What is the mission?


ThatKevinSmith: R.I.P. Lance Cpl. Jake Meinert. Hate to lose any fan; especially like this: http://tinyurl.com/thakyoujacob Fuck this war; bring them home.

ThatKevinSmith: Via @rushiegrrl: "if you don't support the mission, sir, you don't support the troops." Not quite sure what the mission is anymore. Or was.
The mission in Iraq was because of a breakdown in oil negotiations with Saddam.

Things got that way because of a rise in the American standing army, it's why we fight.

This is made easy by the power of nightmares.

Some of those involved now feel it was a mistake based on bad intelligence.
saddam

SADDAM

The Confessions of an economic hitman dude explains the US handling of Saddam from beginning to end.


whywefight

WHYWEFIGHT

The film is described by Wikipedia, IMDB and Sony and is available from archive.org, Google and youtube.


nightmares

NIGHTMARES

The Power of Nightmares

BBC article and Wikipedia article about the documentary which is freely available on archive.org as one complete DVD or as 3 parts, also available from youtube and:

  • Part I: Baby It's Cold Outside YouTube
  • Part II: The Phantom Victory YouTube
  • Part III: The Shadows in the Cave YouTube


mistake

MISTAKE

Guantanamo guard reunited with ex-inmates

"The news would always try to make Guantanamo into this great place," he says, "like 'they [prisoners] were treated so great'. No it wasn't. You know here I was basically just putting innocent people in cages."


tp://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Happy_Anniversary

STFU

Pleased To Be Shutting The Piehole Now - Esquire

"Mr. Baquet said that's not a factor. "The Times has probably acknowledged its own mistakes from that period more than anyone," he said. "We certainly haven't been shy about doing that. We're doing the stories that make sense to us and that offer our readers something worthwhile."

That is, of course, all bollocks. Keller still writes a column. The Times is playing this on the downlow precisely because it never truly has atoned for its role in a fiasco. The op-ed page still welcomes submissions from people whose work on this most grotesque foreign-policy blunder should have been as definitive a career-killer as were Joe Hazlewood's navigational abilities."


intelligence

INTELLIGENCE

How could Britain and the US get this so wrong? A French intelligence guy states it succinctly "they have less of an immune system to misinformation". This one hour BBC report explains how the US and UK were lied to (and didn't seem to care).


ANALYSIS

+5 Insightful


tp://www.juancole.com/2013/03/what-we-did-to-iraq.html

AFTERMATH

What we Did to Iraq

Juan Cole - March 19, 2013.


WHY

The true purpose of the Iraq invasion remains opaque. Here's a theory why.