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Here's a thought: maybe Madison, Wis., isn't Cairo after all. Maybe it's Baghdad - specifically, Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence.

Really they're over Gaza right now: in the same disproportionate & unjust way they were over Baghdad.

A United States Army medic was convicted of murder on Friday for his involvement in the 2007 killings of four Iraqi prisoners whose bound and blindfolded bodies were found in a Baghdad canal.

A classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.

Troops are coming home from Iraq despite the best efforts of the Obama administration to keep them there. "We're relieved to know all the troops will be home at the end of the year. This would not have been possible without the courageous actions of Wikileaks and the alleged participation of Bradley Manning" says Executive Director of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Jose Vasquez. Until their abrupt reversal a few weeks ago, the Obama administration had been working hard to maintain between 8000 and 20,000 troops in Iraq after the current Status of Forces agreement was set to expire at the end of this year. Fortunately, the Iraqi government refused to renew the judicial immunity, under which the U.S. Armed Forces had been operating. Establishment news outlets have largely ignored the reason for this sudden change of plans. A few weeks before the negotiations between Washington and Baghdad reached an impasse, WikiLeaks released a cable providing clear evidence that U.S. forces had been engaged in a cover up of the heinous execution of civilian non-combatants following a raid of a suspected insurgent stronghold. "A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi." (link)

The soldier in a now-famous WikiLeaks video, who found a rocket launcher at the scene of a controversial 2007 Apache helicopter attack, in Baghdad, said in a radio interview this week that he did not believe an ambush was imminent. The video shows 12 men, including two Reuters newsmen, standing on a street corner before being fired upon by the Apache's 30mm cannon, resulting in what appears to be an unprovoked massacre.

"To many people, the "war on drugs" sounds like a metaphor, like the "war on poverty". It is not. It is being fought with tanks and sub-machine guns and hand grenades, funded in part by your taxes, and it has killed 28,000 people under the current Mexican President alone. The death toll in Tijuana - one of the front lines of this war - is now higher than in Baghdad. Yesterday, another pile of 72 mutilated corpses was found near San Fernando - an event that no longer shocks the country."

The Spanish government wants a three-man US army tank crew to stand trial for the death of cameraman Jose Couso in Baghdad in 2003. Couso was killed on April 8

In the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion, the triumphalist verdict of the mainstream media was that the war had been won; Iraq was assured of a benevolent, democratic future. The Times's writer William Rees-Mogg hymned the victory: "April 9, 2003 was Liberty Day for Iraq … It was achieved by "the engine of global liberation," the United States. "After 24 years of oppression, three wars and three weeks of relentless bombing, Baghdad has emerged from an age of darkness. Yesterday was an historic day of liberation."

A former Army Specialist in Baghdad explains why the leaker of the WikiLeaks documents is a hero