Issues 101
Issues - The War in Iraq Part 1


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Halliburton poisoning US occupation
forces in Iraq

If this were truly a war for "democracy" wouldn't Halliburton and the Bush/Cheney administration at least try to protect U.S. troops - or is it, as many suspect, just a war for more money?

www.publicinterestpictures.org

In his documentary feature, UNCOVERED: THE WAR ON IRAQ, filmmaker Robert Greenwald chronicles the Bush Administration's determined quest to invade Iraq following the events of September 11, 2001. The film deconstructs the administration's case for war through interviews with U.S. intelligence and defense officials, foreign service experts, and U.N. weapons inspectors - including a former CIA director, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and even President's Bush's Secretary of the Army. Their analyses and conclusions are sobering, and often disturbing, regardless of one's political affiliations.
Ron Paul on the Iraq War

The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.
- Congressman Ron Paul

Just Foreign Policy Iraqi Death Estimator

The number is of Iraqi casualties is shocking and sobering.

It is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, yet it is based on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003.

That study, published in prestigious medical journal The Lancet, estimated that over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion as of July 2006. Iraqis have continued to be killed since then. The graphic above provides a rough daily update of this number based on a rate of increase derived from the Iraq Body Count. (See the complete explanation.)

The estimate that over a million Iraqis have died received independent confirmation from a prestigious British polling agency in September 2007. Opinion Research Business estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed violently since the US invasion.

This devastating human toll demands greater recognition. It eclipses the Rwandan genocide and our leaders are directly responsible. Little wonder they do not publicly cite it.

As the economy has worsened, the war in Iraq has been moved to the back burner, behind the economy and the cost of health care, as an issue in the 2008 campaign. Yet the American people don't seem to realize - and the candidates have not driven home the point - that there is a direct correlation between the costs of the war, not just now but in years ahead, to the current economic meltdown.

The more trillions of dollars we spend on a war that has no direct connection to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the less we have to address domestic issues.

It is the one major issue John McCain has based his candidacy - and chance of winning - on. But a lot can happen between now and November. All the Iraqi opposition has to do is step up the pressure, aided by other Middle East nations that want the U.S. out now. If, as developments at the end of March indicate, George Bush and Israel attack Iran in April, the war will be brought back to the front burner and American outrage will explode, ruining the McCain candidacy.

Cheney '94 - Iraq invasion would be "a quagmire"
Project for the New American Century (PNAC)

The PNAC is a relatively new, rightwing, Republican think-tank that was started in the 1990's in Washington D.C.. The PNAC was and is made up of entirely Republicans, many of them from the Reagan and Bush41 administrations. They are also called "Neo Conservatives" or Neo-cons" in the general media. These "Neo-Cons" from the PNAC believe in aggressive use of U.S. military force, unilateralism, and have a strong disdain for the United Nations and other international organizations.

Some the more famous members of the PNAC:

Dick Cheney,
Don Rumsfeld
Paul Wolfowitz
Richard Armitage
Richard Perle
William Kristol

Many of the top thinkers at the PNAC are conservative Jews who are strongly pro-Israel and anti-Arab. These folks would like to radically alter the Middle East.

This video is a longer version of the first CFR/ PNAC video with excerpts of the PNAC's letter to Bill Clinton in 1998 about taking military action against Iraq