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The Iraq War is Finally Over. And It Marks a Complete Neocon Defeat
Thanks to the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Iran's greatest enemy, Tehran's influence in Iraq is stronger than America's
The Iraq war is over. Buried by the news from Libya, Barack Obama announced late on Friday that all US troops will leave Iraq by 31 December.
The president put a brave face on it, claiming he was fulfilling an election promise to end the war, though he had actually been supporting the Pentagon's effort to make a deal with Iraq's prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to keep US bases and several thousand troops there indefinitely.
The talks broke down because Moqtada al-Sadr's members of parliament and other Iraqi nationalists insisted that US troops be subject to Iraqi law. In every country where they are based the US insists on legal immunity and refuses to let troops be tried by foreigners. In Iraq the issue is especially sensitive after numerous US murders of civilians and the Abu Ghraib scandal in which Iraqi prisoners were sexually humiliated. In almost every case where US courts tried US troops, soldiers were acquitted or received relatively brief prison sentences.
The final troop withdrawal marks a complete defeat for Bush's Iraq project. The neocons' grand plan to use the 2003 invasion to turn the country into a secure pro-western democracy and a garrison for US bases that could put pressure on Syria and Iran lies in tatters.
Their hopes of making Iraq a democratic model for the Middle East have been tipped on their head. The instability and bloodshed which the US unleashed in Iraq were the example that Arabs sought to avoid, not emulate. This year's autonomous surge for democracy in Egypt and Tunisia has done far more to galvanize the region and undermine its dictatorships than anything the US did in Iraq. And when the Arab spring dawned, the Iraqi government found itself on the defensive as demonstrators took to the streets of Baghdad and Basra to protest against Maliki's authoritarianism and his government's US-supported clampdown on trade union activity. Maliki hosted two Syrian government delegations this summer and has refused to criticize Bashar al-Assad's shooting of protesters.
But the neocons' biggest defeat is that, thanks to Bush's toppling of Saddam Hussein, Iran's greatest enemy, Tehran's influence in Iraq is much stronger today than is America's. Iran does not control Iraq but Tehran no longer has anything to fear from its western neighbor now that a Shia-dominated government sits in Baghdad, made up of parties whose leaders spent long years of exile in Iran under Saddam or, like Sadr, have lived there more recently.
The US Republicans are accusing Obama of giving in to Iran by pulling all US troops out. Their knee-jerk reaction is rich and only shows the bankruptcy of their slogans, since it was Bush who gave Tehran its strategic opening by invading Iraq, just as it was Bush in the dying weeks of his presidency who signed the agreement to withdraw all US troops by the end of 2011, which Obama was hoping to amend. But Senator John McCain was right when he said Obama's announcement would be viewed "as a strategic victory for our enemies in the Middle East, especially the Iranian regime, which has worked relentlessly to ensure a full withdrawal of US troops from Iraq". A pity that he did not pin the blame on Bush (and Tony Blair) who made it all possible.
The two former leaders' memoirs show they have learnt no lessons, even though their reputations in history will never be able to shake the disaster off.
Whether the lessons have been taken on board by the current US and British leaders is more important. NATO's relative success in the Libyan campaign is already being used to draw a veil over the past. Indeed, the fortuitous timing of Gaddafi's death has knocked the news of the US withdrawal from Iraq almost entirely off the media's agenda.
But the past is still with us. A key lesson from Iraq is that putting western boots on the ground in a foreign war, particularly in a Muslim country, is madness. That point seemed to have been learnt when US, British and French officials asked the UN security council in March to authorize its campaign in Libya. They promised there would be no ground troops or occupation.
This should also apply to Afghanistan where Obama claims to be fighting a war of necessity, unlike the war in Iraq which he calls one of choice. The distinction is false, and the question now is whether he will pull all US troops out by 2014.
On the pattern of the aborted deal with Iraq, his officials are trying to negotiate an arrangement with the Karzai government which will authorize the indefinite basing of thousands of US troops, to be described as trainers and advisers, after combat forces leave. This would continue the folly of fueling the country's long-running civil war. Now that al-Qaida has been driven from Afghanistan, Washington should support negotiations for a government of national unity that includes the Taliban and ends the fighting among Afghans. Iraq is no haven of guaranteed stability but, without the presence of US combat troops for the last 15 months, it has achieved an uneasy peace. If talks in Afghanistan are seriously encouraged, it could go the same way once foreign troops at last withdraw.
