Greg Palast.
Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans - Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild.
New York: Plume / Penguin Group, May 2007 (paperback edition, has additional chapters).

Book information: publisher, Amazon.com

I think this is an excellent book on American politics. Particularly valuable is Palast's investigation and exposure of the many techniques the Republican Party uses to steal elections. The comfortable classes who take their rights for granted must become aware of those shameful anti-democratic practices; rights denied for one can be denied for anyone, and by that I mean you. In our age, we the inheritors of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 appear to have squandered that inheritance. In order for America to reform itself the people must know how deeply America has fallen short of its ideals; I find it a tremendously ugly situation. Palast's discussion of how class war is practiced in America is also very valuable. I also found his speculations on the motivation of the U.S. government to depose Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq intriguing and convincing; however, I qualify my agreement by observing that singling out one motivation, though possibly the dominant one in the most influential circle, does not tell the whole story; it seems to me that the many groups acquiescing and participating in the Iraq invasion and occupation have many motivations (most of them not openly admitted, and without the American public's consent) that allow those different interests to enjoy the various benefits of that common undertaking.

Links:

• www.GregPalast.com, his website (articles, videos of his BBC broadcasts, etc.).


• Greg Palast. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. New York: Plume, April 2004.


• Greg Palast, Jerrold Oppenheim, Theo MacGregor. Democracy and Regulation: How the Public Can Govern Essential Services. London: Pluto Press, January 2003.

Conversations With History - Mark Danner, 27 July 2007.

An extremely clear summary of the Bush/Cheney clusterf@ck (i.e., the U.S. government since January 2001).

One in the series Conversations With History.


Mark Danner, His Books and Articles:

• www.MarkDanner.com, his website.


• Mark Danner, Wikipedia.


• Mark Danner - The New York Review of Books
  Links to his articles at The New York Review of Books.


• The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War's Buried History, New York Review Books, 2006.


• Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror, New York Review Books, 2004.


• Words in a Time of War: Taking the Measure of the First Rhetoric-Major President, TomDispatch.com, 31 May 2007.


• The Secret Way to War, The New York Review of Books, Volume 52, Number 10, 09 June 2005.


• Mark Danner articles at TomDispatch.com

After last week's article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, China threatens to trigger US dollar crash (The Daily Telegraph, 08 August 2007) it becomes evident that (a) Evans-Pritchard is a right-wing crank, and (b) it is not in China's strategic interest to destabilize the U.S. economy. Nevertheless and obviously, a creditor does have a great interest in and ability to influence it's debtor's behaviour. I would also add that many alarmist stories such as Evans-Pritchard's have a tendency to focus on only one aspect of far more complicated situations; for example, in his article Evans-Pritchard never mentions that the U.S. is also China's largest trading partner, that China's political and economic stability depends upon maintaining and increasing its trade with the U.S., and that China obviously wants to preserve the value of its dollar denominated assets. The following articles and associated comments delve a little further into this subject.

Andrew Leonard, Will China drop the bomb on the U.S. dollar?, How the World Works, Salon.com, 08 August 2007.

Richard McGregor, China affirms dollar’s reserve status, Financial Times, 12 August 2007.

Jeremy Goldkorn, China's nuclear option — dumping dollars, Danwei.org, 13 August 2007.

Not about Evans-Pritchard's irresponsible aritlce, but too good not to read:
The mandarins of money: Central banks in the rich world no longer determine global monetary conditions, The Economist, 09 August 2007.


Last but not least, I look forward to reading this book:

Barry Naughton. The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth. The MIT Press, January 2007.

Updates to some recent posts: additional articles.

America in Afghanistan and Iraq:

• Nathaniel Fick, To Defeat The Taliban: Fight Less, Win More, The Washington Post, 12 August 2007.
  
  Fick discusses his experience in training U.S. and Afghan soldiers in Afghanistan in Counterinsurgency. He explains four "paradoxical" (his term) principles of Counterinsurgency: (1) "The first tenet is that the best weapons don't shoot. Counterinsurgents must excel at finding creative, nonmilitary solutions to military problems." (2) "The second pillar of the academy's curriculum relates to the first: The more you protect your forces, the less safe you may be. To be effective, troops, diplomats and civilian aid workers need to get out among the people." (3) "The third paradox hammered home at the academy is that the more force you use, the less effective you may be." (4) "The academy's final lesson is that tactical success in a vacuum guarantees nothing. Just as it did in Vietnam, the U.S. military could win every battle and still lose the war."


• Glenn Greenwald, The truth behind the Pollack-O'Hanlon trip to Iraq: An interview with Michael O'Hanlon highlights the scope and breadth of this P.R. fraud, Salon.com, 12 August 2007.


• British MPs Urge Break With Bush On Iraq, Escalation ‘Not Likely To Succeed’, ThinkProgress.org, 13 August 2007.

