BBC NEWS | Middle East | Press scathing at Iraq anniversary (news.bbc.co.uk, 3/20/06). Sample:

There is outrage at the conditions on the ground, with one paper asking "is the daily discovery of bodies the freedom President Bush says Iraqis are living in?"

What it costs us. One of the most powerful periodicals I read last year about the damage that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had done to the United States is The Nation | Issue | December 26, 2005 : The Torture Complex (thenation.com). It's a themed issue about what the U.S. is now known for around the world in the post-Abu-Ghraib era: immoral, illegal, physical and mental abuse. The damage isn't limited to our image, of course: it's also a sort of rot from within, and ordinarily upstanding people suddenly stand on their heads and twist their tongues trying to justify something which they have always claimed to abhor. It's ugly to see someone arguing that something was TERRIBLE when the Nazis or Saddam Hussein or [tyrant of the week] did it, but... well, it's peachy keen when the U.S. kills people the same way, "because we're, like, good."

Extra-notable: a reminder that the School of the Americas has been exporting torture for years, and that there has always been denial of the immorality of that on the part of the majority of Americans - and vehement protest by a vocal, moral, minority.

How bad is it, continued. From the ordinarily lighthearted Achenblog (washingtonpost.com, 2/23/06) comes a sobering summary of the status of US intervention:

But each news bulletin is more disturbing than the last. More than 100 bodies have been found in the past day, executed. The BBC reported that a busload of 47 factory workers was stopped at a checkpoint, and all the workers were summarily murdered on the spot. The perpetrators of this massacre and other atrocities remain mysterious. War between Sunnis and Shiites could be averted if the citizens find someone else to blame for the violence, and, according to the Post story, some folks are ready to point the finger at the Americans and 'Zionists.'

The not-quite-correct Colin Powell line, explaining "the Pottery Barn Rule" (which Pottern Barn insists isn't their policy) of 'you break it, you buy it' in which the US' removal of one government makes it responsible for the country they're occupying is just as evident as Powell's warning suggested.

How bad is it? Daytime Curfew in Four Iraqi Provinces Halts Violence (washingtonpost.com, 2/24/06) is actually titled on the front page as "Relative Calm in Iraq Today." Which doesn't mean much.

She has a point: From AlterNet: Blogs: The Mix: Candlelight vigils stop illegal wiretapping! by Rachel Neumann:

writing letters to an administration that already knows what I think since they've been monitoring my emails and phone calls seems ridiculous.

One of the early casualties of the attack on Iraq and the related ideological war was the current US administration's decision that they are absolutely above the law, and can spy on citizens at will.

It seemed at first that there was public sentiment in favor of legal surveillance of anyone who had independent thoughts of any kind in the early days of the war, especially surveillance of the peace movement, which had predicted that the war might be a very bad thing - an unpopular, widespread sentiment. But when the Bush Administration went beyond that, civil libertarians actually woke up and got mad, including some of those in Bush's own party. How novel.

Sad landmark for the British part of the Coalition: BBC NEWS | Scotland | Funeral for 100th conflict death (news.bbc.co.uk, 2/20/06).

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Guantanamo Bay inmates 'tortured' (news.bbc.co.uk, 2/13/06):

[From UN special raporteur on torture, Manfred Novak.]

'We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the US government. There are no conclusions that are easily drawn. But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture,' Mr Nowak told the LA Times.

The Center for Justice and Accountability (cja.org) "works to deter torture and other severe human rights abuses around the world by helping survivors hold their persecutors accountable." It's a tricky time to be involved in an anti-torture project in the U.S., which makes this work all the more admirable. Be sure to see their resolutions in support of human rights with regard to the U.S..

Just in case you were wondering: Iraq Coalition Casualties Count (icasualties.org).

Unfortunate unilateral action of the week: It's one thing to pursue a dangerous criminal; it's another to simply bomb a village where the criminal may or may not be. BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | 'Zawahiri' strike sparks protest (news.bbc.co.uk, 1/14/06) has a grim, Keystone Cops sort of flavor that is completely discouraging. This approach is consistent with the US military approach to threats within Iraq, but that isn't helping, either.

A sad anniversary. BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Guantanamo Bay's unhappy anniversary (news.bbc.co.uk, 1/11/06). The 'war on terror (and international law) has meant that the US' lawless, foreign military gulag, Guantanamo Bay, has existed publicly for 4 years. The system that it is supporting has produced no successful convictions, just a long string of embarrassments as the men who were so hastily rounded up and deprived of their liberty are quietly dumped in or near their home countries.

Whoever thought the US would sink so low as this.

