‘Fake News’ isn’t news, and it isn’t new either. When considering the Trump administration’s efforts at media manipulation it would be helpful to remember the path that led the United States to war in Iraq.
American forces have adopted Israeli military tactics employed in Gaza of dropping cautionary leaflets and knocker bombs intended to warn civilians of incoming attacks. The method was used outside of Mosul in a recent operation, yet a woman and a child were killed upon re-entering a building shortly after it was targeted by a hellfire missile. The deaths were disclosed by a Department of Defense official in a briefing yesterday on expanding U.S. forces in Iraq as it battles fighters with the Islamic State.
On December 3rd 2015 a statue was unveiled in honor of Richard “Dick” Cheney at the United States Capitol. Coincidentally, the previous day witnessed the British parliament, specifically the House of Commons, inadvertently honor Cheney in the debate on whether to extend the military intervention aimed at ISIS in Iraq into ISIS’s supposed heartland in Syria.
In speech to American Enterprise Institute last night, Benjamin Netanyahu said that Saddam was a “neighborhood bully” who had only “regional” effects, not “wedded to a larger goal.” But in 2002 he testified to Congress that Saddam put “our entire world at risk.”
The world is witnessing the largest refugee crisis since the horrors of World War II. There are close to 60 million war refugees, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, an all-time high, as people from Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Yemen are fleeing violence in their countries. Human rights organizations warn the Gulf states, Israel, Iran, and Russia—all of whom have taken zero refugees—along with the US, Canada, and Europe—which have taken few—are not doing enough. Ben Norton presents a guide to the refugee crisis and how every country you need to know about is responding.
Jerrold Nadler is the only Jewish member of Congress from NY to support the Iran Deal, and his statement repeatedly stresses his devotion to Israel, lest he will pay for this decision
Jeffrey Goldberg falsely tied Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda and fabricated a moral case for invading Iraq, Ken Silverstein writes at the Observer, seeking to give Goldberg a “pundit reckoning” for this disastrous judgment, no his career has soared
Reports say Israel will accept Iran deal quietly if US gives it more F-35 fighters. So we haven’t done enough for the country already? If US conservatives see Israel as a spoiled child, the party is over.
Baharka IDP camp, Iraq, holds over 1,000 displaced Iraqi families. However in one small section, 18 Palestinian refugee families currently reside. Their displacement began 67 years ago with the Nakba, and has continued to 2015 – all the families have fled from ISIS within the last year. For some of the older Palestinian refugees this is their fifth refugee camp in their lifetime, for the younger generation it is their first. For all however, the plight of being a Palestinian refugee doesn’t appear to have an end in sight.
Scott Long comments on the Brian Williams scandal that he lied about his experience in Iraq, but he doesn’t understand why this is an issue. Williams made up a story, but he was in the middle of the most fantastic made-up story in American history. The Iraq war was a gigantic fiction: the reasons were fake, the goals were fake, the triumph was fake. Rather than Williams’ tall tales, the real scandal is journalism’s complete submission, as the “war on terror” raged, to the fantasies of patriotic allegiance.