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Thursday, July 30th 2020, 7:19 pm - The hot temperatures that were recently observed in Iraq were within one degree of an international record.

The Middle East has recently faced scorching temperatures as a heat dome sits over the region. The extreme weather is forcing millions indoors, straining electricity grids and breaking new temperature records.

Baghdad, Iraq reached a blistering 51.8C during the afternoon on July 28, which shattered its previous record high of 51C set on July 30, 2015. Little relief followed on July 29 when the city reached 51.1C, its second-highest temperature ever recorded.

Southeastern regions in Iraq saw even hotter temperatures on July 30 when weather stations in both Amara and Al Basrah peaked at 53.0C. Iraqs national temperature record is 53.8C, which was set in Basra in 2016, and is still the nations hottest temperature ever recorded.

The intense heat wave has also set record-breaking temperatures in other regions of Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

The Weather Network meteorologist Tyler Hamilton says that the sweltering conditions are courtesy of heat dome, which is a ridge of high pressure that has been stagnant over the Middle East.

The upper level atmosphere has created a sinking flow that has trapped hot air near the Earths surface underneath this dome.' High pressure systems also prevent cloud formation, which has allowed for clear skies and relentless sunshine in Iraq and resulted in unbelievably hot conditions.

The temperatures that were recently observed in Iraq were less than one degree shy from global records. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says that the hottest temperatures ever recorded on Earth are 53.9C ( 0.1C margin of uncertainty) in Mitribah, Kuwait on July 21, 2016 and 53.7C ( 0.4C) in Turbat, Pakistan on May 28, 2017.

Furnace Creek, Death Valley, California reached 56.7C on July,10 1913, but weather historians have questioned the accuracy of old temperature records and the meteorological technology that was used over a century ago.

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Several cities in Iraq reach 53C amid intense heat wave - The Weather Network

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a blue-ribbon commission and congressional committees uniformly blamed the U.S. national security apparatus for failing to connect the dots of evidence that might have exposed Osama bin Ladens plot.

Less than two years later, President George W. Bush launched a ruinous war in Iraq based on a far greater intelligence failure, one that saw the CIA, Pentagon and other agencies effectively make up the evidence that the White House sought to justify invading a country that had not attacked or even threatened to attack the United States.

The serial mistruths, mistakes and misperceptions about Iraqs supposed weapons of mass destruction and alleged support for al-Qaida are laid out in devastating detail in Robert Drapers authoritative new book, To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq.

This is well-trod history, but Draper mines newly declassified documents and tracks down previously unavailable CIA and Defense officials to flesh out the sordid story of the run-up to the March 2003 invasion, the start of a grinding conflict that would last eight years and claim nearly 4,500 American lives.

Why now? Two decades on, there are no new headlines to be pulled from the toxic personal and policy disputes of the Bush era. But Draper has written a compelling narrative of just how calamitous an ideology-first approach to fact-finding can be in the White House, and why Americans were so badly deluded.

Unlike President Trump, who utters falsehoods daily, Bush was a true believer which is exactly what made him impervious to conflicting evidence or doubts about the supposed Iraqi threat.

That folly has given Americans just cause to question U.S. intelligence estimates and, perhaps worse, has gifted Trump with a regular foil for jabs at experts and specialists even in his own administration. The erosion of trust that fueled his base is just one of the many poisonous after-effects of the war.

The road to that war began a few days after the 2001 attacks, when Vice President Dick Cheney led his aides to CIA headquarters in Virginia. The nations top spy agency was frantically searching for a follow-up assault by bin Laden, who was based in Afghanistan.

But Cheney insisted the CIA needed to focus on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, despite the CIA briefers conviction that there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement in the attacks. As one later said, it was like asking, Did Belgium do this?