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74 Comments so far
Show AllComplete neocon defeat? Hardly. It in fact turned out to be the setup for several neocon wars, only some of which have begun in earnest, and the rest of which our current neocon thughocracy of Obomba and Killary is frantically trying to enmesh us. I'd call it a substantial, if incomplete, neocon victory.
I must disagree. Their adventure has ended, is ending in exactly that, defeat. They have lost power, have been exposed for what they are and will not be able to achieve power again.
Defense spending is about to be cut, withdrawal from military positions are around the corner, the fervor for disengagement I believe is growing.
We are unlikely to be involved in the coming war.
WTF are you talking about? We're already ramping up for war with Iran, Syria, and Pakistan.
What I am talking about is the fact that we will not be going to war in Iran, Syria or Pakistan. We will not be involved with "boots on the ground" in the coming war. The more likely participats will be Egypt/Israel or Iran/Israel.
We aren't going. Shouldn't, can't afford it and most Americans won't abide it at this point. We will be busy at home.
re: "What I am talking about is the fact that we will not be going to war in Iran, Syria or Pakistan."
Thank you Kreskin for that prediction. But try again. An attack on Iran by Israel will absolutely pull the US right in. It's called WWIII, and at this point in human history — considering the instability, the shortages, the chaos in the markets, the impending crash and the rise of the OWS movement... and throw in religious hatred and rivalries, decades of mounting reprisals — the moment is RIPE for an explosion of aggression, one which would certainly embroil numerous countries, all of which have a vested interest in the outcome.
It's not what most of the 99% want, but it's looking more and more like what the 1% are convinced they need.
And possibly Cuba and North Korea.
Certainly NOT Cuba and North Korea is very unlikely, especially with the economic life line we just threw North Korea with the South Korean trade agreement.
Us troops are "On the Ground" in Uganda and contrary to claims the US sent troops on the ground into Libya.
The Pakistani Government has already warned the US about repeated incursions of US troops into that country.
The Contracters funded by the US treasury as mercenaries for all intents and purposes are US troops unless it your contention that the Hessians used against the 13 colonies had nothing to do with the British Empire and that empire would have had no troops in the Colonies had it relied on mercenaries alone.
"Their adventure has ended,"
Ha! It never ends.
The Neo Cons may try as they will, but Americans have concluded they are the reflection of the same type of people that attacked us, extremist's, radical's that put their own interet's first rather than their country or their people.
They are not broken, but they are exposed. And for the moment, that will do.
re: "Americans have concluded"
Most Americans haven't even concluded that people like Bachmann, Perry and Cain are insane maniacs bent on our collective destruction.
Most Americans haven't concluded much more than whether they're going to watch football, Mad Men, True Blood or Dancing With The Stars this evening. You seem to have a distorted sense of what 'Americans' will or will not do.
You may be well intentioned, but you might want to actually observe the -real 99%-, and what they do, rather than believe that those who call themselves the 99% really represent all of us... at least for now, they don't. Someday, hopefully, but for now...
I have to agree with you, sadly enough.
I'm not so sure that Americans have concluded that much yet. It's a slow process. It may take a long time. Americans haven't accepted reality about at least three previous wars: Vietnam, Korea, and Gulf War 1. Judging by that, I don't expect Americans to accept reality about the Iraq/Afghanistan twofer war in my lifetime.
Millions of Americans still believe that we either won in Vietnam, or that we lost because we didn't drop nuclear weapons there to (using a favorite phrase of bellicose Americans) "turn the whole country into glass". Plenty of Americans have suggested that the U.S. turn Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, "into glass" with nucear weapons. Hopefully none of these Americans are in positions to be able to do that; however, there is no secure mechanism in our society to prevent people who want to turn other countries into glass from rising to positions of power where they obtain the capability to fulfill their apocalyptic desires. I suspect that both within the Pentagon and the U.S. military there are already plenty of such folks, just waiting for the day.
