The most serious consequences of the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq confirm what millions of people around the world warned about 17 years ago.

While the world is consumed with the terrifying coronavirus pandemic, on March 19 the Trump administration will be marking the 17th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by ramping up the conflict there. After an Iran-aligned militia allegedly struck a U.S. base near Baghdad on March 11, the U.S. military carried out retaliatory strikes against five of the militia’s weapons factories and announced it is sending two more aircraft carriers to the region, as well as new Patriot missile systems and hundreds more troops to operate them. This contradicts the January vote of the Iraqi Parliament that called for U.S. troops to leave the country. It also goes against the sentiment of most Americans, who think the Iraq war was not worth fighting, and against the campaign promise of Donald Trump to end the endless wars.

What’s the matter with us
that we allow
Endless wars, new wars
Wars, wars and more wars?

As U.S. threats against Venezuela continue with the U.S. selection and then recognition of non-elected Juan Guaido as the interim president, there have been threats by Guaido supporters, again backed by the Trump/Pence Regime, to take over the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington DC.

Debra Sweet | May 16, 2019

If you believe Trump is so isolationist that he wouldn't use the tremendous military force he controls to attack, invade, occupy, change regimes or worse, you've been bamboozled. This is the guy who used the "mother of all bombs" and wants to know "if we have nukes, why can't we use them?"

Looking to the storms coming in 2019, we consider, how is Trump the same as other U.S. presidents, and how is his regime markedly different, requiring concerted action from us?

Each of the three "war on terror" presidents were and are completely committed to the US empire's domination of the globe through military supremacy.  Each declared victory in the illegitimate endless war in their own way.  George “W” Bush proclaimed "mission accomplished" (2003),  Obama did it with "air strikes… taking out ISIL leaders, heavy weapons, oil tankers, infrastructure," promoting a "network of partners" instead of invasions (2015) and, Trump bluntly declared victory over ISIS in Syria, saying "now, we've won" (2018).

Amazon is seeking to build a global “brain” for the Pentagon called JEDI, a weapon of unprecedented surveillance and killing power, a profoundly aggressive weapon that should not be allowed to be created.

Founded in 1994 as an online book seller, Amazon is now the world’s largest online retailer, with more than 300 million customers worldwide, and net sales of $178 billion in 2017.

Amazon has built a vast, globally distributed data storage capacity and sophisticated artificial intelligence programs to propel its retail business that it hopes to use to win a $10 billion Pentagon contract to create the aforementioned “brain” that goes by the project name Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, a moniker obviously concocted to yield the Star Wars acronym — JEDI.

I sifted through the children’s backpacks laid at the Isaiah Wall, across from the United Nations, looking for one labeled with the name of an 11 year-old boy. That’s the age of my son, and carrying it would help me feel closer to the lives we were mourning. I found one.

Abd al-llah Abdullah Hussein al-Raza, along with 39 other school children, was killed in a Saudi airstrike on August 9, 2018, in Yemen’s Saada province. They were traveling on a celebratory end-of-year field trip when a bomb hit their bus, killing eleven adults as well as the children. The United States supplied the bomb, manufactured by Lockheed Martin. In press photos, heaps of the children’s bloodied, blue backpacks anchored the grotesque tableau of a massacre.

It should not have taken the murder of school children to at last focus the world’s attention on the war that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates having been waging on Yemen since March 2015. Merciless bombardments, the sealing of ports, disease, mass starvation, and the suffering of children have been its hallmarks. Since the war’s start, more than 85,000 children under the age of five may have died from hunger alone. Any purported justification of the war as a means to thwart Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels has vaporized long ago in this ferocious depravity.

“I certified to Congress yesterday that the governments of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are undertaking demonstrable actions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure resulting from military operations of these governments.”

—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, September 12

The Trump/Pence regime’s “certification” that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were reducing “harm to civilians” is worse than a sham. And so was its claim to be working to “allow unimpeded access” for humanitarian relief and taking actions to lessen the war’s catastrophic impact on Yemeni civilians.

In the first two parts of this report, I have estimated that about 2.4 million people have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, while about 1.2 million have been killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a result of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.  In the third and final part of this report, I will estimate how many people have been killed as a result of U.S. military and CIA interventions in Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen.

Those who perpetrated the Iraq War are still at large, we are reminded by Attytood blogger Will Bunch. "The good people who made a few tiny mistakes back in those crazy post-9/11 times [haven't] turned over a new leaf."

How did America get to this state of amnesia?

CIA Director nominee Gina Haspel allies say she has learned from her mistakes (torture of Cat's Eye detainees). George W. Bush's Iraq War cheerleader John Bolton insists he's not that guy anymore. The former president channels his "inner Rembrandt" to rehabilitate his image by painting portraits of military veterans. Barack Obama turned a blind-eye to prosecution for war crimes in the interest of partisan harmony.

"There are few people more likely than Mr. Bolton is to lead the country into war. His selection is a decision that is as alarming as any Mr. Trump has made so far," asserts The New York Times Editorial Board. "Coupled with his nomination of the hard-line C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, as secretary of state, Mr. Trump is indulging his worst nationalistic instincts."