Over the next year, Cheney and other ideologues would push their bogus theory, as well as increasingly dire but equally false claims that Hussein had secretly produced and stockpiled an arsenal of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

The Pentagon created its own so-called intelligence shop to funnel unsubstantiated reports to Cheney and Bush, many from informants with little credibility. Led by a deferential George Tenet, the CIA quickly fell in line, repeatedly strengthening its cautious assessments of the Iraqi threat to help the White House convince the public of an urgent danger.

Bush needed little convincing: he had ordered up Iraq war plans only two months after the Sept. 11 attacks. As Draper writes, the rush to war was driven by fear, not hard intelligence, and by imagination, not facts. It was thus difficult for critics to push back when Bush warned, in October 2002, that we cannot wait for the final proof the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Yet Iraq had no nuclear program, no poison gases, no shells filled with deadly viruses. U.N. inspectors had scoured the country for months, but their failure to find illicit weapons was viewed in Washington only as proof that Iraq had cleverly hidden them.

Draper has written the most comprehensive account yet of that smoldering wreck of foreign policy, one that haunts us today.

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The lies and mistakes that led us into Iraq, laid out in a new book - Wyoming Tribune

For the people of Iraq, the fallout from the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 continues to this day, sometimes in unexpected and violent ways. That is the message that the Iraqis featured in FRONTLINEs Once Upon a Time in Iraq emphasize time and again. The documentary recounts their stories of life under Saddam Hussein, the war, the occupation, and the years of chaos that followed from sudden explosions during the days of sectarian violence, to mass killing under the brutal reign of ISIS.

Some of them shared what has happened in their lives and in Iraq since they filmed with FRONTLINE.

In the documentary:

Sally Mars was six years old when the U.S.-led invasion began in March 2003. In the documentary, she recalled hearing shooting and explosions. I remember that a missile hit very close to our house, she said. And my mom, she threw herself on top of us, me and my brothers. The house was shaking, we thought it would come down on us.

Whats happened since?

I really feel like Ive changed since we filmed the interview, Mars said. I feel like Im 50 years older now.

In October 2019, mass demonstrations erupted in Iraq as people rallied against corruption, lack of services, and high unemployment rates. It was a main turning point, she said.

The protests were met with a violent response. Bodies were dropping on the streets and the firing just continued with smoke everywhere, while blood flowed from the victims like waterfalls.

Angry and resolved, Mars joined the protests on Oct. 26. Everything inside me changed as I walked on my own through the demonstrations, she said. People she didnt know gave her water and a mask for tear gas. She saw people cooking food for the protesters and helping the injured. From that point, she said: I learned what it meant to be someone that loves their country, and what it means to fight for your rights, and for your freedom in the face of death.

The Iraq war changed the entirety of our society for the worse and destroyed Iraqis as individuals, Mars said. Our generation started rebuilding the strength in personality of the Iraqi individual by reclaiming our original roots and culture.

In the documentary:

When Ahmed Albasheer first saw American soldiers in Iraq, he said he felt hope. I had this dream that my country is becoming one of the good countries in the Middle East, or maybe in the world. But as the occupation continued, he saw the rise of sectarian division, with people carrying two pieces of identification one for Sunni checkpoints and one for Shia checkpoints. In the documentary, Albasheer said America did two major bad things in Iraq: the first was the invasion, and the second was withdrawing before Iraq was ready.

Whats happened since?

Albasheer said he felt the height of hope last October when massive anti-government protests began. The young men took to the streets to challenge the government and to demand a homeland I would say that my hopes were very high at that point, he said. I believed that everything was possible then.

Since then, he fears that the militias have grown even more politically influential, and its become dangerous and nearly impossible for young people who want to change the system. Protesters, he said, are not only facing a corrupt political system but super powers.

I cant see a clear future for Iraq at the moment, Albasheer said, noting that hundreds of protesters have been killed.

Anyone who wants to express their opinion will either be killed, bribed, or get death threats, escape the country, and speak from exile like me and many others do, he said.

