BROODING THOUGHTS ON TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF SADDAM HUSSEIN’S HANGING

Above left: Saddam at trial. Inset, top left: Saddam, 1979. Inset, top right: captured, 2003. Bottom right: Hussein family, pre 1995. Photo credit: Department of Defense / Wikimedia, Iraqi News Agency / Wikimedia, Unknown / Wikimedia and Iraqi State Television/ Wikimedia

Here we are on the tenth anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s hanging

As with the removal and ghastly end of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, another tyrant the US didn’t like, and with a third, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, hanging on despite a concerted effort to topple him, we’re inclined to ask:

How’s all this regime-changing and “democracy building” in the Middle East working out?

By almost every measure, it has been a disaster. There’s a lot of blame to go around: the US government, the US media, and the American public all bear some responsibility for provoking massive bloodshed and creating a more unstable world without any noticeable improvement in the lives of the people directly affected and at a great cost to the US.

In any case, we thought it was worth taking a bit of time to reflect on all of this. So we provide you with links, below, to some of what we wrote about Iraq in the past.

Manufacturing War: A Primer

Now that President Obama’s administration is giving itself the option to have “boots on the ground” in Iraq, there has never been a more important time to look at how we get sucked into unending wars. Professor Martin Hellman examines how it’s been done for the last 70 years.

Mind the Credibility Gap: Syria and the History of US War Disinformation

… a story that contained no hint of behind-the-scenes diplomatic machinations encouraging Hussein to think the US would not oppose his marching into Kuwait.

Stories-You-Didn’t-Read Department

Baroness Manningham-Buller, director general of MI5 in 2002-2007: “Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people — a few among a generation — who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack on Islam.”

Who Caused Europe’s Refugee Mess? Why, We Did

…I was among the unfortunately small number of journalists warning about the rush to war with Iraq, and pointing out how virtually the entire US establishment was complicit in…

Not So Fast: Not All Media Screwed Up the Iraq Story (Just Almost All)

In a new piece for CNN, headlined “Media’s Failure on Iraq still stings,” the media analyst Howard Kurtz looks back on what went wrong with the media in its coverage of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. CNN summarizes his points atop the article:

Iraq Invasion Revelations, Part II: The Payoff

Iraq invasion skeptics, listen up. You’re right: it was always about oil. Now the other shoe is dropping — in India of all places. That’s where the oil and money connection back to Iraq can be found.

The Cradle of Conflagration: The End (and Beginning) of the War for Iraq

In the wake of the pullout of US forces, Iraq is on the brink of internal combustion. And frankly, nobody should be surprised. Even a cursory review of Iraq’s history reveals this to be the likely aftermath of American occupation — and not even because of American missteps on the ground (as egregious as those were), but because of the intrinsic nature of the Iraqi ‘nation’.

A Republican Regrets: How the Iraq War Brought Chaos to the West

He helped Powell make the case for the overthrow of Saddam in 2003. Today he looks back on those decisions as a turning point not…

Related front page panorama photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Rumsfeld and Saddam (South Bend Voice / Flickr – CC BY 2.0), Powell anthrax (Unknown / Wikimedia), Saddam hanging (Unknown / Wikimedia) and shock and awe (Common Dreams).

Why States Still Use Barrel Bombs

Smoke ascends after a Syrian military helicopter allegedly dropped a barrel bomb over the city of Daraya on Jan. 31.(FADI DIRANI/AFP/Getty Images) Summary Barrel bombs are not especially effective weapons. They are often poorly constructed; they fail to detonate more often than other devices constructed for a similar purpose; and their lack of precision means they can have a disproportionate effect on civilian populations. However, combatants continue to use barrel bombs in conflicts, including in recent and ongoing conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, and they are ideally suited to the requirements of resource-poor states. Analysis Barrel bombs are improvised devices that contain explosive filling and shrapnel packed into a container, often in a cylindrical shape such as a barrel. The devices continue to be dropped on towns all over Syria . Indeed, there have been several documented cases of their use in Iraq over the past months, and residents of the city of Mosul, which was re...

Russia Looks East for New Oil Markets

Click to Enlarge In the final years of the Soviet Union, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began orienting his foreign policy toward Asia in response to a rising Japan. Putin has also piloted a much-touted pivot to Asia, coinciding with renewed U.S. interest in the area. A good expression of intent was Russia's hosting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in 2012 in Vladivostok, near Russia's borders with China and North Korea. Although its efforts in Asia have been limited by more direct interests in Russia's periphery and in Europe, Moscow recently has been able to look more to the east. Part of this renewed interest involves finding new export markets for Russian hydrocarbons. Russia's economy relies on energy exports, particularly crude oil and natural gas exported via pipeline to the West. However, Western Europe is diversifying its energy sources as new supplies come online out of a desire to reduce its dependence on Russian energy supplies . This has ...

LONDON POLICE INDIRECTLY ENCOURAGE CRIMINALS TO ATTACK RUSSIAN DIPLOMATIC PROPERTY

ILLUSTRATIVE IMAGE A few days ago an unknown perpetrator trespassed on the territory of the Russian Trade Delegation in London, causing damage to the property and the vehicles belonging to the trade delegation , Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during the September 12 press briefing. The diplomat revealed the response by the London police was discouraging. Police told that the case does not have any prospects and is likely to be closed. This was made despite the fact that the British law enforcement was provided with video surveillance tapes and detailed information shedding light on the incident. By this byehavior, British law inforcements indirectly encourage criminals to continue attacks on Russian diplomatic property in the UK. Zakharova’s statement on “Trespassing on the Russian Trade Mission premises in London” ( source ): During our briefings, we have repeatedly discussed compliance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, sp...

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