New Study Documents Depleted Uranium Impacts on Children in Iraq

In the years following 2003, the U.S. military dotted Iraq with over 500 military bases, many of them close to Iraqi cities. These cities suffered the impacts of bombs, bullets, chemical and other weapons, but also the environmental damage of open burn pits on U.S. bases, abandoned tanks and trucks, and the storage of weapons on U.S. bases, including depleted uranium weapons. Here’s a map of some of the U.S. bases:

This map and the other illustrations below have been provided by Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, read more

Don’t Iraq Iran

If Iran had spent the last few decades lying about and threatening the United States, and had attacked and built military bases in Canada and Mexico, and had imposed sanctions on the United States that were creating great suffering, and then a lying scheming war-crazed Iranian official announced that he believed the United States had put some missiles on some fishing boats in the Chesapeake Bay, would you believe that . . .

a) The United States was a dangerous rogue state threatening Iran with read more

Corrupt Spineless Iraqi Legislators Are Right

You’ve got 5,000 armed foreign troops stationed in your country. You don’t say a word until the idiot foreign emperor stages a surprise visit. Then you’re outraged principally because he didn’t notify you or meet with you or put up any pretense that your country belonged to you in any way. At that point you demand that the U.S. occupation of Iraq finally be brought to a bitter better-late-than-never end. And you’re damn right.

The U.S. has been helping Iraq into ever-worsening catastrophe read more

The Case Against Iraqing Iran

The case against Iraqing Iran includes the following points:

Threatening war is a violation of the U.N. Charter.

Waging war is a violation of the U.N. Charter and of the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

Waging war without Congress is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Have you seen Iraq lately?

Have you seen the entire region?

Have you seen Afghanistan? Libya? Syria? Yemen? Pakistan? Somalia?

War supporters said the U.S. urgently needed to attack Iran in 2007. It did not attack. The claims turned out to be lies. read more

Tomgram: Karen Greenberg, The Forever Prison and the Forever Wars

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Can you even imagine a world where the response of President George W. Bush to al-Qaeda’s acts of horror in September 2001 wasn’t the launching of “the Global War on Terror” which, from Afghanistan and Iraq across the Middle East and deep into Africa, became a global set of disastrous conflicts that might, in truth, have been al-Qaeda’s dream? Well, dream on.

And while read more

Tomgram: William Hartung, Bringing the Militarization of University Research Back to Earth

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Pentagon expert William Hartung first wandered into TomDispatch in March 2008, less than seven years after this country’s Global War(s) on Terror were launched, full-scale disasters that were already costing the American taxpayer a fortune and a half — or perhaps, given the subject, all too literally an arm and a leg. As he read more

Tomgram: Andrea Mazzarino, War Doesn’t End When It “Ends”

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

We normally think of wartime and peacetime as two distinct and separate realities. When wars end, they end. Period. Unfortunately, when it comes to modern wars, that’s been anything but the case, as TomDispatch regular Andrea Mazzarino makes clear in a striking fashion today. She read more