In the documentary:

In Once Upon a Time in Iraq, Um Qusay recalled that life in her town under Saddam Hussein meant hunger and war. We used to eat chicken feed, she said. There was no rest, we were always at war. Wars that were not even necessary. Um Qusay also lived through the bloody and brutal reign of ISIS. She told the story of how she and fellow townspeople helped hide Iraqi army cadets who were being targeted by ISIS. When asked why she risked her life to protect those men, she said, The reason was that first of all, they are Iraqi.

Whats happened since?

Since she filmed the interview, Um Qusay said that Iraq is getting worse and worse by the day. She said, Theres a lot of pressure on regular civilians murder, massacres, demonstrations I dont know how to explain this, but we have no hope.

Um Qusay added: There needs to be complete oversight on those governing Iraq, so that its made sure that theyre doing whats right for the country.

In the documentary:

Tahany Saleh was a university student when ISIS took over the Iraqi city of Mosul in June 2014. Then, her life came to a standstill. I stopped going to university. We stopped going into the street, she said. As the Iraq army and the anti-ISIS coalition fought ISIS, Saleh was among the civilians caught in the cross fire. The army was bombing and ISIS was bombing. And we were right in the middle.

Whats happened since?

Saleh was interviewed for Once Upon a Time in Iraq shortly after the war to retake Mosul from ISIS. I perceived life in an indescribably intense way, she recalled. I had an overwhelming sense of survival. I had a lot of hope for change. There was a sense of possibility that we were going to revive the country, bring the city back, be safe, be stable.

Since that time, she has found herself disappointed. Things are very difficult now, very difficult, because we feel extremely let down as Iraqis, she said. Violence has increased, along with the power and influence of militias. Those who call for change are targeted for assassination, she said. I dont feel safe. I dont feel like my family and friends are safe, she said. I fear looking at my phone because I cant handle finding out that another person has been assassinated for speaking out, for trying to improve the country.

Ultimately, Saleh wishes for a better future and for Americans to better understand Iraqis. I hope that things change and that we can go back to dreaming again, she said. I just want to be able to hope.

Vanessa Bowles contributed reporting.

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Four Iraqis on Searching For Hope 17 Years After the Iraq War - FRONTLINE

The clocks struck 8.19pm on 6 July when Hisham al-Hashemi pulled his white Jeep Cherokee up outside his house in the eastern Baghdad neighbourhood of Zayouna.

It seems the prominent specialist in jihadist groups and star of Iraqi satellite news channels paid no attention to the motorcyclists parked approximately 20 metres from his home.

As Hashimi turned his car towards the front door of his house, the biker closest to him, hooded and dressed all in black, ran over to the car and attempted to fire his automatic rifle. The Kalashnikov only fired a single bullet, but it was enough to paralyse Hisham's movement, a senior police officer involved in the investigations told Middle East Eye.

Surveillance camera footage shows the gun jamming, and the gunman pausing briefly as he tried to fix the defect. Eventually, he instead pulled a handgun out of his jacket, ran towards the drivers window, fired several bullets towards Hashimi and withdrew.

Hashimis murder took less than a minute. In many respects, it resembled dozens of assassinations carried out in Baghdad and the central and southern provinces against activists, journalists and influencers over the past three years.

But it was different.

The 47-year-old was an expert in Sunni militant groups in Iraq and had helped the Iraqi security services and US forces dismantle or neutralise dozens of them over the past 13 years.

Because of this, hed made many enemies. However, few in the popularmedia and political circles, including those close to Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, believed the Islamic State group and its ilk were responsible.

Instead accusations have been pointed at Shia armed groups, in particular Kataeb Hezbollah, Iraqs powerful Iran-backed paramilitary and one of Kadhimis fiercest and most aggressive opponents.

Those close to Kadhimi believe Hashimis killing was only the harbinger of more to come and a direct challenge to the prime minister himself.

Intelligence sources told MEE that more of the prime ministers entourage are in the assailants sights.