Financial System:

• Paul Craig Roberts, In the Hole to China: Uncle Sam, Your Banker Will See You Now ..., CounterPunch.org, 08 August 2007.


• Julian Delasantellis, Central banks' easy virtue, easy money, Asia Times, 13 August 2007.

George Packer.
The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 2005.

Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.
(Note: The publisher has also prepared a Reading Group Guide [PDF] for this book. When printing pages 2 and 3 I recommend you turn off color printing; there is something wrong with those pages of the document in the version I downloaded. I have not use the Guide.)

Since the publication of The Assassins' Gate, Packer has published additional articles in The New Yorker that I think should be considered additional chapters of the book. They are:

• The Lesson of Tal Afar: Is it too late for the Administration to correct its course in Iraq?, 10 April 2006;
• Knowing the Enemy: Can social scientists redefine the "war on terror"?, 18 December 2006;
• Betrayed: The Iraqis who trusted America the most, 26 March 2007.

The Assassins' Gate is an excellent survey of the Iraq quagmire and complements (does not overlap) other books such as Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III and Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. I finished reading Packer's book more than a month ago; I delayed this post to finish reading Packer's New Yorker articles and in the meantime was distracted by reading other books. It seems unlikely that I will soon get around to reading the longer counterinsurgency items and government reports listed below.

Some Book Reviews:

• Michael Hirsh, Confessions of a humvee liberal, Washington Monthly, September 2005.
  Subtitle / description: "The New Yorker's George Packer has written a penetrating, unblinking account of the catastrophic Iraq war that he supported. He just can't admit he was wrong."
• Michiko Kakutani, Grand Theories, Ignored Realities, The New York Times, 07 October 2005.
• Gideon Rose, Welcome to the Occupation; A rueful liberal hawk explores the road to war in Iraq and its chaotic aftermath, The Washington Post, 09 October 2005.
  See also:
  Book World Live; George Packer, "The Assasins' Gate", transcript of a webchat with George Packer, WashingtonPost.com, 11 October 2005.
• Fareed Zakaria, 'The Assassins' Gate': Occupational Hazards, The New York Times, 30 October 2005.
• Peter Berkowitz, A Worthy War Critic, Policy Review, Number 133, October & November 2005.
• Scott McConnell, The Worst and the Dullest, The American Conservative, 19 December 2005.
  The reviewer notably emphasizes the book's survey of the Neoconservative origins of the 2003 Iraq invasion.
• Peter W. Galbraith, The Mess, The New York Review of Books, Volume 53, Number 4, 09 March 2006.
• Michael Young, How Did Iraq Go Wrong? Liberal hawks blame incompetence but sidestep American narcissism, Reason, April 2006.
• W. Andrew Terrill, Book Reviews, Parameters, Autumn 2006, pp. 124-126.
• Michael Rubin, Assassinating the truth about the Iraq war, The Middle East Forum, American Enterprise Institute, 20 December 2005.
  A warmonger's perspective.

George Packer and Some of His New Yorker Articles:

• George Packer, Wikipedia.
  The Wikipedia article contains links to his articles about the Iraq war; a full list of his articles in The New Yorker is here.
• Interesting Times, George Packer's blog at The New Yorker.
  Appears to have started in June 2007.
• George Packer, David Halberstam, The New Yorker, 07 May 2007.
  Notes the relevance of Halberstam's Vietnam classic The Best and the Brightest to today's quagmire.
• George Packer, Betrayed: The Iraqis who trusted America the most, The New Yorker, 26 March 2007.
  A major article "about how many of the Iraqi translators who helped the American occupation now face uncertainty about their own survival." One should consider this article a supplementary chapter to The Assassins' Gate which ends with events in early 2005. The article is particularly good at illustrating cultural differences between Iraqis and Americans and also makes plain the continuing deficiencies of U.S. policy towards Iraq.
• George Packer, Save Whomever We Can, The New Republic, 26 November 2006.
  An earlier and shorter article than the one above, also about Iraqis who assisted the Americans and are now becoming refugees.
• George Packer, Knowing the Enemy: Can social scientists redefine the "war on terror"?, The New Yorker, 18 December 2006.
  One should consider this a supplementary chapter to The Assassins' Gate.
  This major article attracted widespread attention; it focuses mainly on Kilcullen and McFate, and also discusses work of Barton and Hoffman:
  
  David Kilcullen, formerly of the Australian Army, is a specialist in counterinsurgency warfare, now assisting the Americans in Iraq. Links to some essays by Kilcullen are given below in the Counterinsurgency section.
  
  Montgomery McFate is a cultural anthropologist. Links to some essays by McFate are given below in the Counterinsurgency section.
  
  Frederick Barton, Center for Strategic and International Studies.
  
