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Afghanistan may be the graveyard of empires, but Iraq is home to a graveyard sense of humor. Iraqis wonder aloud whether the U.S. and Britain would have invaded Iraq if its main export had been cabbages instead of oil. However obvious the answer, a remarkable array of American pundits and pseudo-savants have resisted giving the oil factor any pride of place among the motives behind the U.S./U.K. decision to invade Iraq in 2003. To this day, the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) continues to play its accustomed role as government accomplice suppressing unwelcome news. So, if you don't tune in to Amy Goodman's Democracy Now or read the British press, you would have missed the latest documentary evidence showing that Great Britain's Lords and Ladies lied about how big oil companies, like BP, lusted after Iraqi oil in the months leading up to the attack on Iraq. Oil researcher Greg Muttitt's new book Fuel on Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq presents that evidence, since Muttitt had better luck than his American counterparts in getting responses to his Freedom of Information requests. After a five-year struggle, he obtained more than 1,000 official documents which - how to say this - do not reflect well on the peerage, the captains of the oil industry, and the government of Tony Blair.

Jeffrey Goldberg responded yesterday to my post detailing his long list of journalistic malfeasance by telling me that he and the Prime Minister of Iraqi Kuridstan would like me to travel there to hear how much the Kurds appreciate the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Leaving aside the complete non sequitur that is his response -- how does that remotely pertain to Goldberg's granting of anonymity to his friends to smear people they don't like or the serial fear-mongering fabrications he spread about the Saddam threat prior to the invasion? -- I don't need to travel to Kurdistan to know that many Kurds, probably most, are happy that the U.S. attacked Iraq. For that minority in Northern Iraq, what's not to like? They had foreign countries (the U.S. and its "partners") expend their citizens' lives and treasure to rid the Kurds of their hated enemy; they received semi-autonomy, substantial oil revenues, a thriving relationship with Israel, and real political power; the overwhelming majority of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whose lives were snuffed out and the millions of people displaced by the war were not Kurds, and most of the destruction took place in Central and Southern Iraq away from their towns and homes, while they remain largely free of the emergent police state tactics of the current Iraqi government. As Ali Gharib put it to Goldberg: "there are at least 600,000 Iraqis who, I imagine, are not too thrilled about the way it all turned out and with whom Greenwald will never get a meeting."

As soon as the news was reported that Gen. David Petraeus is succeeding soon-to-be-retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, the media narrative was set in stone: the super-general who won the war in Iraq with the so-called surge can now work his magic in another theater. It's hard to stop a locomotive meme-which is what the surge story has become. But the success of the surge in Iraq remains debatable to this day. Still, try injecting that point into media discussions of Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet with Petraeus taking over the Afghanistan war, it's worth noting the other side of the surge tale. So as a public service, here are a few analyses that question the surge hype.

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."

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)

For most people in Britain and the US, Iraq is already history. Afghanistan has long since taken the lion's share of media attention, as the death toll of Nato troops rises inexorably. Controversy about Iraq is now almost entirely focused on the original decision to invade: what's happening there in 2010 barely registers.

Pentagon admits "nothing will change." That isn't a paraphrase -- it's a direct quote from the Army's chief spokesman in Iraq

The largest intel leak in the United States history, has been the most revealing account of any war in history. Over 400,000 classified US military documents on the Iraq war were released by the whistle blowing website WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. Iraq war veteran Josh Steiber says that

Iraq experiences 27.79 Fort Hood shootings a day and averages the equivalent casualties of September 11th every 8.23 days. Afghanistan experiences 1 Fort Hood shooting a day and averages the equivalent casualties of September 11th every 231.24 days.

Iraq is entering a critical period as it prepares for upcoming provincial polls, which provide an opportunity to shape a new political landscape in the fledgling democracy, a top United Nations envoy said today, while cautioning that the potential for election-related violence and instability remains.