The assassination, an adviser of the prime minister told MEE, was a message of intimidation to Kadhimi and his teams members from the gang of Katyusha, a nickname for Kataeb Hezbollah referencing the rockets used by the group to attack US interests in Iraq.

"The message clearly suggests that they can reach us any time, and that he [Kadhimi] is too weak to protect his people, the adviser said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

However, two more of Kadhimis advisers insist it is too early to confirm that Kataeb Hezbollah lies behind the killing, preferring instead to describe the culprit as a radical Shia group.

'We know that our names are all on the list, and that each of us must think that he is the next'

- Kadhimi adviser

We believe that they will target the members of Kadhimis inner circle with the aim of challenging him and dragging him into a traditional confrontation, which they have all the tools to win at this stage, one said.

"We know that our names are all on the list, and that each of us must think that he is the next.

Hashimis assassination and the danger now posed to his allies is an existential threat for the premiers fledgling two-month rule.

All of Kadhimis supporters and opponents, inside and outside Iraq, are wondering how he will respond.

Recent history suggests it may be confrontational.

Journalists and politicians who worked with Kadhimi or met him in exile in the 1990s describe him as a moderate, ambitious, very polite, a good listener and a man who does not tend to verbally or physically clash with his critics or opponents.

The prime minister tended to mix with intellectuals and writers. He built a reputation as someone who excelled at documenting violence against victims of the Baathist government, and managed to enjoy good relations with all parties involved in local and regional conflicts.

Since the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein, these characteristics have mostly stayed the same, according to a number of former colleagues who worked with him to establish the state-owned Iraqiya Media Network and magazine The Weekly.

Although Kadhimi helped establish many media projects, including the international website Al Monitor, he did not draw attention as a journalist or as a thinker, according to a prominent Iraqi journalist who has known the prime minister since their days working in the opposition against Saddam.

'A man of conviction': Grief and fury greet assassination of Iraqi analyst

Even during his four-year period as head of the intelligence service, Kadhimi avoided clashes with all of the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish political forces or Iranian-backed armed factions.

A Shia paramilitary commander close to Kataeb Hezbollah told MEE he managed this "despite having information proving that most of them were involved in criminal, economic and intelligence crimes", which would be enough to put them in jail or at least politically terminate them.

Yet since assuming the premiership, the man once known for operating sensitively from the shadows has taken several provocativestances.

He has surrounded himself with a number of researchers, journalists and activists who led or supported the protest movement that toppled his Iran-backed predecessor Adel Abdul Mahdi.

Among them are Hisham Dawood, a researcher in political anthropology;Harith Hasan, a political researcher;Mushreq Abbas, a journalist; Kadhim al-Sahlani, an academic and activist;Aqeel Abbas, an academic;Ahmed al-Mulla Talal, a TV anchor; and Ahmed al-Rikabi, a journalist.

Munqith Dagher, CEO of the Baghdad-based Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies think tank, describes Kadhimi as an expert in the game of media, which is why he has surrounded himself with media personalities.

His entourage, Dagher says, has been assembled in a parallel prime ministers office, with Kadhimi wary of shunting Abdul Mahdis staff aside.

He is a compromise man, so he did not make any major changes in the old prime minister's office staff, but he also created a small parallel office to which his special team, his group, and his advisers joined, Dagher says.

However, the prime ministers circle is seen by the Iran-backed factions as hostile to them, seeking revenge and keeping them from power, according to one of Kadhimis advisers.

Meanwhile, Kataeb Hezbollah has made no secret for its disdain for the man they hold responsible for the death of the armed factions founder, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was killed by a US drone strike alongside Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in January.

Ignoring Irans request to support - or at least permit - Kadhimis premiership, Kataeb Hezbollah has missed no opportunity to attack him through their media outlets, and stepped up the rate of rocket attacks targeting US assets in Baghdads Green Zone and Iraqi military bases.