If Americans were not such trusting fools, by and large, they might "conclude" not that "they [neocons] are the REFLECTION of the same type of people that attacked us, extremists, radicals that put their own interests first rather than their country or their people", but that they are nearly indistinguishable from them, and in some cases may be identical.
Human history teaches that there's only one way for a society to learn to be peaceful: by having peacefulness beaten into it. And even then the lesson is only temporary. Devastated twice in one century, Germany is now rediscovering the joys of predatory warfare via its junior partnership in NATO. I shudder to think what it will take to make a peaceful country out of the USA.
Yes, I've reached the same conclusion, and I too shudder to think what it will take to make this a peaceful nation. I'm old enough that I don't worry for myself too much, but I fear the country my daughter's come of age in.
Neo chicken hawks
BULLSHIT
I completely agree, corvo, and as I read the article I began to wonder what parallel universe Steele lived in. As you imply, Iraq was just a warm up for Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, and probably now Syria and Iran. What's more, it was all mapped out in the various PNAC papers and the Israeli "Strategy for Securing the Realm" paper and the earlier Yinon plan. And all of the above, especially the Israeli papers, envisioned the breakup of Iraq (and eventually Syria et al) into feuding ethno-religious enclaves.
The current pesudo-withdrawl from Iraq, far from a neocon defeat, could thus be best described with the words "Mission Accomplished."
And meanwhile the murderous, indeed genocidal "birth of a new Middle East" continues apace.
I have asked this question many times but haven't seen any answer.
WHY does Israel have so much power in the US Congress? What do we owe them?
Yes, they had a hard time 60 years ago, but many people have had it just as bad.
Somalian women, most women in 3rd world countries.
What the hell makes Israel so 'special'?
Don't you know that our Congress is occupied Israeli territory? It has been since 1948 when they bought our government.
Hoa binh
The answer could fill volumes.
But essentially, the USA and Israel have compatible eschatologies. Hundreds upon hundreds of years of Western indoctrination have been embedded within our culture to foster a belief that the fate of all of Christianity is bound up in that powder-keg of a land, and in that holy of holy cities, Jerusalem.
Secondly, Israel is right there — exactly where we want to exert our influence — and they're armed to the teeth. Their country represents the West's solid foothold in the 'harem' (Arab for forbidden) Middle East. It's a solid place to stand and point our American guns at the foreheads of those who might rise to oppose us.
And why would we want to exert an influence there so badly?
We're heavily dependent oil junkies. Oil junkies with a set of desperate religious convictions which we use to cloak and distance ourselves from our own inner failings and weaknesses. Someday, we may use these convictions to heal, but at this stage, it's all for purposes of self-deception, as we destroy ourselves, our families and our relationships to our loved ones.
Thanks to both of you for your replies. I do know that AIPAC. Has bought the whores in Congress who only exist to serve them and the Elites.
And I thought it had something to do with Christianity and that whole Rapture bullshit.
Amazing that a peaceful man's message could get so screwed up!
With the Holy Whore Catholic Church's crusade and killing millions while ammassing trillions in wealth, to all the other religions that popped up with the same message of hate.
Jesus himself said 'Let no man come between you and your Father", so many need a religion to tell them how to think, who to hate, ect
I do find it interesting that most Americans (and many modern Christians worldwide) don't seem to care all that much about the city of Bethlehem, the actual (or supposed depending on your pov) birthplace of their savior, and site of the sacred Church of the Nativity. Many Western leaders, including I believe, Cheney, Bush and Blair have even been excommunicated by the Christian bishop of that city for their abominable war crimes. Most Christians apparently don't understand the extent of the suffering imposed by Western/Israeli policies upon the real people there, Christian and Muslim alike, and prefer to remain ignorant to what is happening for reasons I have speculated on, above.
re: "Jesus himself said 'Let no man come between you and your Father", so many need a religion to tell them how to think, who to hate, ect"
Yes, it is strange that a religion founded upon the ascendancy of individualist spiritual authority over hierarchical worldly authority would result in doctrine that praises worldly authority and dictates political choices to the faithful. Of course, we should remind ourselves that the 1% has infiltrated and taken over more than just our government. They've also hijacked the church some time back.
Cheers, and PEACE to you and yours, joecool9.
