Backtracking

Ahoy. Links below saved/condensed for posterity. Will try to resume posting semi-regularly.

* Just how many Iraqis have died in the war? PR Watch's Diane Farsetta and The Guardian's Jonathan Steele and Suzanne Goldenberg do an admirable job wading through the assorted figures and studies, when most would prefer we ignore or whitewash the question entirely.

* Jim Lobe, rewinding 5 years: Why Did the U.S. Invade Iraq? Similarly, Patrick Cockburn looks back and sees "a war of lies from the start." Also see Cockburn on DN!

* Frontline did a pretty lengthy retrospective on "Bush's War" recently. Yet, as Ray McGovern notes, it was much too timid. You got plenty of "how," but hardly any "why." Plus, nary a dissident source was referenced.

* A $3 trillion war? Is that estimate too low? How about $5 trillion?

* The Winter Soldier hearings were a "victory" for independent media? Perhaps. But the more obvious lesson drawn was that the lack of coverage further exposed the bankruptcy of corporate media, especially at the NYT.

* Michael Schwartz narrates the disintegration of Baghdad over the course of the war.

* Nir Rosen: "The Myth of the Surge." Also see Rosen on DN!

* McClatchy rightly foreshadowed the unravelling of the "success" of the "surge" at the beginning of the crackdown in Basra and related environs, ultimately aimed at the Sadrists.

* Along these lines, Juan Cole speculates as to why Maliki attacked Basra, Lenin's Tomb dissects Sadr's victory, and IPS' Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail proclaim March 25 a "day of truth."

* See more on Sadr from Patrick Cockburn in an excerpt drawn from his latest book and a related essay by Richard Seymour.

* Alternet: Five Things You Need to Know to Understand the Latest Violence in Iraq.

* The number of IDPs in Iraq continues to trend upward. And those Iraqis fleeing the country often wound up in Sweden, where one city of some 80,000 people hosts more refugees than the entire United States.

* Obviously, the US isn't planning on giving up its permanent enduring foothold in Iraq. That should be crystal clear by now.

* Salon: Just how bad was the looting of Iraq's museum and archaeological sites?

* See Ira Chernus on why Petraeus' testimony should have been ignored. Alas, it wasn't. Instead, Petraeus & Crocker put Iran back on the front burner, euphemized as a concern about "special groups."

* Accordingly: 6 Signs the U.S. May Be Headed for War in Iran? Note especially the fallout from Fallon's resignation.

* Jim Lobe flags some newly released documents that highlight "The Bush Doctrine in Embryo."

* More Yoo-authored "torture memos" have been made public. Also see: The Green Light.

* Re: the "torturing Principals." Can we now throw out the "bad apples" excuse? Pretty please?

* To those attuned to history, the sickening "debate" over torture and waterboarding in the US might sound familiar.

* At Gitmo, "We can't have acquittals. We've got to have convictions." Surely nothing problematic in that...

* Rule #1 for international "diplomacy": always refrain from shedding light on Israel's behavior. Doing so is rarely useful, and scarcely noted. Just ask John Dugard, who I doubt gets invited to many cocktail parties.

* The Guardian's Seumas Milne and the IPS team of Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani highlight some of the issues raised by Vanity Fair's "Gaza Bombshell" article.

* Ilan Pappe is rethinking his depiction of Israel as pursuing a "genocidal" policy against Palestinians in Gaza. He now sees the policy as part of a distinct strategy, an outgrowth of Israel's unilateralism. In a related piece, Jonathan Cook more or less agrees.

* Remembering the Nakbah; Remembering Deir Yassin.

* One State or Two ?

* Israel loves stealin' that Palestinian land, reminds Henry Siegman in the LRB.

* Waaaay down the memory hole: When Conservatives Loved the Palestinians.

* Interesting New Yorker piece on Nadia Abu El Haj's tenure fight. Those Israel Firsters get awfully cranky when you challenge Zionist myths.

* Funny how we've had, until relatively recently, a "booming" economy when so very few felt a "boom." And, yes, this trend goes much farther back.

* Still, as we all know, socialism absolutely sucks. Except, that is, socialism for rich people, which is necessary to "preserve the system" and something we don't even dare call socialism.

* The assorted bailouts have Dean Baker wondering, "Can’t the media find any economists who don’t think that handing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the big banks and the incredibly rich people who own and manage them is a good idea?"

* From Global Financial Crisis to Global Recession -- Part I & Part II.

* Capitalism is in an "Apocalyptic Mood," observes Walden Bello. In another piece, Bello is doubtful that capitalism can survive the climate change crisis.

* "Never mind the economic crisis," implores George Monbiot. "Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession which is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch."

* Food stamp usage in the US is projected to surpass record levels. Incidentally, food stamps are one of the few success stories of the frayed safety net in the US.

* "Welfare reform" reconsidered. Twas a bad, callous idea. No kidding.

* The Nation published a recent edition reflecting back on the New Deal. Several of the articles are worth a gander.

* Newsflash: having a black presidential candidate doesn't mean much when the larger picture of racial inequality is factored in. Also see: UN Panel Finds Two-Tier Society.

* 1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says. Sweet land of liberty.

* Damn illegal immigrants. Always sucking the good ol' US of A dry.

* Sick Around the World. A pretty good introduction to how a few other industrialized countries handle healthcare. Related, from earlier: The Health of Nations.

* Vicente Navarro outlines "The Next Failure of Health Care Reform." After providing background, he points out why both the Clinton and Obama proposals are seriously deficient.

* Psst. The real work starts after the election.

* The New Gilded Age and Neoliberalism's Theater of Cruelty. An excerpt from Henry Giroux's new book. Also check a review.

* Stephen Lendman: Destroying Public Education in America.

* Paul Street illustrates the so very many reasons why our democracy rocks. Also see Street on the "good war" in Afghanistan.

* Flat Earth News sounds an awful like a sequel to Manufacturing Consent, which makes it all the more curious that the former scarcely acknowledges the latter.

* Scott Horton's Harper's article, "Vote Machine: How Republicans hacked the Justice Department," is available here. Well worth the read.

* Peak Oil -- true or false?

* Michael Klare: "The End of the World as You Know It...and the Rise of the New Energy World Order."

* Nick Turse: The Military-Petroleum Complex.

* My Lai, 40 years on. Also see an inconvenient reminder from Gareth Porter. And do recall Turse's discovery from a few years ago.

* Euphemism and American Violence.

* Bloomberg: "Current and former military personnel accounted for about 20 percent of U.S. suicides in 2005, according to a government study."

* China hits back at the US for "human rights violations." Ya know, the whole glass houses thing.

* Bernard Chazelle floats ideas for saving the American Left.

* Disappearing polar caps; fragmenting ice shelves in Antarctica. Nothing to see here, as usual. Move along.

* Does Harvard care about academic integrity? Going on its handling of the Dershowitz case, I'd say obviously not.