Iraq

The Libertarian Angle: The Iraq Debacle

by Future of Freedom Foundation June 16, 2014

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: the continuing debacle in Iraq. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

They Don’t Mean Well

by Sheldon Richman January 15, 2014

Americans have a strange need to believe that their “leaders” mean well. Nowhere is this more true than in foreign policy. Even when the horror of some government operation is revealed (usually after being kept from the American people), solemn pundits and elder statesmen will drone on about unintended consequences and the fog of war, while admonishing against “pointless” ...

The Criminal Iraq War

by Tim Kelly April 4, 2013

Much ink (or bandwidth) has been expended writing about the tenth anniversary of the U.S. government’s invasion of Iraq. That is justified, for the Iraq war was an act of naked aggression and a crime against humanity. While apologists for the Bush administration have cited “bad intelligence” or even incompetence as an excuse for what the late Major General William ...

How the News Media Betrayed Us on Iraq

by Sheldon Richman March 26, 2013

The tenth anniversary of the start of America’s illegal and aggressive war against Iraq should not pass without recalling that the mainstream news media eagerly participated in the Bush administration’s dishonest campaign for public support. It is no exaggeration to say that most news operations were little more than extensions of the White House Office of Communications. Abandoning even ...

The Disasters that U.S. Intervention Created

by Sheldon Richman March 21, 2013

Americans have forgotten about the Iraq war, which began 10 years ago this week, and the Afghan war, the longest in American history, but the U.S. government is still throwing its weight around in both countries. The Iraq war, the pretext for which was nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, officially ended in 2011 with the withdrawal of virtually all of ...

Exiting Iraq

by Sheldon Richman January 4, 2012

In his official remarks about the end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, President Obama told an assembly of troops, The war in Iraq will soon belong to history. Your service belongs to the ages. Never forget that you are part of an unbroken line of heroes spanning two centuries — from the colonists who overthrew an empire, to your ...

Iraq: The End of the Affair RT Russia Today

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 13, 2011

Jacob Hornberger, founder of the Future of Freedom Foundation, believes the US has imposed a dictatorship that just happens to be democratically elected on the Iraqi people. You've got a regime that is dictatorial in every sense of the word, Hornberger told RT. And there are people there who are never going to accept a regime that came into existence ...

What If Iraq Had Weapons of Mass Destruction?

by Laurence M. Vance February 23, 2011

The recent revelation that the man most responsible for the myth that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction — Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, a.k.a “Curveball” — lied should forever put that falsehood to rest. It was Curveball’s fabrications that formed the basis of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s claims about Iraq’s alleged weapons programs in his speech before ...

When Will George W. Bush Be Tried for His War Crimes?

by Sheldon Richman February 21, 2011

We should take a small measure of satisfaction in former President George W. Bush’s cancellation of his trip to Switzerland after human-rights groups threatened to bring legal action against him for authorizing torture. Persons detained by the U.S. government after 9/11 were subjected to what the Bush administration euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation,” including waterboarding. In reality those methods constituted ...

Blood on His Hands

by Sheldon Richman November 15, 2010

As George W. Bush hawks his memoir, Decision Points, he seems especially driven to justify his decision to invade and occupy Iraq. He emphasizes how sickened he was at learning that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, though not too sick to kid about it at the White House correspondents’ dinner. While he refuses to say whether ...

They Died for Iran

by Sheldon Richman September 16, 2010

More than 4,400 Americans have died during the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Nearly 32,000 Americans have been wounded. And despite what President Obama says, it’s not over yet. What did those men and women sacrifice for? Some war critics say it was in vain, but that’s not true. It was for Iran. Iran is the big winner in ...

Obama: Neoconservative

by Sheldon Richman September 13, 2010

President Barack Obama was far from candid when he announced the end of combat operations in Iraq last month, but he did nothing to hide the fact that he is a neoconservative when it comes to the American empire. That was not lost on leading neoconservatives, who tend to prefer Republicans. William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, told a ...