  Bruce Hoffman, Center for Peace and Security Studies, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Author of Inside Terrorism, Columbia University Press, 2006. Packer describes Hoffman as "a former RAND Corporation analyst who began to use the term 'global counterinsurgency' around the same time as Kilcullen."
  
  According to Packer, Kilcullen's thinking is informed by texts such as:
  Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (1951);
  Philip Selznick, The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics (1952);
  Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (2004);
  Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (2004).
  
  Academic anthropologists comment on using anthropological insights in counterinsurgency warfare:
  Cultural Operations Research Human Terrain, Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog, 18 May 2005.
  
  Packer's article also mentions a relatively new project of the Department of Defense, the Cultural Operations Research Human Terrain. See "Human Terrain" references in the Counterinsurgency section.
  
  Sharon Chadha, George Packer, Know The Enemy, 08 January 2007.
  Summarizes and comments on Packer's article.
  
  Patricia Kushlis, Fighting Global Counterinsurgency is not a War on Terror, WhirledView, 29 December 2006.
  Summarizes and comments on Packer's article.
  
  Knowing the Enemy, Part 1: The Ghosts of Vietnam, Opposed Systems Design, 20 December 2006;
  Knowing the Enemy, Part II: Strategic Perspective, Opposed Systems Design, 21 December 2006.
  Summarizes and comments on Packer's article.
• George Packer, Unrealistic, The New Yorker, 27 November 2006.
  Discusses some Iraq war policy consequences of the 2006 congressional election win by the Democratic party.
• George Packer, The Megacity: Decoding the chaos of Lagos, The New Yorker, 27 November 2006.
  A major article on Lagos, Nigeria, one of the world's major slum cities.
  Packer mentions several books about slum cities:
  Davis, Planet of Slums;
  Neuwirth, Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A Urban New World;
  Mehta, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found;
  The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003;
  Koolhaas, Lagos: How It Works.
• George Packer, The Moderate Martyr: A radically peaceful vision of Islam, The New Yorker, 11 September 2006.
  A major article on Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, his advocacy for the reform of Islam in Sudan, and his legacy. For those efforts Taha was executed by Sudan in 1985. Interestingly, the now notorious Judith Miller was present at Taha's hanging and wrote about it in her book God Has Ninety Nine Names: Reporting from a Militant Middle East (1996); Miller was The New York Times' Cairo bureau chief 1983-1987. Packer includes in his article an excerpt from Miller describing the scene of Taha's hanging.
  
  More on Sudan: Sudan in Crisis, The Washington Post.
  
  More on Taha:
  Mahmoud Muhammud Taha, The Second Message of Islam, Syracuse University Press, 1996.
  Mohamed A. Mahmoud, Quest for Divinity: A Critical Examination of the Thought of Mahmud Muhammad Taha, Syracuse University Press, 2006.
  Abdullahi Ahmed an-Na'im, School of Law, Emory University; see especially Naim's book and related project: The Future of Shari'a: Secularism from an Islamic Perspective. Other recent work by Naim: Islam and Human Rights: Advocacy for Social Change in Local Contexts, 2006.
• George Packer, Fighting Faiths: Can liberal internationalism be saved?, The New Yorker, 10 July 2006.
  Book review; items discussed:
  Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom;
  Peter Beinert, "A Fighting Faith: An Argument for a New Liberalism", The New Republic, 13 December 2004;
  Peter Beinart, The Good Fight: Why Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again;
  Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy;
  James Carroll, House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power;
  David Rieff, At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention;
  Josef Joffe, Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America.
• George Packer, Not Wise, The New Yorker, 08 May 2006.
  Comments on Bush administration Iraq policy ineffectuality as of that date.
• George Packer, The Lesson of Tal Afar: Is it too late for the Administration to correct its course in Iraq?, The New Yorker, 10 April 2006.
  A major article that should also be considered a supplementary chapter to The Assassins' Gate. Discusses the evolution of Iraq war strategy, from the long period of denial by senior military leaders that they were confronting an insurgency, to the open implementation of a counterinsurgency strategy (however the efficacy of counterinsurgency in Iraq is now debated due to the emergence of civil war, which is strategically different from just insurgency). Among the people Packer interviewed is Army Colonel H. R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (1997), his University of North Carolina PhD dissertation in History, and Crack in the Foundation: Defense Transformation and the Underlying Assumption of Dominant Knowledge in Future War (November 2003), available here and here. McMaster's Crack in the Foundation is discussed in its larger political-military context here, i.e., McMaster's work helped discredit Rumsfeld's "transformation" or "revolution in military affairs"; more articles on the RMA debate are here.
  The last third of the article somewhat updates The Assassins' Gate through early 2006; for example, the psychiatrist Dr. Butti makes an appearance in the article.
• George Packer, Name Calling, The New Yorker, 08 August 2005.
  Observations on the Bush administation's language shift to "Islamist extremism" in place of "Global War on Terrorism." Says that the administration has implicitly admitted that its militaristic and unilateral strategy since September 11, 2001 has failed. Could this indicate that they have finally recognized that the American occupation of Iraq has only served to further provoke the extremism that produces terrorism? I doubt it.
  