Haram not harem
True, my mistake. Thank you for the correction, veenataos.
Beautifully compact summary of a complex historical reality. Brilliant.
The argument about whether this is a "neocon defeat" is an apples and oranges question. As a war (a matter of foreign policy), the escapade in Iraq is clearly a defeat for the United States, including those neocons who thought it would be a cakewalk. As a domestic policy, it is a victory--it gave the neocons exactly what they wanted within the United States: an enormous reduction in civil liberties for citizens, and an enormous transfer of wealth from the working classes to the political and economic elites. Respondants to this article who are asserting that this is a defeat are talking about a different issue than those who say it is a victory.
And now we all know for sure what we have all known for sure for years.
We wasted time, treasure and kids lives, Iraqi And Afghan lives, treasure and freedoms at the behest of political extremists in the US. Ending their other adventure is the only task left to correct the terrible mistake made by our country, misled and lied to by the lowest form of cowardly vermin.
Those that wouldn't serve when called had no hesitation in sending others to war. The definition of a coward.
And the war we had to keep fighting so those that died in it didn't die in vain, actually did die in vain. Well, except for the trillions that the contractors made off of it.
Those are the people and corporations that did win. The only weinners. And so far they have paid no penalty.
This article sounds like fear mongering about Iran. What does the author want? War on Iran? For what reason? Because Iraq didn't sign the PSAs or grant immunity to our forces? Makes no logical sense.
"The talks broke down because Moqtada al-Sadr's members of parliament and other Iraqi nationalists insisted that US troops be subject to Iraqi law. In every country where they are based the US insists on legal immunity and refuses to let troops be tried by foreigners"
Why should any nation allow a foreign military to reside within their borders and not abide by their laws? If Iraq and other nations were wise they would insist that even the private contractors be held accountable. Even domestically our military should be held accountable to our US laws...but in many cases they are not.
I knew when GW signed his executive order 13303 it was bad news.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/05/print/20030522-15.html
Headline should be: USA DEFEATED - IRAQ WINS WAR ...USA now charged with War Crimes.
Remember Vietnem.
KeLeMi
"Remember Vietnem [Vietnam]." Indeed. But as Barack Obama noted when campaigning for president in 2008, the United States should never apologize for the crimes that it committed against other countries such as Vietnam. Apparently the reason for that is that American Exceptionalism must always prevail.
Barack Obama is essentially a neocon himself. The elites that engineered 911, the Iraq war, the Afghan war and the end of civil liberties have had nothing but victories in the last decade. The withdrawal from Iraq was negotiated by George Bush. They got what they wanted. Now they need the military resources elsewhere and they are moving on. When it comes to American empire Obama's foreign policy is no different than Bush. Do not be fooled into thinking there are important distinctions between neocon policy and Obama's policies. The illusion of choice is a very carefully cultivated lie. It is nothing more than propaganda. America has been hijacked. Until people wake up to that fact and address it there will be no real debates and no democracy. Only one foreign policy agenda will be pursued by the upper echelons of government and that agenda has little or nothing to do with the interests of the American people.
Simply replacing US troops with Private Contractors does not mean the War is Over.
We still have over 200,000 private contractors from the likes of Blackwater/xe and Halliburton. I'll know Victory when the stock price of halliburton falls to below the level it was at when that master of war cheny entered the WH.
Obama has simply redefined the Concept of War - if US troops aren't on the ground then it isn't war.
I'd add - giving credit to Obama for losing his negotiations to sadr isn't the same as success since the oilybomber Did Not Want To Leave - he was forced.
Lucky for us - but don't say obama won - in fact Lucky For Us that every time obama and the imperialists lose - WE WIN!
Ah yes. The mantra begins. The war in Iraq is over. It's like living in a fantasy land. Why do so-called Progressives buy into this nonsense? We aren't "out of Iraq," and that war is not over. We have the worlds largest embassy there, along with a private State Department army and and unknown number of private contractors. We are still an occupying power there. Wake up, people. Another Big Lie slides right by, reinforced by "journalists" like Steele who aid and abet the continued distortion of language. Orwell would be proud.
Geobbels would also be proud. The business of MSM journalists, like Steele, is to steal and destroy the truth.
