The Unknown Candidate: There is No U.S. "Victory" in Iraq

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

There is No U.S. "Victory" in Iraq

The BBC has uncovered new video evidence that US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians. The video appears to challenge the US military's account of events that took place in the town of Ishaqi in March. The US said at the time four people died during a military operation, but Iraqi police claimed that US troops had deliberately shot the 11 people.

Army Manual to Skip Geneva Detainee Rule

The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

Degrading America's Image

"It defies belief that this administration is still clinging to its benighted policies on prisoners after the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the killings at American camps in Afghanistan and the world's fresh outrage over what appears to have been the massacre of Iraqi men, women and children in the village of Haditha," writes the New York Times.

In Brazen Roundup, 56 Vanish From Baghdad

Monday morning, gunmen in police uniforms and ski masks cordoned off a street in the Karkh neighborhood of central Baghdad and were swiftly shoving captives, four or five at a time, into a dozen waiting pickup trucks. Fifteen minutes later, the trucks were gone, and so were 56 people.

Doug Nelson | The Rot From Within

Doug Nelson writes, "To understand the similarities between the Viet Nam conflict and the current Iraq debacle is to shed light on how decent American young men would think, for an instant, that they were justified in killing moms, dads, little girls and innocent taxi passengers."

The Failures of Bush's Democratization of Arab Countries