  "In Iraq, America has run up against the limits of war in an ideological contest. The Administration is right to reconsider its strategy, starting with the language. Will anything else follow? The global struggle against violent extremism would inspire more confidence if, for example, the Administration hadn’t failed to include funding for democracy programs in Iraq beyond the next round of elections there; or if Karen Hughes, the President’s choice as Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, hadn’t left the job empty for five months while waiting for her son to graduate from high school; or if the White House weren’t resisting attempts by Congress to regulate the treatment of prisoners; or if Karl Rove would stop using 9/11 to raise money and smear Democrats. No one really knows how American influence can be used to disinfect Islamist politics of violent ideas. This is the first problem. The second is that the Bush team has shown such bad faith, arrogance, and incompetence since September 11th that it seems unlikely to figure it out."
• George Packer, Invasion vs. Persuasion, The New Yorker, 20 December 2004.
  Contrasts the Ukrainian Orange Revolution of 2004-2005 in which a stolen election was peacefully challenged, the culmination of many years or decades of cultivating a democratic civil society in Ukraine, versus the (failing) American attempt to impose a democratic culture on Iraq.
• George Packer, The Playing Field: Iraqis and Americans find themselves in opposite positions, The New Yorker, 30 August 2004.
  Attending the 2004 Athens Olympics with some Iraqi illegal immigrants in Greece.
• George Packer, Ten Years After, The New Yorker, 01 March 2004.
  A very brief survey of the political upheavals in Haiti over the ten years preceeding February 2004. President Aristide was deposed again on 29 February 2004 (this time by the U.S. government - see An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President). I read or heard somewhere authoritative that a good introduction to Haiti is Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People 1492-1995 by Nancy Gordon Heinl. Also I'd like to call attention to Paul Farmer's The Uses of Haiti.
• George Packer, A Democratic World: Can liberals take foreign policy back from the Republicans?, The New Yorker, 16 February 2004.
  This is a very insightful essay, in my opinion the best of Packer's New Yorker articles I have listed in this blog post. The status of foreign policy in American politics as described in the essay has changed very little in the three and a half years since it was published, so despite its age the article is still very useful. Sadly, the weakness of the Democratic Party identified by Packer, the party's lack of a vigorous foreign policy amenable to promotion in TV shouting matches and robust enough to counter Republican and White House fear-mongering, war-mongering demogogery, etc., still persists, as evidenced by the Democrats' capitulation to expanding surveillance authority under FISA passed in early August 2007 (see Eric Lichtblau, James Risen and Mark Mazzetti, Reported Drop in Surveillance Spurred a Law, The New York Times, 11 August 2007; Glenn Greenwald has also discussed this Democratic Party weakness: Attention Democrats: GOP fear-mongering does not work, Salon.com, 06 August 2007). In preparing the essay Packer interviewed Senator Joe Biden, Ivo H. Daalder, General Wesley Clark, and Thomas Carothers. Rather than attempting to summerize it here, I encourage you to read this essay.
• George Packer, Gangsta War: Young fighters take their lead from American pop culture, The New Yorker, 03 November 2003.
  A major article on Ivory Coast (official name: Côte d'Ivoire) rebels.

Counterinsurgency:

• Note: You can find an abundance of additional information on counterinsurgency warfare at the Reference Library - Counterinsurgency webpage of Small Wars Journal. See the Reference Library Main Page for even more information.
~~ David Petraeus ~~
• David Petraeus, Wikipedia.
• Counterinsurgency [PDF], Field Manual No. 3-24 and Marine Corps Warfighting Publication No. 3-33.5. Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, Department of the Army, 15 December 2006.
  (Forward by David H. Petraeus & James F. Amos.)
  Contains a very helpful Annotated Bibliography.
  
  Also published as:
  
