How the Bush Administration Used the 2001 Anthrax Attacks to Manufacture Consent for the Iraq War

In a deep investigative piece, Abby and Robbie Martin explore the 2001 Anthrax Attacks––what led to them, why they happened, and how the Bush administration used them to manufacture consent for the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Abby Martin
Robbie Martin
By Abby Martin
And Robbie Martin
American Anthrax

 ABBY MARTIN : 17 years ago, less than one month after the horrific attacks on September 11, 2001, weaponized anthrax was sent through the mail in a biological attack that stunned an already traumatized nation. The first American died from anthrax infection on October 5th. During the weeks that followed, letters sent through the US postal

Read Full Article

An Open Letter to New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger

The Times has always been a newspaper by, and for, the elite, but by squeezing out the few alternative voices that you once employed, it no longer publishes those articles that illuminate and connect us to a world outside the Beltway, or beyond Harvard Square.

Jon Jeter
By Jon Jeter
A.G. Sulzberger poses for a photo on the 16th floor of the New York Times building in New York. Dec. 13, 2017. Damon Winter | The New York Times via AP

Dear Mr. Sulzberger,  I read with great interest news accounts of your conversation with President Trump, in which you admonished him for his inflammatory characterization of the media as “fake news” and asserted that such polarizing language poses a threat not only to journalists but to American democracy itself. You needn’t be a partisan --

Read Full Article

From Madison Avenue to Pennsylvania Avenue: How They Sold Operation Iraqi Freedom

The same techniques (and often the same PR gurus) that have been used to hawk cigarettes, SUVs and nuclear waste dumps were deployed to retail the Iraq war.

Jeffrey St. Clair
By Jeffrey St. Clair
President Bush announces he has reached an agreement with House leaders on a resolution giving him authority to oust Saddam Hussein, in the Rose Garden, Wednesday, Oct 2, 2002. Bush is joined by, from left to right front row, Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert, R-Ill, Bush, Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo. As part of the deal with the House, Bush bent to Democratic wishes and pledged to certify to Congress that diplomatic and other peaceful means alone are inadequate to protect Americans from Saddams weapons of mass destruction. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

The war on Iraq won’t be remembered for how it was waged so much as for how it was sold. It was a propaganda war, a war of perception management, where loaded phrases, such as “weapons of mass destruction” and “rogue state” were hurled like precision weapons at the target audience: us. To understand the Iraq war you don’t need to consult

Read Full Article

How Many Millions Have Been Killed in America’s Post-9/11 Wars?

The numbers of casualties of U.S. wars since Sept. 11, 2001 have largely gone uncounted, but coming to terms with the true scale of the crimes committed remains an urgent moral, political and legal imperative.

Nicolas J.S. Davies
By Nicolas J.S. Davies
How Many Civilians US Killed

How many people have been killed in America’s post-9/11 wars? I have been researching and writing about that question since soon after the U.S. launched these wars, which it has tried to justify as a response to terrorist crimes that killed 2,996 people in the U.S. on September 11th 2001. But no crime, however horrific, can justify wars on

Read Full Article

15 Years Later, the World Is Still Reeling From the Decision to Invade Iraq

Brushing aside warnings that he was about to unleash Armageddon in the Middle East, George W. Bush launched an unprovoked attack on Iraq on March 19-20, 2003, the ramifications of which we are still grappling with today

Nat Parry
By Nat Parry
Men pray at a cemetery for Shia volunteer fighters killed fighting with ISIS militants in the Wadi al-Salam, or "Valley of Peace" cemetery in Najaf, 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Baghdad, Iraq. (AP/Anmar Khalil)

Robert Jackson, the Chief United States Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals, once denounced aggressive war as “the greatest menace of our time.” With much of Europe laying in smoldering ruin, he said in 1945 that “to initiate a war of aggression … is not only an international crime: it is the supreme international crime

Read Full Article

15 Years On, the Staggering Death Toll in Iraq Keeps Climbing

As we begin the 16th year of the Iraq war, the American public must come to terms with the scale of the violence and chaos we have unleashed in Iraq.

Medea Benjamin
Nicolas J.S. Davies
By Medea Benjamin
And Nicolas J.S. Davies
Ali Hamza, 8, sits at the graves of his brother, Mohammed, and sister Asinat, who were killed at their school when a suicide car bomb attack near Qabak elementary school in the Shiite Turkomen village of Qabak, Iraq, Oct. 7, 2013. (AP Photo)

March 19 marks 15 years since the U.S.-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the American people have no idea of the enormity of the calamity the invasion unleashed. The U.S. military has refused to keep a tally of Iraqi deaths. General Tommy Franks, the man in charge of the initial invasion, bluntly told reporters, “We don’t do body counts.”

Read Full Article