The 10 year terrorist attack on Iraq by fascist amerika, aka the Iraq war, is hardly over; thousands of trained murderers remain, aka mercs, military bases, gross embassy... amerikan imperialism marches on....right into the abyss ! What also continues are mass murderer obombers deadly lies !
The author of this piece has quite self-servingly overlooked at least five facts:
1) there is in Baghdad a twenty-one building strong U.S. embassy; these are large buildings and they can house thousands of busybodies in the service of the Evil Empire;
2) there are U.S. military bases in Iraq; Oilbomber has not mentioned them, nor has he stated that they would be dismantled;
3) there are thousands of mercenaries and other hired killers working for the Pentagon and the State Department in Iraq; and the U.S. will send more at the beginning of next year;
4) the old legal structure of Iraq has been completely dismantled and replaced with one that favors Western economic interests.
5) Iraq is now a U.S. police station that serves to intimidate the region, Iran in particular, but also Russia and China.
Once one takes those facts into consideration, one may seriously wonder about Steele's claim that the neoconservative fascists have been defeated. The situation looks somewhat more complicated than that.
Victory in Iraq and America can't afford a parade.
I think the author of this column is dead wrong. The neocons were able to keep the profits flowing to the Military Industrial Complex for over 8 years and it is not over yet. That is a win for those who profit from our wars, and that is win for the neocons who work fo them.
Staying in Iraq has been a win for the American1%....
I agree with corvo and clovis.
This article is standard pasteurized, processed mass-media Talking Head feed.
I share Steele's contempt for the odious and villainous war criminals Bush and Blair, and their neocon cronies; it's also true enough that their strategies and schemes haven't worked out according to their generally-understood plans.
But even assuming that "turn[ing] the country into a secure pro-western democracy and a garrison for US bases that could put pressure on Syria and Iran" was the Amerikan Hegemony's desired or preferred outcome, such grand, simplistic goals are always superficial and provisional in nature.
Ironically, apart from trumpeting the Iraq adventure ending in an alleged "complete neocon defeat", the article is abundant with contradictory indications that the predatory, exceptionalist, hyper-militarized imperial spirit marches on.
It's a diabolical work in progress, in which the Amerikan authorities and their minions and enablers continuously seek to pursue the same old "neocon" goals and ambitions.
When striving for unilateral conquest, control, and domination, imperial regimes occasionally take a couple of steps backwards or sideways along the way. But, as Steele himself details, the aggressors simply accommodate shortcomings, and seek to learn from mistakes and failures and adapt or modify their tactics accordingly.
If, for example, experience teaches that a "key lesson from Iraq is that putting western boots on the ground in a foreign war, particularly in a Muslim country, is madness", the lesson learned is not that predatory military aggression is futile or wrong-- it's that the imperium must experiment with other means, e.g. mercenaries, drone missiles, counter-terrorism terrorism (like anti-missile missiles, see?), sleazy secret deals with foreign interests, etc. to acheive the same reprehensible ends.
Conventional, shallow public opinion may characterize certain superficial setbacks as "defeats", and the officials responsible may suffer transient loss of face. But from their point of view, this amounts to taking one for the team. They're playing the Long Game.
Again and again, articles like this one recall journalist Ron Suskind's 2004 quote from "a senior adviser to Bush", reportedly Karl Rove:
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"
While pundits declare staged and contrived events like the "troops withdrawl" in Iraq as an unequivocal "neocon defeat", the empire indeed continues to act. The pundit orthodoxy seems unaware that it's permanently fated to remain a beat behind.
Perhaps it might be better to extrapolate on present political and economic realities rather than past one's in predicting where we go or what we do now.
Look to other similar period's in our past for the key.