  John A. Nagl (Foreword), David H. Petraeus (Foreword), James F. Amos (Foreword), Sarah Sewall (Introduction).
  The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual.
  University of Chicago Press, July 2007.
  (publisher, Amazon.com)
• Counterinsurgency Reader [PDF]. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combined Arms Center, October 2006.
  (Preface by David H. Petraeus.)
  Considered a required supplement to the Counterinsurgency field manual.
• Glenn Greenwald, How much credence should Gen. Petraeus' reports be given?, Salon.com, 19 July 2007.
• Glenn Greenwald, Further politicization of the U.S. military's public statements, Salon.com, 24 July 2007.
• Michael R. Gordon, U.S. Is Seen in Iraq Until at Least ’09, The New York Times, 24 July 2007.
• Frank Rich, Why the White House Keeps Hiding Behind General Petraeus, The New York Times, 30 July 2007.
• Andrew J. Bacevich, Army of One: The Overhyping of David Petraeus, The New Republic, 06 August 2007.
~~ David Kilcullen ~~
• David Kilcullen, Wikipedia.
• David Kilcullen, Countering Global Insurgency [PDF], 30 November 2004. (A shorter version was published in Journal of Strategic Studies vol. 28, no. 4 (Aug 2005), pp. 597–617.)
  Said to be a very influential paper.
• David Kilcullen, "Twenty-Eight Articles": Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency [PDF], published in both IO Sphere, Summer 2006 and Military Review, May/June 2006.
  Said to be a popular article in the U.S. military.
• David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency Redux [PDF] (published in: Survival vol. 48, no. 4 (Winter 2006-2007), pp. 111–130).
• David Kilcullen, Edward Luttwak’s "Counterinsurgency Malpractice", Small Wars Journal Blog, 15 April 2007.
  
  Killcullen's essay refers to:
  
  Edward Luttwak, Dead end: Counterinsurgency warfare as military malpractice, Harper's Magazine, February 2007.
• David J. Kilcullen, New Paradigms for 21st Century Conflict, eJournal USA, Volume 12, Number 5, May 2007.
• David Kilcullen, Understanding Current Operations in Iraq, Small Wars Journal Blog, 26 June 2007.
  Read this.
~~ Montgomery McFate ~~
• Montgomery McFate, United States Institute of Peace.
• Montgomery McFate, The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture [PDF], Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 38, 3rd Quarter 2005.
• Montgomery McFate, Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of their Curious Relationship [PDF], Military Review, March-April 2005.
  Also posted at RedOrbit.com, 18 May 2005.
• Montgomery McFate, Iraq: The Social Context of IEDs [PDF], Military Review, May-June 2005.
• Montgomery McFate, The Cultural Knowledge Gap and Its Consequences for National Security, Fellow Project Report Summary, United States Institute of Peace, 10 May 2007.
• As Packer notes, the academic anthropology community is not happy with Montgomery McFate's work. An example of this: Anthropologists as Counter-Insurgents, Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog, 19 May 2005.
• Matthew B. Stannard, Montgomery McFate's Mission: Can one anthropologist possibly steer the course in Iraq?, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 April 2007.
  A profile of McFate and a summary of American anthropology's relationship with the U.S. military since the Civil War.
~~ Other Counterinsurgency ~~
• Tanya, A Call to Curiosity, INTEL DUMP, 12 July 2005.
• Audrey Roberts, Navigating the Human Terrain: The Importance of Cultural Understanding in Contingency Operations, Journal of International Peace Operations, Vol. 2, No. 6, May-June 2007.
• Jacob Kipp, et al., The Human Terrain System: A CORDS for the 21st Century [PDF], Military Review, September-October 2006.
• Laboratory for Human Terrain, Dartmouth College.
• Ralph Peters, The Human Terrain of Urban Operations, Parameters, Spring 2000, pp. 4-12.
• Jeffrey Record, The American Way of War: Cultural Barriers to Successful Counterinsurgency, Policy Analysis, Number 577, 01 September 2006.
• Steven Metz & Raymond A. Millen, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century: Reconceputalizing Threat and Response, Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, November 2004.
• Steven Metz, Learning from Iraq: Counterinsurgency in American Strategy, Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, January 2007.
• Thomas R. Mockaitis, The Iraq War: Learning from the Past, Adapting to the Present, and Planning for the Future, Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, February 2007.

United States Government Reports:

• Quadrennial Defense Review Report, United States Department of Defense, 06 February 2006.
  (PDF Link).
• Iraq Study Group Report, 6 December 2006:
  • Iraq Study Group, Wikipedia.
  • Iraq Study Group, the group's official webpage.
  • Report download webpage.
• President George W. Bush, Initial Benchmark Assessment Report, The White Hose, 12 July 2007.
  (PDF Link)
  
  Robert Burns, Iraq Report May Mean Longer U.S. Surge, Associated Press, 13 July 2007.

PBS Frontline Documentaries:

• Index to programs: Reports by Year, PBS Frontline.
• Endgame, PBS Frontline, 19 June 2007.
  Program descriptions:
  "What went wrong, and why, in America's tragically failed effort to find a strategy for success in Iraq.
  
  As the United States begins one final effort to secure victory through a 'surge' of troops, FRONTLINE investigates how strategic and tactical mistakes brought Iraq to civil war. The film recounts how the early mandate to create the conditions for a quick exit of the American military led to chaos, failure, and sectarian strife. In Endgame, producer Michael Kirk (Rumsfeld's War, The Torture Question, The Dark Side, and The Lost Year in Iraq) traces why the president decided to risk what military planners once warned could be the worst way to fight in Iraq -- door-to-door -- and assesses the likelihood of its success. Top administration figures, military commanders, and journalists offer inside details about the new strategy."
• Webchat with Michael Kirk, WashingtonPost.com, 20 June 2007.
• Frontline's Shocking Exposé of Iraq War Endgame Strategy, DailyKos.com, 20 June 2007.
• The Lost Year in Iraq, PBS Frontline, 17 October 2006.
  Program descriptions:
  "They came to rebuild and bring democracy, but soon were hardened by the postwar realities. WHen it came time to leave, they left behind lawlessness, insurgency and economic collapse.
  
