The Democratic Push to Bomb Iraq Again
David Swanson ■ People forget the extent to which Democrats, who controlled the U.S. Senate at the time, pushed for and supported the 2003 attack on Iraq. Remember them or not, theeeeeeeeeey’re back! The Center for American Progress, the head of whose “action fund,” former Democratic Congressman from Virginia’s Fifth District Tom Perriello, slipped through the revolving door into a State Department job in February, is now pushing for “principled” bombings of Iraq. Principled or not, the Center for American Progress is funded by Lockheed Martin and other huge war profiteers. C.A.P. has just put out a report recommending that air strikes be considered. For that to happen, many other things need to not be considered.
Matt Carr ■ Iraq: A Brief History of Bombing || Faced with the prospect of the imminent disintegration of the Iraqi state, the installation of of a jihadist caliphate in the heart of the Middle East, an all-out sectarian civil war, and the final collapse of US policy in Iraq, the Obama administration is reaching once again into that trusty tool of US foreign policy: air strikes. Since World War II, bombing has been the weapon of choice for successive governments in all the wars America has fought. It’s a weapon that has been used against Iraq – and also in support of Iraq – on numerous occasions, and with very different political and military objectives. And with Iraq’s cities once again appearing in the Imperium’s bomb sights, its worth looking back at some of these precedents, and the policy twists and turns that made them possible.