A nice flash project showing a visual map of Coalition Casualties in Iraq on a daily basis

The laws of war are essential for citizens and legislators to master if humanity is to evolve beyond our violent history of war to enjoy civil communities. To bring these basic laws to life, we'll touch on war's history, explain the letter of US war laws, explain the philosophy/spirit of US war laws, and make the obvious conclusion once the laws are clearly understood that current US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are unlawful orders that our military must refuse and stop as demanded in their oath to the protect and defend the US Constitution.

Rabiha al Qassab, a British Iraqi woman who lives in London, describes the harrowing story of her husband, Ramze Shihab Ahmed. Having fled in 1998 after being accused of trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein, Ramze returned to Iraq last year to get his son out of prison. He, too, was arrested and was tortured. Like 30,000 other Iraqis, he and his son are being held without charge.

The laws of war are essential for citizens and legislators to master if humanity is to evolve beyond our violent history of war to enjoy civil communities. To bring these basic laws to life, we'll touch on war's history, explain the letter of US war laws, explain the philosophy/spirit of US war laws, and make the obvious conclusion once the laws are clearly understood that current US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are unlawful orders that our military must refuse and stop as demanded in their oath to the protect and defend the US Constitution.

The anti-globalisation movement suffered a dizzying setback on 9/11. Symbolic gatecrashing into the well-guarded meeting places of the super-rich suddenly seemed a much more sinister activity than before. Busting up branches of Starbucks and other Seattle-style antics became anathema in an atmosphere of injured and vindictive patriotism. But Naomi Klein, the combative theorist and publicist of anti-globalisation, was not about to accept such guilt by association. Her reply, The Shock Doctrine, deals with the corporate acquisitiveness that she sees as ravaging the planet and reformulates the ideas of the anti-globalisation and anti-corporate movements for a post-9/11 world. Klein believes she has found the answer to a question that has perplexed many on the left: if every modern American government has been a tool of powerful business interests, what, if anything, makes the Bush administration uniquely odious? Her answer is that the Bush administration draws its political support not from America's corporate class generally, but rather from a particular part of it: 'the sprawling disaster capitalism complex'. She has in mind the companies that reap huge profits from catastrophes, both man-made and natural. They include defence contractors, arms dealers, high-tech security firms, the oil and gas sectors, construction companies, private healthcare firms and so on. Not exactly ambulance-chasers, they are driving the ambulances themselves - for a profit. For the most part, they capitalise on emergencies rather than deliberately bringing them about. But the distinction is not always so clear: the stock price of Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defence contractor, almost tripled between 2003 and 2007 after a former vice president at the firm chaired a committee agitating for war with Iraq. The Iraq war was also 'the single most profitable event' in the history of Halliburton, whose former CEO, who still retains stock options, is Dick Cheney.

U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion, sent by the planeload in cash and intended for Iraq's reconstruction after the start of the war.

Martin Luther King - A Time to Break Silence Starting in 1965, King began to express doubts about the United States' role in the Vietnam War. In an April 4, 1967, appearance at the New York City Riverside Church - exactly one year before his death - King delivered Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. In the speech he spoke strongly against the U.S.'s role in the war, insisting that the U.S. was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." "Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land." "At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor." Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 -- April 4, 1968), was one of the main leaders of the American civil rights movement. A Baptist minist

Behind the Pentagon's closed doors, U.S. military leaders told President Bush they are worried about the Iraq war's mounting strain on troops and their families. But they indicated they'd go along with a brief halt in pulling out troops this summer.

Just as many Iraqis expected, the Blackwater banning was a publicity stunt by the Iraqi government prior to the elections, in reality: Names change, but the faces stay the same

US security firm mired in Iraq controversy changes its name Blackwater Worldwide renamed Xe as company tries to salvage its tarnished brand

Mr. Obama plans to leave behind a "residual force" of tens of thousands of troops to continue training Iraqi security forces, hunt down foreign terrorist cells and guard American institutions