In response, Kadhimi last month ordered the Counter-Terrorism Squad to raid one of the factions headquarters and arrest its fighters there.

It was a startling escalation-one that led to Kataeb Hezbollah vowing to teach Kadhimi a lesson because he "dared to storm one of its headquarters and arrest a number of its fighters", a commander of the armed group told MEE.

While Kadhimi's opponents were busy digging up the past of his entourage and plotting massive media campaigns to discredit and question their loyalties, the prime minister busied himself with elevating figures free from Iranian influence.

Over the past six weeks, he has issued a raft of decrees that have shaken up the militarys leadership and eased Irans grip on Iraqs security forces.

He assigned Lieutenant-General Abdul Amir Yarallah as chief of staff of the army, Lieutenant-General Abdel Amir al-Shammari as deputy of the commander of joint operations, and Lieutenant-General Abdul Wahab al-Saadi as commander of the Counter-Terrorism Squad. He also appointed Major-General Fayez al-Mamouri as director of military intelligence.

Not satisfied with those positions alone, Kadhimi removed Faleh al-Fayadh, head of the Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary, from his roles as the national security adviser and in the National Security Service, which he had run by proxy since 2009.

The Baghdad raid that put Kadhimi and Kataeb Hezbollah on a collision course

Lieutenant-General Abdul-Ghani al-Asadi was made head of the National Security Service, and Qassim al-Araji, the former interior minister, national security adviser.

Kadhimi also drew a clear line between combat forces on the one hand and military intelligence directorate and the agency tasked with probing military violations on the other. The National Security Agencys database was separated from the Iran-backed paramilitaries own security directorate, and he ordered the intelligence service to take command of the security of communications and information.

Suddenly, Kadhimi had a level of control over Iraqs military and security agencies unseen in years, and retained effective command of the intelligence agency he had just vacated.

All those military leaders are known for not being subject to the influence of the Iran-linked factions, a prominent former Iraqi intelligence officer and a friend of Kadhimi, who declined to be named, told MEE.

"Kadhimi is Iraqs boldest prime minister, and quickly rearranged the militarys house. All the prime ministers who preceded him were not able to identify the defects in the military, but Kadhimis work in intelligence over the past years helped him identify the deficiencies.

These figures are Kadhimis true team, the former officer said, describing it as a military government that the prime minister may soon use with effect.

As for the team of journalists and researchers, he used them to distract his opponents. He threw them to his opponents to busy themselves, and went to work elsewhere without disturbances, he said.

Kadhimi currently surrounds himself with two of the most dangerous forces in Iraq, the media and the military.

This has provoked his opponents, especially the forces linked to Iran.

They say that he mimics Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was also an intelligence officer, and that he seeks to strike his opponents unilaterally while in power, including the armed factions leaders and fighters.

The raid on Kataeb Hezbollahs headquarters last month and the arrest of its fighters, in addition to the changes in military staff, have intensified the suspicions of Kadhimis opponents that he is targeting them, and enflamed tensions.

Hashemis assassination was one of the consequences of this tension, one of Kadhimis advisers told MEE, adding that the premier does not seek to emulate Putin's personality, but he wants the law to have teeth.

This political system has reached the brink and will not produce anything after today, and therefore he [Kadhimi] is convinced that the moment of real change has arrived. But unfortunately it came at a very critical time and coincided with a severe financial crisis, a major collapse in oil prices, and a deadly pandemic, the adviser added.

He seeks to empower the law, and as such, he tries to bite into the chaos that engulfs the country, whenever an opportunity exists. But the resources and capabilities of the supporters of anarchy are still far greater than the state's supporters."

