(Video) ICYMI: The ‘Last Word’ Condi Rice interview
I’m not sure what’s more amazing about this interview; former Bush National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s crumbling decorum and seeming imperviousness to any fact that exists after March of 2003, or the fact that clips of the shellacking she took at the hands of Lawrence O’Donnell (who isn’t even a reporter) didn’t wind up splashed across the news cycle on Friday. Watch part one:
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Part two after the jump. Read more
‘Curveball’ made it all up about Iraq. So now Colin Powell wants answers
Rafid Ahmed Alwan al Jana, otherwise known as "Curveball," lied the U.S. into invading Iraq.
The unmasking of “Curveball,” the Iraqi informant who made up lies about mobile chemical/biological weapons being developed in his home country in order to spur the Bush administration to give in to its desire to invade Iraq, has led to potential criminal charges in Germany, but barely a yawn in the U.S. But at least one former member of the Bush administration would like some answers. Read more
Well said: rabid right’s demonization of the president is ‘sick and corrosive’
Following the president’s address on the end of combat operations in Iraq, NY Daily News writer Joshua Greenman serves one up for those who continue to demonize the president: Read more
Iraq by the numbers
Weary combat troops in Iraq.
The Toronto Star’s Mitch Potter may have said it best:
A war that may yet go down in history as America’s single greatest foreign policy blunder reached a milestone Tuesday night with five decisive words from President Barack Obama: “Operation Iraqi Freedom is over.”
And as I wrote in a previous post, the president was exceedingly gracious in his remarks about the end of a war he, and many Americans like myself, opposed from the outset (my first ever guest column for the Miami Herald was on that subject, back in April 2003.) Obama deserves credit for keeping his campaign promise to end the war in responsible fashion (though Iraq hasn’t exactly held up its end of the bargain by forming a stable government) and he was right to focus his speech Tuesday night on honoring the dead and wounded in the war, rather than on recriminations against the men who took us there. (The neocons tried in vain to recast George Bush as the Great Hero of the Tigris on Tuesday. Too bad only Fox News viewers will believe them.)
But there is more to the story. And it’s not good news. Read more
The president’s Oval Office address on the end of the combat mission in Iraq
President Obama used his speech tonight to thank the troops, finesse his opposition to the war in the first place, to be gracious to his predecessor, and to pivot — quickly — back to the economy. One thing you won’t hear in the speech: any defense of the two, three, or was it four… justifications for invading Iraq in 2003.
Read the full remarks after the jump.
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Is it over, over there? U.S. combat troops leave Iraq
MSNBC reporter Richard Engel went live from the scene as the last U.S. combat brigade packed up, and pulled out of Iraq. With Rachel Maddow in Baghdad and Keith Olbermann in the MSNBC studio. Watch the moment of truth:
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The Washington Post on how combat troops view the end of the mission.
The New York Times on the civilian takeover.
I don’t know how you’re feeling about this, but all these years later, and more than 4,000 lives later, I still can’t help but wonder why on earth this country invaded Iraq — what we gained, and whether any of it was worth so many lives. It’s a question I’m assuming we’ll be asking ourselves for a lifetime. Iraq, and why the Bush administration was so determined to invade it, was the subject of the first column I ever wrote for the Miami Herald, back when I was working for the local NBC affiliate in Miami in 2003. I still don’t have an answer. Do you?
Obama: Iraq war coming to an end
It’s finally almost over. President Obama today told disabled veterans that the war in Iraq, launched by his predecessor for reasons no one still fully understands, is almost at an end. It’s an important campaign promise, and in many ways, a moral imperative, the president will soon fulfill.
The Wapo has the story. The president’s full remarks after the jump. Read more
Blair’s promise: U.K. would back U.S. in Saddam overthrow
Tony Blair reportedly promised to back George W. Bush if he decided to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein … and he apparently made that promise a year before the invasion, at a time when Bush was telling the U.S. media no such decision had been made … the Times of London reports on a series of secret notes that tell the sorry tale of how Great Britain followed Bush and Cheney off a cliff. Read more
You’re welcome, Connecticut
Not content to have pushed for preemptive military action in Iraq, Iran and Syria, now, your “Independent” Senator would like the U.S. to “act” in Yemen.
“Somebody in our government said to me in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, Iraq was yesterday’s war. Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war,” Lieberman said, during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday”. “That’s the danger we face.” Read more
George Will to Dick Cheney: some ‘dithering’ before Iraq invasion would have come in handy
George Will scores the quote of the day on “This Week”:
“A bit of dithering might have been in order before we went into Iraq in pursuit of non-existent weapons of mass destruction,”
Meanwhile, the panelists must have felt somewhat diminished by having to share the table with talk radio nag Laura Ingram. Watch here.
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