No peace treaty has been signed with Germany after WW2. Does that mean that we are still at war with the Bundesrepublik? As far as I understand it has been accepted that the state of war ended when the German government signed an agreement that condoned the continued presence of Allied soldiers on German soil and a huge US airbase at Ramstein near Frankfort. The headquarters of the US Fifth Army was in Heidelberg. The case of Iraq is slightly different but not by much. Until the end of 2007 the United Nations had accepted a sort of US Mandate status for Iraq for a number of successive years. By then the UN General Assembly had told the Bush administration that this status would not be renewed in 2008. Now the Bush administration had to scramble to get an agreement with the government of Iraq before the end of 2008. Absent such an agreement US Armed Forces would have been considered by the International Community to be illegally in Iraq. I still do not understand why president Bush did not ignore the UN then. There was not much time left to get an agreement acceptable to the UN and I believe that the Bush administration opted for the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) instead of a formal Peace Treaty for reasons of expedience. Bush believed, mistakenly as it turned out, that the government of Iraq would meekly accept his demand of essentially a perpetual occupation of Iraq. The key hurdle was not the issue of immunity but a firm date at which all members of the US Armed Forces must be out of Iraq. Because of the looming Parliamentary elections of 2010 in Iraq and the vigorous opposition of El Sadr and his block of 35 votes in Parliament the government of Al Maliki played a brilliant game of "chicken" with Bush. Like today he averred, probably correctly, that he would not be able to get Parliamentary approval for a SOFA-Iraq without a firm "get out" date. Should we be surprised that this was won by a nation that was once ruled by Nebuchadnezzar? Bush lost and that was the end of the war in Iraq. So, who has ended the war in Iraq. Bush? No. Obama? No. The war was ended in 2008 by the courageous people of Iraq who held together and would not accept a semi-permanent occupation by the the "Coalition of the Quitting". Which is also the reason why the current blatantly stupid attempts of president Obama to salvage a chimera will fail too. There is absolutely no reason to thank Mr. Obama for the "end of the war in Iraq". As Keith Olberman stated it so succinctly: "We were kicked out". Indeed. By the people of Iraq. Thank you!
Why do we need troops in the ME at all when we have drones?
"The Iraq War is Finally Over"
Who told you this thing, child.
I must say, I’m losing patience with CD. What kind of absurd nonsense is this article? The defeat of the neo-cons? The neo-cons have won hands down. The US consumer can always be convinced that we are “over there” to fight another battle against evil, and if they question this cartoon, most will keep their mouths shut. Most Amerikans I talk to that who realize that the media is spouting malicious lies are careful to keep their views under the radar. Most haven’t a clue, nor do they care to.
“The neocons' grand plan to use the 2003 invasion to turn the country into a secure pro-western democracy . . .”—obviously Steele is a neo-con himself, pretending to buy into this as a true intention of the US’s illegal and incredibly barbarous invasion of Iraq. The intention of the neo-cons was pretty obviously to terrorize the Iraqi people, destroy its infrastructure, encourage internal strife, kill or at least disenfranchise a good chunk of the population, and, yes, set up a powerful military base there, manned by mercenaries—the worst scum of the earth beyond our politicians, who merely order killing from their desk chairs.
“In Iraq the issue is especially sensitive after numerous US murders of civilians and the Abu Ghraib scandal in which Iraqi prisoners were sexually humiliated.” Can we soft-pedal a bit more outrageously? Sexually humiliated? How about anally raped with bottles, not to mention killed and thrown in the trash? How about those dogs? I could go on . . .“Numerous US murders of civilians”? How many we’ll never know, but who cares here in Amerika or the UK, because, as Chomsky said so well in a Democracy Now podcast the other day, these people aren’t really people to “US,” and THAT is the true victory of the neo-cons.
Anyone who thinks the continual rape of the Mideast is dwindling is not paying attention. That old idea that we would win over their people with our consumer “democracy”—the apex of freedom and goodness and all—was never in the plan. We broke the back of Iraq, and we’ll keep enough mercenaries there to keep the boot on Iraq to stomp out whatever dissent we don’t like and maintain our geopolitical position, but our military is off to destroy other cheeky nations that think they have a right to their resources, be they oil or poppies or minerals, thinking they can decide how and what they are to be paid. By God! When we said we wanted them to act like Amerikans, we certainly didn’t mean that!
It’s odd. I talk to veterans a lot, and they tell me what their fellows tell them. Most have been saying this last year that they thought they were finally doing some good things for the Iraqi people. Well, I guess that’s a done deal.
Funny they let in articles like this one and print every single John Nichols article he writes but won't print an article by either:
Ampedstatus and david degraw
Or
Globalresearch.ca
Go figure.