the U.S. government were driven by a desire to rescue the innocent, why would it be arming Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain?  The U.S. government destroyed the nation of Iraq between 2003 and 2011, with results including the near elimination of various minority groups.  If preventing genocide were a dominant U.S. interest, it could have halted its participation in and aggravation of that war at any time, a war in which 97% of the dead were on one side, just as in Gaza this month—the distinction between war and genocide being one of perspective, not proportions.  Or, of course, the U.S. could have left well alone.  Ever since President Carter declared that the U.S. would kill for Iraqi oil, each of his successors has believed that course of action justified, and each has made matters significantly worse.

The Irish Anti-War Movement (IAWM) today issued a statement condemning both the response of the US Government through its military airstrikes and the ethnic cleansing of Christians and other religious groups by the Islamic State forces.

By David Swanson
"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" The answer is, of course: heartlessly, callously, sociopathically, from a state of denial and chosen blindness. The answer is fundamentally the same as what would allow John Kerry to give the speech he gave at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

By David Swanson
Memorial Day is nice, I suppose. Veterans Day is all right. Patriots Day can be fun. Yellow Ribbon Day's not bad. But you will be pleased to hear that on Thursday the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously voted, in pure bipartisan harmony, to add the following gem to the big war-funding, war-expanding, bill that now goes to the Senate: "The President shall designate a day entitled a National Day of Honor to celebrate members of the Armed Forces who are returning from deployment in support of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other combat areas."

By David Swanson
Of all the 95% of humans who live outside the United States, or any of those within it for that matter, who do you think is most invisible? Whose existence, did we come to hear about it, would be the most incomprehensible and therefore inaudible?

By Dirk Adriaensens—member of the Brussells Tribunal Executive Committee
While Anglo Saxon universities are boasting of their so-called "glorious role" in the reconstruction of Iraqi academia (See f.i. U of A helping create an education revolution in Iraq), Iraq's education is dying. From August 1990 onwards, UN sanctions excluded Iraqi education from international scientific developments and banned import of essential educational material such as books and even….. pencils. Many Iraqi professors and scientists left the country during that period. Then came the 2003 invasion….

By David Swanson
Just as in discussions of bombing nations for women's rights it's hard to bring up the subject of the right not to be bombed, in discussions of shipping so-called illegal children away from the border where you've been terrorizing them in reenactments of Freedom Ride buses it's hard to bring up the subject of not having your government overthrown and your nation turned into a living hell.

The Irish anti-war Movement (IAWM) said today that this week's events in Iraq, beginning with the capture of Mosul by ISIS and continuing with the country's descent into civil war, are a clear case of the chickens of the 2003 invasion coming home to roost. The IAWM is calling on the Irish Government to publicly reject any policy of intervention in Iraq.