Baghdad Year Zero: Naomi Klein

Baghdad Year Zero -- Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia (Harpers.org): "I was also reminded of the most common explanation for what has gone wrong in Iraq, a complaint echoed by everyone from John Kerry to Pat Buchanan: Iraq is mired in blood and deprivation because George W. Bush didn’t have “a postwar plan.” The only problem with this theory is that it isn’t true. The Bush Administration did have a plan for what it would do after the war; put simply, it was to lay out as much honey as possible, then sit back and wait for the flies.

The honey theory of Iraqi reconstruction stems from the most cherished belief of the war’s ideological architects: that greed is good. Not good just for them and their friends but good for humanity, and certainly good for Iraqis. Greed creates profit, which creates growth, which creates jobs and products and services and everything else anyone could possibly need or want. The role of good government, then, is to create the optimal conditions for corporations to pursue their bottomless greed, so that they in turn can meet the needs of the society. The problem is that governments, even neoconservative governments, rarely get the chance to prove their sacred theory right: despite their enormous ideological advances, even George Bush’s Republicans are, in their own minds, perennially sabotaged by meddling Democrats, intractable unions, and alarmist environmentalists."

Pro-War Liberals Frozen in the Headlights

Pro-War Liberals Frozen in the Headlights (Harpers.org): "Packer's book is nothing if not the autobiography of a liberal dupe. Its central narrative concerns the political journey of Packer's Svengali, Kanan Makiya, whose ascent from Iraqi Trotskyist and anti-Saddam exile to Cambridge (Mass.) intellectual to friend of Ahmed Chalabi to intimate adviser to Bush's “cabal” of right-wing radicals is related in excruciating detail.

Like Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, Makiya fancies himself a “revolutionary” using bullets made in the forges of the Enlightenment. But the whole neo-con notion of “shocking” the Arab and Muslim worlds onto the true and only path of “democracy” parallels the merciless Bolshevik mentality of 1917 more than it follows on the tolerant ruminations of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau.

So what if tens of thousands of bystanders get killed in the wake of the overwhelming historical forces of progress? Like Lenin and Trotsky, the neo-cons want world revolution, not slow evolution.

Packer reports (without evident irony) that Makiya told Bush that invading Iraq would “transform the image of America in the Arab world” (boy, did it ever), and he quotes his brainy pal as explaining to the president that once freed of Saddam Hussein, “people will greet the troops with sweets and flowers.” Yet even after 2 1/2 years of carnage, the tender, doubt-filled George Packer is still seduced by his “idealistic” Iraqi soulmate.

Despite the “recklessness of its authors,” Packer writes, “the Iraq war was always winnable; it still is.”

I'll grant Packer this much: He has a terrific, if unwitting, ear for the absurd and the grotesque. In The Assassins' Gate we learn that Makiya wept while he sat with Bush in front of a TV and watched Saddam's statue pulled down, in what we now know was a staged photo op — also that “the sound of the first bombs falling on Baghdad was, to Makiya, a joyful noise.” "

Interview: Stephen Gaghan

Stephen Gaghan interview: "I met so many people who were just certain, they were certain; They had this great speech; they would tell you how the world works, and it was so convincing. So convincing. And then an hour later, you’d meet somebody else and he would tell you how the world works, and they were so convincing, too. And the problem was that their worldviews were a hundred and eighty degrees from each other, and this is really unsettling. And it happened again and again and again, and I thought “Holy shit – could it be that nobody is seeing the whole picture? Could it be that all these people who have this fucking talk – this often ideological talk – are masking some self-interest? That all these people who are posturing like Talleyrand -- they don’t have the whole picture?"

Control Room on MovieNite

MovieNite: Control Room (2004): "Samir Khader, a senior producer for the controversial Arab network, is an equally complex figure, motivated by an apparent mix of cynicism and idealism. “You can’t wage a war without news, without media, without propaganda,” he declares. Khader presses for war coverage that emphasizes its human toll, including casualties inflicted on Iraqi women and children. Nevertheless, the Iraqi-born journalist later confesses that he dreams of moving to America. “Between us,” he says, “if I am offered a job with Fox, I will take it.”"

Babylon by Bus

Babylon by Bus Or, the true story of two friends who gave up their valuable franchise selling "Yankees suck" T-shirts at Fenway to find meaning and adventure in Iraq

by Jeff Neumann, Ray LeMoine, Donovan Webster

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (August 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594200912

Amazon Link

Yankees Suck T-shirts here and here.

Totally Unauthorized

Totally Unauthorized: "I work in the film industry, as a crew member. I'm also an 'independent filmaker', but I make my money by busting my ass on big movies - many of which I've never seen."

Guardian | Iraq timeline: July 16 1979 to January 31 2004

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Iraq timeline: July 16 1979 to January 31 2004: "Iraq timeline: July 16 1979 to January 31 2004January 31 2004
Twelve people died and at least 50 were injured yesterday in two attacks by Iraqi insurgents in northern Iraq.
Nine killed in bomb attack on Iraq police

January 30 2004
Condoleezza Rice, one of US president George Bush's most trusted lieutenants and a strong advocate of the invasion of Iraq, admits that the intelligence that said Iraq had WMDs may have been wrong. 'What we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground,' she tells CBS News.
Rice admits US doubts on WMD

January 28 2004
David Kay, the former head of the US weapons inspection teams in Iraq, tells a senate committee 'we were almost all wrong' in believing before the war that Saddam Hussein had chemical or biological arms.
We were all wrong, says ex-weapons inspector

January 19 2004
Tens of thousands of Shia Muslims demonstrate in Baghdad to demand prompt elections.
100,000 demand Iraqi elections

January 18 2004
A suicide bomber detonates a pick-up truck laden with 500kg of explosives at the main gate of the US headquarters in Iraq, killing at least 20 people and injuring more than 100.
Suicide bomb at US headquarters kills 20 and injures more than 100

January 17 2004
The number of US soldiers killed in Iraq since the invasion in March climbs to 500 when a roadside bomb killed three US soldiers and two Iraqi troops.
Bomb takes US toll in Iraq war to 500

January 9 2004
At least five people were killed and dozens more injured when a bomb exploded near a mosque in the central Iraqi town of Baquba.
Five killed in Iraq mosque blast

January 6 2004
Two French nationals working in Iraq were shot and killed after their car broke down in the troubled town of Falluja, the French foreign ministry announces.
French workers shot in Iraq

January 5 2004
Three American soldiers have been discharged after being found guilty of viciously beating and harassing Iraqi prisoners of war, it is revealed.
US soldiers sent home for beating prisoners of war

January 1 2004
Two experienced members of the SAS were are in a crash in Baghdad
SAS men killed in Baghdad crash"

2003 Invasion of Iraq - Wikipedia

2003 Invasion of Iraq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The United Nations announced a report on March 2, 2004 from the weapons inspection teams stating that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction of any significance after 1994. [40]"