  In the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein, a group of Americans led by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III set off to Baghdad to build a new nation and establish democracy in the Arab Middle East. One year later, with Bremer forced to secretly exit what some have called 'the most dangerous place on earth,' the group left behind lawlessness, insurgency, economic collapse, death, destruction--and much of their idealism. Three years later, as the U.S. continues to look for an exit strategy, the government the Americans helped create and the infrastructure they designed are being tested. FRONTLINE Producer Michael Kirk follows the early efforts and ideals of this group as they tried to seize control and disband the Iraqi police, army and Baathist government--and how they became hardened along the way to the realities of postwar Iraq. The Lost Year in Iraq is based on numerous first-person interviews and extensive documentation from the FRONTLINE team that produced Rumsfeld's War, The Torture Question and The Dark Side."
  
  Reviews the "reigns" of Jay Garner and Paul Bremer in post-invasion Iraq, April 2003 - June 2004.
• The Insurgency, PBS Frontline, 21 February 2006.
  Program descriptions:
  "An investigation into the people who are fighting against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq.
  
  Kidnappings. Suicide bombers. Beheadings. Roadside bombs. The Iraqi insurgency continues to challenge the most highly trained and best-equipped military in the world. FRONTLINE peels back the layers and gets beyond the propaganda to take a complex look inside the multi-faceted insurgency in Iraq. The investigation includes special access to insurgent leaders, as well as commanders of Iraqi and U.S. military units battling for control of the country and detailed analysis from journalists who have risked their lives to meet insurgent leaders and their foot soldiers. FRONTLINE explores the battle for one Iraqi town and presents vivid testimony from civilians whose families were targeted by the insurgents."

Buying the War, Bill Moyers Journal, 25 April 2007.
"In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, the US government's claims about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties to Saddam Hussein went mostly unchallenged by the media. Four years after 'shock and awe,' how the government sold the war has been much examined, but a big question remains: how and why did the press buy it? Bill Moyers and his team piece together the reporting that shows how the media were complicit in shaping the 'public mind' toward the war, and ask what has happened to the press's role as skeptical 'watchdog' over government power. The program features the work of some journalists who didn't take the government's word at face value, including the team of reporters at Knight Ridder news service whose reporting turned up evidence at odds with the official view of reality. Buying the War includes interviews with Dan Rather, formerly of CBS; Tim Russert of Meet the Press; Bob Simon of 60 Minutes; Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN; and John Walcott, Jonathan Landay, and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers, which was acquired by the McClatchy Co. in 2006."
You can watch Buying the War online here.
You must watch this.


Other Essays, Interviews, News Reports, etc.:

• The Architects of War: Where Are They Now?, ThinkProgress.org, no date.
• William Langewiesche, Welcome to the Green Zone; The American bubble in Baghdad, The Atlantic Monthly, November 2004.
• Anthony Bubalo & Greg Fealy, Joining the Caravan? The Middle East, Islamism and Indonesia, Lowy Institute for International Policy (Australia), March 2005.
• Harold Pinter, Art, Truth & Politics, Nobel Lecture, 2005.
  Pinter considers the concept of Truth for the Artist and the Citizen: the Citizen no less than the Artist is morally obligated to speak the Truth as he experiences it. These considerations logically and morally compel Pinter as a Citizen to speak out on one of the overwhelming Truths of our age: the United States has abandoned its principles since the Second World War by how it conducts its foreign policy. The United States government's actions are a betrayal of its own people and the people of the world. He concludes:
  
