And how might we consider the long-term psychological or spiritual trauma that those who experience war so often suffer? I’m talking about those who died from substance use, excessive risk taking or the cumulative stresses of homelessness. Even if they were not killed in action, many no doubt were killed by action. Should we inscribe their […]
Read More
To understand why progressives should challenge Joe Biden in the upcoming Democratic presidential primary, remember what happened during the last one. When Bernie Sanders exited the 2020 race — after winning more than 1,000 delegates — he cashed in his votes for public policy clout. Mr. Sanders’s supporters joined Mr. Biden’s allies in working groups […]
Read More
This is a tough column for a liberal to write. You may recall that I spent eight years hammering President George W. Bush for just about everything he did (and he deserved it!), yet one more thing must be said: Bush started the single best policy of any president in my lifetime. This year marks […]
Read More
That would leave Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, as potentially the biggest obstacle to repealing the resolutions. Mr. McCaul, who has vocally opposed rolling them back in the past, has written a draft bill to replace the 2002 authorization rather than replacing it, but he declined […]
Read More
“I think Bush is an extraordinarily complex person,” said Melvyn P. Leffler, a University of Virginia historian who just published “Confronting Saddam Hussein,” a book examining the war. “On the one hand, he appears to believe that his decision to invade Iraq was correct. On the other hand, looking at his book of paintings, you […]
Read More
It was supposed to be a farewell party. Young soldiers and their barely older civilian government colleagues were dressed in swimming trunks, cannonballing into a palace pool that had once been a symbol of the deposed dictator Saddam Hussein’s power. Other young Americans were chowing down on corn on the cob and burgers. I was […]
Read More
BAGHDAD — The thump of a car bomb explosion, then a whoosh of flame interrupting homework; the low boom of a roadside bomb and seconds later the shattering of glass jolting families awake; an apartment door being kicked open in the middle of the night and someone shouting in a foreign language; the pop, pop, […]
Read More
WASHINGTON — A month before President George W. Bush first sent American troops into Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was warned that the war might end up costing the United States billions of dollars. Mr. Rumsfeld’s reply to retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the American tasked with overseeing Iraq’s postwar reconstruction, would constitute a […]
Read More
If visitors to Baghdad knew nothing of Iraqi politics, they could be forgiven for thinking that the trim-bearded, green-uniformed man whose larger-than-life photo is everywhere in the Iraqi capital was Iraq’s president. Along the boulevard that tracks the Tigris River and inside the Green Zone, the seat of Iraq’s government, the likeness of Maj. Gen. […]
Read More
A couple of streets away from the new buildings and noisy main road of the desert city of Falluja, there was once a sports stadium. The goal posts are long gone, the stands rotted years ago. Now, every inch is covered with gravestones. “This is the martyrs’ graveyard,” said Kamil Jassim Mohammed, 70, the cemetery’s […]
Read More
The explosions on the first night, lighting up the sky as they burned through buildings below, were only the earliest blasts of the yearslong war to come. For the thousands of days and nights that followed, eruptions across Iraq came from warplanes and cannons, grenade launchers and mines, machine guns, pistols and handmade bombs. What […]
Read More
There is a question about the American-led invasion of Iraq that, 20 years later, remains a matter of deep uncertainty and debate among historians, political scientists and even officials who helped set the war in motion. It’s not the war’s toll in American military deaths (about 4,600) or Iraqi lives (estimates generally fall around 300,000 or […]
Read More
Text by Michael Tucker Months after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, I began filming the U.S. Army’s 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment (known as the Gunners) in Baghdad. The unit was housed in a bombed-out palace on the banks of the Tigris that they named Gunner Palace. Rather than just making a […]
Read More
“The surge strategy reset negative trends and set the conditions for longer-term stability,” the memo said. “The coming 18 months, however, may be the most strategically significant in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein,” it added, putting that in boldface. Referring to Al Qaeda of Iraq, it said, “AQI is down but not out […]
Read More
A Chinese balloon seen hovering over Montana this week has been described as an “intelligence-gathering” airship by the Pentagon and a stray civilian research airship by China. Whatever its intended use, the balloon offers a reminder of how for more than a century, governments have used balloons for surveillance and observation, most often during times […]
Read More