After 15 years of violence, insecurity and sectarianism following the US invasion of Iraq, finding cause for optimism can be a fool’s errand for Iraqi leaders. This week marks the 15-year anniversary of the start of the US invasion of Iraq, ostensibly to free Iraqis from tyranny and oppression. What came next is well known: With […]
It has been more than seven years since U.S. President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13491, banning the U.S. government’s use of torture. Obama’s directive was a powerful rebuke to the Bush administration, which had, in the years after the 9/11 attacks, authorized the CIA and the U.S. military to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” in questioning […]
The damage from regime change in Iraq has been substantial. According to the Chilcot report, at least 150,000 Iraqis (and possibly four times that number) have been killed in the years since the invasion, and an estimated three million people have been displaced from their homes. The security situation is far worse than under Saddam, […]
Misconceptions and outright misrepresentations of the role of oil in the Iraqi debacle remain, spawning conspiracy theories about conflicts from Libya, Syria and Gaza to Afghanistan. The corrupt and sclerotic energy sector continues to hold back the economy and blight the lives of ordinary Iraqis. Searching the Chilcot report to justify decade-old slogans of “no […]
The long-awaited Chilcot report found Britain joined the U.S.-led war against Saddam Hussein before “peaceful options for disarmament” had been exhausted. Read Here – The Atlantic
Twenty-five years ago this week, on February 24, 1991, the first United States ground invasion of Iraq began. The first Bush administration had clear UN and congressional mandates to liberate Kuwait. More than thirty countries contributed ground forces, and the Soviet Union was a critical diplomatic partner. Read Here – National Interest
A new document reveals gap of intelligence on WMD. Why didn’t the chief of Pentagon share it with others? Read Here – Politco
It’s long been a mystery what President George H.W. Bush thought of President George W. Bush’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent invasion of Iraq. Bush 41, of course, had stopped short of ousting Saddam Hussein; Bush 43 had gone ahead and done just that. But what was said behind closed doors […]
Saddam was a tyrant and an aggressor, but are Iraq and the region really better off without him? Consider just some of the consequences of the war that removed him. Read Here – The Atlantic
The legend of the surge has become this era’s equivalent of the legend that America was winning in Vietnam until, in the words of Richard Nixon’s former defense secretary Melvin Laird, “Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975.” In the late 1970s, the legend of […]
looking beyond borders 