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The Iraqi power struggle behind a murder in Baghdad - Middle East Eye

When, at the end of May, President Donald Trump threatened to gun down looters in the streets of Minneapolis, some heard echoes of Paul Bremer. The top civilian administrator presiding over the occupation of Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004, Bremer is usually remembered for his decisions to disband the countrys military and fire countless state employees under the imperatives of de-Baathification. Because the viceroys reckless policies kicked off an insurgency, its often forgotten that the George W. Bush administration dispatched him to restore law and order to the Middle East. Upon arriving, he sought to build a muscular Iraqi police force in collaboration with former New York Police Department commissioner Bernie Kerik. Bremer also tried to change the militarys rules of engagement to allow American soldiers to fire on looters drifting through Baghdads debris-peppered streets.

Read against current events, anecdotes of Bremers first days in Iraq bring to mind Stuart Schraders observation that the history of US empire is the history of policing experts teaching indigenous cops how to patrol and investigate like Americans ... But the flow is not one-way: these institutions also return home transformed. The crises of the past few years reveal that this dialectic extends beyond law enforcement to encompass the entire metropole. The Pentagons growing transfers of military surplus left over from the Iraq War to police departments correlate with a coarsening of the United States political culture. And it is with an eye toward this broader embrace of brutality and impunity that Brendan James argues that the Iraq War is a skeleton key for where we are now.

James and Noah Kulwin are the creators and cohosts of a new podcast on the war and the pathologies that emerged in its wake, aptly titled Blowback. Over the course of ten episodes, the two sketch out what they describe as a counter-history of Americas forays into Iraq. Listeners working their way through the series will hear clips from CNN and MSNBC broadcasts, and anecdotes drawn from the reportage of mainstream journalists, like George Packer and Bob Woodward. What emerges from the synthesis constructed by the hosts is a criticism of these conventional secondary sources. James and Kulwin paint a portrait of a deluded and venal elite convinced that the exercise of American power today will solve the problems created by the exercise of American power in the past.

The hosts include liberals among that elite, taking aim at Democratic politicians who voted to authorize the use of military force against Iraq, as well as celebrities and media figures who supported the invasion. Kulwin, whose essays on foreign policy and technology appear in the gaggle of young or revivified publications associated with the Bernie Sanders left, is a contributing editor to Jewish Currents. James also writes for publications like the Baffler and Jacobin, but he is perhaps most well known for his past role as the producer of the sardonic podcast Chapo Trap House.

It is no surprise, then, that the comical tone of the aforementioned program finds its way into Blowback an episode describing insurgents in occupied Iraq is titled The #Resistance, and the historical narrative is occasionally interrupted by the voice of Saddam Hussein, played by comedic actor H. Jon Benjamin, renowned for his roles in Archer and Bobs Burgers. But in spite of these occasional fits of humor, Blowback is not frivolous. The writing, facilitated by Jamess deft scoring, shifts registers where appropriate. For example, the trauma and tragedy of the civil war unleashed by the invasion of Iraq is imparted to listeners by an account of a father searching for his missing son among the corpses in Baghdads overflowing morgues. The podcasts levity comes at the expense of the unaccountable political and military figures that either negligently enabled or perpetrated atrocities in Iraq. Faced with epochal crimes for which there may be no redress, laughter becomes a kind of sovereignty, a triumph over ones own powerlessness.

The substance of Kulwin and Jamess critique of conventional histories of the war in Iraq is also serious. To begin with, there is the matter of chronology. Typically, the start of the war is dated to George W. Bushs invasion in March 2003. Barack Obamas troop withdrawal in December 2011 marks its conclusion. In Blowback, the start and end dates are hazier. They fold into a broader history of Anglo-American marauding in Mesopotamia from the 1920s to the present. Special attention is paid to the inconclusive first Gulf War and the unprecedentedly severe sanctions regime of the 1990s, both of which hollowed out Iraqs economy and political institutions long before Bremer began issuing his ruinous decrees.

