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[At-Largely] NYT Iraq War Timeline Whitewashes History (Part I: Hans Blix ...: Hans Blix saw his presentation before the Security Council as areport card with which to forceIraq's hand to be more forthcoming with his team of weapons inspectors.In the end, his dedication to the facts, of painting an exhaustive viewof Iraq's cooperation up to that point, over a mere two-month period,left his findings vulnerable to cherry-picking by those, in the Bushadministration and the media, who were beating the war drums. Blixrelated that Iraq had, as of Jan.

[Jenny's Pennies] Friday food for thought - Iraq, five years on edition: What I found instead were young men hiding their regrets from neighbors who wanted to celebrate them as war heroes. They seemed relieved to talk with me about things no one else wanted to hear””not just about the acts themselves, but also about the guilt, pain, and anger they felt along with pride and righteousness about their service.

 [Joejolly's Weblog] A war of utter folly ( Hans Blix ): In 2003, Iraq was not a real or imminent threat to anybody. Instead, the invasion reflects a claim made in the 2002 US national security strategy that the charter was too restrictive, and that the US was ready to use armed force to meet threats that were uncertain as to time and place - a doctrine of preventive war.

 [pittsburghthoughts] Saddam did work with terror groups associated with al Qaeda: While these documents do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al Qaeda network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al Qaeda as long as Saddam could have these terrorist-operatives monitored closely. Because Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups.

 [The Sisyphus Files] What We Have Accomplished in Iraq: The Anniversary: Five years after the start of the war in Iraq, it’s become common wisdom ”” among mainstream media and Beltway pundits, anyway ”” that it’s all been a failure. They couldn’t be more wrong.

[Untitled] Dallas Morning News offered mediocre performance in pre-war coverage: The Dallas Morning News did not fail completely in its coverage leading up to the invasion of Iraq, as many critics have alleged. However, the paper could have incorporated more viewpoints on the front page, as well as devoted more coverage to other Iraq topics, including post-war planning and the invasion’s possible implications for the greater Middle East.

 [(((Billy))) The Atheist] Five Years and Counting: Lives Lost to Lies!: of America, satisfying to take down a truly destructive dictator.  Never mind that we helped to make him.  Never mind that we winked at his use of poison gas against Iran and his own people.  Never mind that, no matter what his frightened scientists said, he had no programme to produce weapons of mass destruction.  Never mind that he never threw the inspectors out.  Never mind that there never was ANY link between the secular dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and al Qaida.  Never mind that the uranium purchases were a clumsy forgery. 

[Untitled] The Dallas Morning News on Iraq: a mediocre performance: 16, the paper ran editorial which stated that Hussein had failed to comply with the U.N Security Council resolution to disarm. Ignoring Iraq’s non-compliance, the editorial said, could allow the “possibility that Iraq could use its artfully concealed weapons to wreak murder on an unprecedented scale.”

 [Blue Bexley] Why I Don't Protest: On the other hand, Hussein was known to have experimented with chemical and biological weapons, and the destruction of said weapons was exceedingly difficult to confirm given the lax record keeping, lack of cooperation, and possible ignorance of the Iraq government. Absent free and unfettered inspections, we were left with an increasingly untenable sanctions regime.

 [Masson's Blog] John Cole does an Iraq War Retrospective: If you took all the wrongness I generated, put it together and compacted it and processed it, there would be enough concentrated stupid to fuel three hundred years of Weekly Standard journals. I am not sure how I snapped out of it, but I think Abu Ghraib and the negative impact of the insurgency did sober me up a bit.

 [The Libertarian Alliance: BLOG] The War: Five Years on - Was Sean Right?: Whatever the side benefits of these campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq (and there have been benefits as I’ve been to both countries and seen it for myself) have been for Afghan and Iraqi citizens, the fact remains that it seems a huge amount of people have convinced themselves now that it doesn’t really matter if they were misled or not, in the reason given for going into both those countries in the first place.

[The Big Breakfast Blog - Leaner, Meaner, Funnier] Comment: 5th Anniversary of Iraq Invasion: That total number of deaths (all Iraqis) in the report included all excess deaths due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poorer healthcare, etc, and included civilians, military deaths and insurgent deaths. Of those who died 601,027 were considered “violent deaths”.

[Just Foreign Policy News] Just Foreign Policy News, March 21, 2008: If Americans are to make informed judgments not only about the invasion of Iraq and whether the occupation should continue, but also about future wars our government may wish to start, then we need to have good information about the war’s impact on Iraqis.

[Oliver Kamm] Iraq commentaries: I fully accept that the extent of that breach was problematic, and that in retrospect the UN weapons inspectors did a much more effective job of dismantling Iraqi weapons programs than many believed at the time, but absent full Iraqi compliance, Iraqi disarmament was an open question at the time, and neither the pro- nor anti- war commentators can honestly claim any superior judgement over the other in hindsight. Iraq was in breach of UN SCR's, the only question remaining being whether or not this was sufficient to justify the 2003 invasion (or even the Blair/Bush hyperbole about it, even if this shouldn't detract from criticism of the anti-war 'war about oil' hyperbole).

[A NEWT ONE] Iraq: Five Years Later: Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 authorizes the use of all necessary means to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 and subsequent relevant resolutions and to compel Iraq to cease certain activities that threaten international peace and security, including the development of weapons of mass destruction and refusal or obstruction of United Nations weapons inspections in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, repression of its civilian population in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688, and threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 949;

 [Change & Experience: The Hillary Blog] Hillary Clinton Delivers Remarks on Ending the War in Iraq: We’ll empower local leaders and use U.S. and international influence to press the Iraqis to reach political reconciliation, and I will call on the United Nations to strengthen its role in promoting this reconciliation. Not having been a party to the mistakes of the path five years, the U.N., which has already provided valuable technical assistance in Iraq, is far more likely to be viewed as a neutral, honest broker than the United States, especially when it acts on behalf of a broad coalition of concerned states and the international community.

[Strategic News Service] Why I Oppose An Iraq War: (In an April 2002 speech, FBI Director Robert Mueller said, “We ran down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we could get our hands on.” The conclusion: Atta was never in Prague on the day of the alleged meeting and there was no evidence that he ever met with Iraqi intelligence officials.) Nonetheless, senior members of the Bush administration continued to repeat the claim. Only recently, with the focus shifting from “regime change” to Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, have administration officials stopped citing the Prague meeting, and it was not part of the case against Saddam made by Secretary of State Powell to the United Nations on Feb.

[Allen L Roland's Radio Weblog] OBAMA'S SPEECH AGAINST IRAQ WAR / OCTOBER 2002: Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil.

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