By Dave Lindorff

Reuters may be “satisfied” with the Pentagon’s investigation
concluding that US troops were “justified” in their slaying of the news
organization’s working journalist Waleed Khaled back in 2005, but the
rest of us shouldn’t be.

Khaled and his driver were killed by US troops when they came on a
firefight involving US troops and Iraqi police who were allegedly under
attack. The Pentagon report into the incident concluded that the two
men came onto the scene, and American forces, seeing Khaled’s videocam
and tripod, thought it was a rocket launcher. They reportedly fired
warning shots. When Khaled’s driver did the logical thing, backing
slowly from the scene, US troops “assumed it was an insurgent tactic”
and fired to “disable” the vehicle, killing the two men.

By Dave Lindorff

I admit to feeling a little like the weatherman who keeps saying it's going to rain, and who eventually is proven correct. I feel certain that the Bush/Cheney regime is going to launch a disastrous attack on Iran, but have made several calls, which have been proved wrong, beginning back in October 2006, when I wrote that it looked like several aircraft carrier battle groups were being put in position for the assault, but then it was called off.

Now it looks like the attack is coming soon.

By Dave Lindorff

During my six-year sojourn in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, one of the things I came away with was a sense of how generally un-nationalistic and non-patriotic the Chinese people were.

Caught up in the struggle first to simply survive and then, in the mid-90s, to try and grab onto the moving train that was China’s new Great Leap into Capitalism, average mainland Chinese, whether out in the remote farmlands of western Anhui Province or in the rundown houses lining the hutongs of Shanghai or Beijing, had no time for patriotic displays or nationalistic concerns.

When Chinese Communist Party leaders in Beijing would beat the drum of nationalism over Taiwanese independence efforts in the 1990s, it evoked mostly yawns among average Chinese people, and in fact, to Beijing’s embarrassment, a popular computer game featured a war-game in which Taiwan defeated the People’s Liberation Army.

By Dave Lindorff

In a couple days, Americans will be deluged with effusive, praise-filled stories in what passes for news organizations, print and electronic, in the US, quoting Gen. David Petraeus on the glories of his and President Bush’s brilliant so-called "surge" strategy in Iraq.

There will be little critical comment on his report, which will claim that the surge is working but that Iraqi’s “need to do more” to take advantage of the surge in stability to create a stable government in Baghdad.

By Dave Lindorff

Well, the toll of wasted American lives in Iraq has hit 4000. But hey, who’s counting?

Certainly not the folks in the White House and the Pentagon, and certainly not John McCain, the prospective Republican nominee for president, who thinks the war is going just dandy.

But it’s worth noting that about a year ago, around the time that Bush’s “surge” plan got implemented with the addition of some 30,000 additional troops to the Iraq theater, the number of dead was about 3000. So it’s fair to say that Bush’s “surge” policy—his “escalation of the war in order to end it” plan—has directly led to the deaths of 1000 more young American men and women.

And what has he achieved with this bonus sacrifice?

By Dave Lindorff

It’s appropriate that on this week of the fifth anniversary of the criminal US invasion of Iraq, we are also seeing several other things: the death toll of American troops in that doomed adventure is rising past 4000, the economy is sliding into a recession which could be deep and long, and the financial markets are teetering on the edge of a possibly historic collapse.

The conjunction of all of these dire things is no coincidence.

By Dave Lindorff

Several years ago, I warned that as the Bush/Cheney administration sought to reduce politically problematic casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would resort to increased use of air attacks to combat the growing insurgency in Iraq and the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

I also predicted that the result of this switch in tactics would lead to higher civilian casualties in those two countries.

We're now seeing those results.

Announcer: [cue peppy marching music] It's time once again to play Worldwide Preemptive War, the exciting TV game all America is playing . . . whether they like it or not . . . where members of our studio audience compete for fantastic prizes, like getting out of here alive without a serious injury. Our first contestant is Joe Grunt, from the Topeka, Kansas National Guard . . . COME ON DOWN!

Contestant 1: Hey, wait a minute, I just signed up for a weekend a month.

Announcer: [laughing] Read your contract, son, including the part about stop loss extensions. And our second contestant is George W. Bush from the Texas Air National Guard . . . COME ON DOWN! . . .

MediaMatters cataches old Rushbo in flagrante:

Have we become a nation of totally silly people? Today 22 Democratic senators voted along with the Republicans to condemn MoveOn’s ad which questioned the credibility of General Petraeus’s report on the war. Senator Levin described the ad as “outrageous.” And I just heard Mark Shields, who I have thought to be a pretty astute political pundit, pontificating on PBS about the “tastelessness” of the ad and how terribly insulting the ad was because “Americans don’t like to have their names made fun of.” What country am I in? What planet am I on? If I heard the most recent figures correctly the estimate is that as many as one million human beings have been killed in Iraq. And we’ve been doing somersaults for the last two or three weeks about the MoveOn ad? This is the premier issue of the day?