  I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
  
  If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.
• Tom Tomorrow (aka Dan Perkins), Hell in a Handbasket: Dispatches from the Country Formerly Known as America, Tarcher, 2006.
  Book review:
  Glenn Greenwald, Tom Tomorrow's Hell in a Handbasket, 10 October 2006.
• R. Hutchinson, Neocon Dream, R.I.P (Died in Iraq in 2005), Listmania, Amazon.com, 27 April 2007.
• Edward Luttwak, The Middle of Nowhere, Prospect, May 2007.
  "Western analysts are forever bleating about the strategic importance of the middle east. But despite its oil, this backward region is less relevant than ever, and it would be better for everyone if the rest of the world learned to ignore it."
• Countering the Terrorist Mentality, eJournal USA, May 2007.
  Single topic issue.
• Michael C. Desch, Bush and the Generals, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007.
  "Summary: The rift between U.S. military and civilian leaders did not start with George W. Bush, but his administration's meddling and disregard for military expertise have made it worse. The new defense secretary must restore a division of labor that gives soldiers authority over tactics and civilians authority over strategy -- or risk discrediting civilian control of the military even further."
• John Chuckman, The Historical Significance of the War in Iraq, Dissident Voice, 10 May 2007.
  Comments on this essay at OneBigTorrent.org (a very good website for political documentaries).
• Interview of Major General John Batiste (retired) by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! 25 May 2007 (MP3 file here).
  Interview transcript here.
  I strongly recommended one read or listen to this.
• Mark Danner, Words in a Time of War: Taking the Measure of the First Rhetoric-Major President, TomDispatch.com, 31 May 2007.
  A quick survey of the history of the United States during the Bush administration, partiuclarly with reference to events after September 11, 2001, the invasion of Iraq, and the Bush government's revocation of civil liberties previously guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Especially recommended for those not inclined to read a whole book on the subject.
• Tom Engelhardt, How Permanent Are Those Bases?, TomDispatch.com, 07 June 2007.
  Other title: The Great American Disconnect; Iraq Has Always Been "South Korea" for the Bush Administration.
• Powell: Close Guantanamo Now, Restore Habeas, ThinkProgress.org, 10 June 2007. (includes video of Powell's television appearance)
  Colin Powell speaks out, finally.
• Shut Guantanamo now, says Powell, The Australian, 12 June 2007.
• Sean Parnell and Mark Dodd, 'Legoland' braces for invasion as part of troops' urban war games, The Australian, 12 June 2007.
  Joint U.S.-Australia exercise in Queensland.
• Jonathan Freedland, Bush's Amazing Achievement, The New York Review of Books, Volume 54, Number 10, 15 June 2007.
  "One of the few foreign policy achievements of the Bush administration has been the creation of a near consensus among those who study international affairs, a shared view that stretches, however improbably, from Noam Chomsky to Brent Scowcroft, from the antiwar protesters on the streets of San Francisco to the well-upholstered office of former secretary of state James Baker. This new consensus holds that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a calamity, that the presidency of George W. Bush has reduced America's standing in the world and made the United States less, not more, secure, leaving its enemies emboldened and its friends alienated. Paid-up members of the nation's foreign policy establishment, those who have held some of the most senior offices in the land, speak in a language once confined to the T-shirts of placard-wielding demonstrators. They rail against deception and dishonesty, imperialism and corruption. The only dispute between them is over the size and depth of the hole into which Bush has led the country he pledged to serve."
• Steven Simon & Ray Takeyh, Out of Iraq: We've Lost. Here's How To Handle It, The Washington Post, B01, 17 June 2007.
• Robin Wright, For U.S. and Key Allies in Region, Mideast Morass Just Gets Deeper, The Washington Post, A16, 17 June 2007.
  Political instability and outright chaos in Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt and Iraq, all places where the leadership has American backing. Article doesn't venture into Pakistan.
• Ahmed Rashid, The General in His Labyrinth: America's Bad Deal With Musharraf, Going Down in Flames, The Washington Post, B01, 17 June 2007.
  As in the Middle East, the U.S. supported military dictatorship in Pakistan is also facing strong and more legetimate opposition.
• Thom Shanker & Michael R. Gordon, G.I.’s in Iraq Open Big Offensive Against Al Qaeda, The New York Times, 17 June 2007.
• Karen J. Greenberg, Blowback, Detainee-style: The Plight of American Prisoners in Iran, TomDispatch.com, 18 June 2007.
• David Morgan, Iraq now ranked second among world's failed states, Reuters.com, 18 June 2007.
• Justin Raimondo, Rise and Fall of the Bizarro Empire: The internal contradictions of U.S. imperialism, AntiWar.com, 18 June 2007.
  Argues that America will fall by being tripped up by the Pentagon bureaucracy / military-industrial complex.
• Juan Cole, Cole's Advice to Hillary on Iraq, Informed Comment, 21 June 2007.
• Glenn Greenwald, Everyone we fight in Iraq is now "al-Qaida", Salon.com, 23 June 2007.
  Observes that Bush administration rhetoric/propaganda has shifted from refering to "insurgents" or "Sunni" or "Shia'a" fighters in the Iraq Civil War to now "using the term 'Al Qaeda' to designate 'anyone and everyeone we fight against or kill in Iraq'".
• It's like déjà vu all over again. It's like déjà vu all over again, DailyKos.com, 23 June 2007.
  Repeated claims over the years of intentions to reduce troop numbers in Iraq. Excellent observations in this diary.
• David H. Petraeus, Beyond the Cloister, The American Interest, July-August 2007.
  