Accounts of the war with wider historical lenses often bring into focus the sectarian polarization that marred Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion. But James and Kulwin do not dwell on the topic of sectarianism. Instead, they pay an unusual amount of attention to another social cleavage that runs through both Iraq and the United States today: class. This shift in emphasis has its downsides. Blowback fails to convey the malleability of sectarian identity, and to record the myriad of ways in which American interventions in Iraq reified and exacerbated communal tensions along this axis. The widespread view, echoed by even Barack Obama, that contemporary sectarian conflicts date back millennia, absolves American policymakers of responsibility for destructive decisions, like creating a quota system on the Iraqi Governing Council.

On the other hand, the authentically socialist portrayal of Iraq as a flash point in a global class war casts the beneficiaries and victims of empire in a fresh light. In the first episode, the hosts explain that the British Empires exploitation of Iraqs oil resources weakened restive coal miners unions back in the UK. In the final episode, listeners learn of Iraqs extensive poverty around 20 percent of the residents of the oil-rich country lived off of $2.20 a day for many years after the invasion and of the vast fortunes of the architects of the war Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Dick Cheney are all multimillionaires. The inchoate suggestion borne by these snippets is that somehow global inequality and perpetual interventions in the politics of the Middle East are bound together.

Another of Blowbacks virtues is its use of didactic character studies of war supporters, like Ahmed Chalabi, and Bush administration officials, like Douglas Feith, to convey criticism of conventional narratives of the war. Perhaps the most interesting of these portraits is of Donald Rumsfeld, who Kulwin and James redefine as a zealous and ultimately effective proponent of neoliberalism from his time as chief of staff in the Ford administration to his tenure as secretary of defense in the Bush administration. Upon resigning in disgrace at the height of Iraqs civil war in 2006, Rumsfeld was roundly criticized for his cost-cutting, small-footprint approach to warfare marked by an overreliance on military contractors and advanced technology. But something akin to Rumsfelds military doctrine has since become hegemonic. Despite Rumsfelds ouster, the United States continued its drift toward high-tech drone warfare, special operations forces raids, and overwhelming air power as its primary modes of war. The fleeting gains of Bushs vaunted 2007 troop surge, which signaled to some a move away from Rumsfelds approach, evaporated under ISISs blitzkrieg on Mosul in 2014.

The podcasts most important lesson is that the war was not a fait accompli. The damage wrought was foreseeable. Against Secretary of State Powell, who persuaded liberal opinion makers to support the invasion in spite of his own personal reservations, there was foreign secretary Robin Cook, who resigned from Tony Blairs government over the decision to go to war. Jingoistic reporting and editorializing in the pages of the New York Times and the New Yorker did not erase massive anti-war marches in the streets of New York and other capitals around the world. And in opposition to those legislators, like Joe Biden, who bought into the Bush administrations case for war, there were 156 dissenters in the halls of Congress who voted nay on the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq.

In Teju Coles novel Open City, the main character, Julius, reads aloud from a newspaper to an elderly mentor, Professor Saito. The year is 2007, the Iraq War has reached a new nadir, and Julius, reading from a Manhattan apartment, cannot contain his dismay. Professor Saito responds to his uneasy student:

I felt that way about a different war ... You go through that experience only once, the experience of how futile war can be ... There are towns whose names evoke a real horror in you because you have learned to link those names with atrocities, but, for the generation that follows yours, those names will mean nothing; forgetting doesnt take long. Fallujah will be as meaningless to them as Daejeon is to you.

If only. American troops remain stationed in Iraq. Those most responsible for the atrocities of the war continue to play an outsize role on our national stage. Until they exit, no generation will follow that of the Iraq War. And until a new kind of leadership takes the reins of American foreign policy, no generation will follow that of the Korean War. Fallujah and Daejon will resurface as new Fallujahs and Daejons are perpetrated.

It is easy to sympathize with the contributor who, in an episode of Blowback, remarks: I wish I could get this shit out of my brain and stop knowing or caring about these people, but theyre all still here ... theyre all still planning the next war.

Link:
The Iraq War Is the Skeleton Key - Jacobin magazine