Peter Van Buren Editor’s Note: TCP is especially proud to offer an original article by Peter Van Buren, author of We Meant Well, a compelling account of U.S.-led rebuilding efforts in post-invasion Iraq. Van Buren, who worked closely with American troops in Iraq, knows the bloody nature of war, which makes him doubly aware of…
Nile Stanton At the reliably up-to-date and highly informative website Breaking Defense, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. reported that on June 16th, Lt Gen James Kowalski, Deputy Commander of the US Strategic Command, told a group, “We have to recognize that there are two authoritarian nuclear-armed regimes [China and Russia] dominating the Eurasian landmass, and they…
b. traven, W.J. Astore, and Stuart Lyle We at The Contrary Perspective believe in freewheeling debate. We recently had such a debate, largely behind the scenes, on the causes and larger meaning of America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. We offer this debate to our readers, unedited except for the addition of links and clarifications,…
b. traven After 9/11, Bush/Cheney and an authoritarian national security state ran amok. Vengeance was the byword, and few in the government were careful about who the enemy was. Fear of another humiliating attack on the scale of 9/11, combined with a sociopathic disregard for human rights, drove a torture regime that was authorized from…
W.J. Astore About seven years ago, I had an impassioned debate with a conservative friend about whether the U.S. had engaged in torture and, if we had, whether it had been effective. My position was clear: we had engaged in torture, and it was both wrong and counterproductive. My friend was unconvinced. His arguments, which…
Michael Murry. Introduction by William Astore. It’s fascinating to witness Republican candidates for president continuing to swing and miss as they’re tossed softball questions about George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. Jeb Bush was first at bat. He initially said he’d invade Iraq all over again; then he got testy about answering “hypothetical”…
W.J. Astore American reporting on Iraq focuses on the eternal now, such as the rise of ISIS or recent battles in Tikrit. Rarely is any context given to these events, and rarer still is any accounting of the costs of war (still rising) to the Iraqi people. Let’s return to 2003 and the U.S. invasion…
W.J. Astore Leading figures in the Bush Administration — Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz — fancied themselves to be the new Vulcans. As in Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and the forge, armorer for gods and mortals. In the aftermath of 9/11, they didn’t look to Darth Vader in their journey…
W.J. Astore Six years ago, Vice President Dick Cheney admitted that he had approved waterboarding as one of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Waterboarding had been defined as torture by the U.S. during World War II when the Japanese had employed it (although the U.S. had used the so-called water cure during the Filipino Insurrection…
Michael Murry I watched Rachel Maddow’s new documentary (“Why We Did It”) on why the U.S. went to war in Iraq in 2003. Her answer was “oil,” which is true enough as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go nearly far enough. First of all, a matter of style: I found her breathless “now it…
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