War

Syrian forces and rebels accuse each other of firing a chemical weapon, but only the rebels have an incentive to actually do so. They also have the track record of committing atrocities and blaming them on Syrian forces. If the Syrian military wanted to use chemical weapons, why would they fire one shell? Apparently the weapon killed 16 Syrian soldiers and was launched just days after a senior US congressman declared use of a chemical weapon would result in direct US involvement in the civil war. Claims that the Syrian army launched this weapon are laughable.

Pat Buchanan provides a more accurate assessment of the Iraq war disaster.

"What makes the question more than academic is that the tub-thumpers for war on Iraq a decade ago are now clamoring for war on Iran. Goal: Strip Iran of weapons of mass destruction all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran does not have and has no program to build."

There's that problem with government so-called experts again. No matter how many times they're wrong, they keep their jobs and the government continues to promote them as experts.

An honest appraisal of the role of oil in Bush's decision to invade Iraq.

"Wars rarely have one clear and singular purpose, and the Iraq War in particular was driven by different agendas prioritized by different factions. To say it was fought exclusively due to oil is an oversimplification. But the fact that oil is a major factor in every Western military action in the Middle East is so self-evident that it's astonishing that it's even considered debatable, let alone some fringe and edgy idea."

Agreed, but neither Buchanan nor Greenwald mention another powerful motivation for the war identified by a commenter:

"They have a lot of oil. No one is arguing otherwise. But to say it's the only reason, or even the main reason we invaded, is a little naive. Hell, I would argue that Saddam's desire to change Iraq's oil trading to a non-dollar currency factored in larger than the actual oil. Didn't Qaddafi threaten to do the same thing right before NATO rocked his world?"

Iran is doing the same thing too. That's the common denominator behind all these invasions. We didn't invade Venezuela. We didn't invade Sudan. That's because they didn't threaten to abandon the dollar.

News outlets tend to claim that 100,000 or more Iraqis died as a result of the US invasion. This source claims 1,455,590 deaths.

98 killed, 240 wounded in Iraq. Some anniversary.