U.S. Has End in Sight on Iraq Rebuilding: Documents Show Much of the Funding Diverted to Security, Justice System and Hussein Inquiry (washingtonpost.com, 1/2/06):

The Bush administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February, officials say. The decision signals the winding down of an $18.4 billion U.S. rebuilding effort in which roughly half of the money was eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein.

An aside: the insurgency didn't actually get the money, despite the comment that the insurgency was eating money. It's just more polite to say that, rather than to point out the high overhead costs of an unpopular military occupation.

Photographs From Iraq: December 2005 : SF Indymedia (sf.indymedia.org)

The New Yorker: Fact: UP IN THE AIR - Where is the Iraq war headed next? by Seymour Hersh (12/5/05, newyorker.com).

The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: "I said to the President, 'We are not winning the war.' And he asked, 'Are we losing?' I said, 'Not yet.' The President, he said, 'appeared displeased' with that answer.

Hersch has published a variety of very interesting articles about the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Here's something I haven't thought much about, because it isn't often mentioned in the corporate media:

The military authorities in Baghdad and Washington do not provide the press with a daily accounting of missions that Air Force, Navy, and Marine units fly or of the tonnage they drop, as was routinely done during the Vietnam War. One insight into the scope of the bombing in Iraq was supplied by the Marine Corps during the height of the siege of Falluja in the fall of 2004.... Since the beginning of the war, the press release said, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped more than five hundred thousand tons of ordnance.

(Bold emphasis mine.) There are several interesting items in this particular Hersch article - go give it a read.

A look at the big picture. EducationGuardian.co.uk | eG weekly | Paul Rogers: Peace studies in our time (education.guardian.co.uk):

He explains the thesis: 'The real long-term conflict in the world is between an elite and the marginalised majority.' In it he describes the spectacle of a World Bank conference on poverty cocooned in a five-star hotel amid the squalor of Dhaka, in Bangladesh, and the grotesqueness of a gated community in South Africa surrounded by a 33,000-volt fence.

It seems obvious that the developed world is pushing the overall world into a variety of painfully unjust, inequitable situations, and that there is resistance to this. What's funny is how rarely this situation is acknowledged.

He doesn't read the newspapers. Or the editorials. Or the interviews. Or the blogs. President Gives Both Reassurance, Warnings on Iraq (washingtonpost.com, 12/18/05):

'I don't think I got it wrong,' Cheney said. 'I think the vast majority of the Iraqi people are grateful for what the United States did. I think they believe overwhelmingly that they're better off today than they were when Saddam Hussein ruled.'

Like a bad penny, he's back! Iraqi Oil Minister Resigns to Protest Higher Fuel Prices (washingtonpost.com, 1/2/06):

...over the weekend, the government named Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi as oil minister.

No way! NO WAY!

What the so-called war on terror is costing us at home, or, the perils of a government that engages in purposeless domestic spying. Judges on Surveillance Court To Be Briefed on Spy Program (washingtonpost.com, 12/22/05):

One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.

'For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap,' said the official. 'They couldn't dream one up.'

They couldn't dream one up? What does that tell you about the folks doing the spying?

A Life, Wasted: Let's Stop This War Before More Heroes Are Killed, by Paul E. Schroeder (washingtonpost.com, 1/3/06) is an eloquent clarification of what it really means to LIVE as a hero, and a challenge to the near silent opposition to the war of so many.

He was a hero before he died, not just because he went to Iraq. I was proud of him before, and being a patriot doesn't make his death okay. I'm glad he got so much respect at his funeral, but that didn't make it okay either.

It's a good, but sad, read.

Everything is going great now, right? From a BBC Correspondent: Iraqi ship ploughs on in choppy waters (news.bbc.co.uk, 12/27/05):

So the Shias dominate, the Kurds are a strong minority, the secular are suffering but the Sunnis are protesting. Indeed the main Sunni grouping, the Iraq Accord Front, claiming fraud, is threatening to boycott the assembly if there is no re-run vote in some areas. Since there will be no re-run, it remains to be seen if this threat will be put into practice.

...And even if the Sunnis do join the assembly, it may be that they are simply opening up a new front to urge the removal of US and other foreign forces. It does not mean that the insurgency will end.

The election may be over but the war is not.

All of this makes you wonder why the Sunnis showed up for the election at all, doesn't it? They claim fraud, the correspondents shrug; the ticket that won the initial election won on an anti-occupation platform, but there's no way to make that happen under the system the Americans imposed...

I'm not including a quote from an American about how the country is likely to tear itself apart. But it's now being acknowledged at official levels to adjust American expectations.