  Comments on Petraeus's article:
  Phillip Carter, Do smarter soldiers make better soldiers?, INTEL DUMP, 24 June 2007.
• Insurgency and Australian Intellectualism, SouthSeaRepublic.org.
  Commentary on work of David Kilcullen and David Petraeus.
• Pepe Escobar, Hamastan and Red Zoneistan, Asia Times Online, 29 June 2007.
  Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War, 2007.
• William E. Odom, 'Supporting the troops' means withdrawing them, Nieman Watchdog, 05 July 2007.
• Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks, Administration Shaving Yardstick for Iraq Gains; Goals Unmet; Smaller Strides to Be Promoted, The Washington Post, 08 July 2007.
• Gary Kamiya, Leave the Muslim world alone, Salon.com, 17 July 2007.
  "Bush's moralistic Middle East crusade has backfired, creating more enemies than it destroys. It's time for a tactical retreat."
• Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks, Exit Strategies, The Washington Post, 17 July 2007.
• Peter Galbraith, The Iraq war is lost, Salon.com, 18 July 2007. Also published: New York Review of Books, Volume 54, Number 13, 16 August 2007.
• Juan Cole, Bush Falsehoods about Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Informed Comment, 25 July 2007.
• Chris Hedges, Beyond Disaster, TruthDig.com, 06 August 2007.
  Considers the future of Iraq and the geopolitics of the Middle East.
• David Rees, Cormac Ignatieff's "The Road", The Huffington Post, 07 August 2007.
  This VERY funny essay is a critique of:
  Michael Ignatieff, Getting Iraq Wrong, The New York Times Magazine, 05 August 2007.
  One should also read Rees' essay on an earlier Ignatieff article:
  David Rees, My Old Bus Stop, The Huffington Post, 29 July 2005.
• Michael Young, Bush's Gulf Gambit: By containing Iran, the U.S. remains in Iraq, Reason online, 02 August 2007.
• Anthony H. Cordesman, The Tenuous Case for Strategic Patience in Iraq: A Trip Report [PDF], Center for Strategic and International Studies, 06 August 2007.
• Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks, As British Leave, Basra Deteriorates; Violence Rises in Shiite City Once Called a Success Story, The Washington Post, 07 August 2007.
• Glenn Greenwald, The foreign policy community: America's bipartisan foreign policy orthodoxies and their scholar-guardians are in desperate need of challenge, Salon.com, 08 August 2007.
  
  Samantha Power, Conventional Washington versus the Change We Need, 03 August 2007.
• Damien McElroy, Iraq needs a dictator, says US group, The Daily Telegraph, 09 August 2007.
• Warren P. Strobel, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef, Cheney urging military strikes on Iran, McClatchy Newspapers, 09 August 2007.
  The United States' next war of aggression (i.e., war crime) and foreign policy disaster?

David Barsamian.
Louder Than Bombs: Interviews from The Progressive Magazine.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: South End Press, May 2004.

Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.

These interviews provide concise introductions to the ideas and books of the people interviewed. The interviews were published in The Progressive between April 1997 and October 2003, and are organized in the book in reverse chronological order (which is preserved in the list below).

An archive of recent interviews in The Progressive is here.

David Barsamian, Wikipedia.

The interviewees and some of their books
(Note: I have not read most of these books; inclusion of books below is based upon mention in Barsamian's book or what seems interesting to me.):

• Edwidge Danticat
  (The Farming of Bones, 1998; Krik? Krak!, 1995; After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti, 2002)
  Read the interview here.


• Kurt Vonnegut
  (Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969; Cat's Cradle, 1963; Breakfast of Champions, 1973)
  Read the interview here.


• Ahmed Rashid
  (Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, 2000; Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, 2002)
  Read the interview here.


• Danny Glover
  Read the interview here.


• John Pilger
  (Heroes, 1986, 2001; A Secret Country: The Hidden Australia, 1989; The New Rulers of the World, 2002; Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire, 2006)


• Tariq Ali
  (The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity, 2002; Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq, 2003; Conversations with Edward Said, 2005; Speaking of Empire and Resistance: Conversations with Tariq Ali, 2005; Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope, 2006)
  Read the interview here.


• Edward Said
  (Orientalism, 1978; Culture and Imperialism, 1993; Culture and Resistance: Conversations With Edward W. Said, 2003)
  One of the two interviews with Said in the book is here.


• Amartya Sen
  (Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation; Development as Freedom)


• Arundhati Roy
  (The Cost of Living; The God of Small Things; Power Politics; War Talk; The Algebra of Infinite Justice, this collection probably contains some/many? of the essays in the books listed previously; The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy)


• Angela Davis
  (Women, Race, & Class; Women, Culture & Politics; Are Prisons Obsolete?; Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture)


• Haunani-Kay Trask
  (From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii; Light in the Crevice Never Seen; Center for Hawaiian Studies)


• Juan Gonzalez
  (Roll Down Your Window: Stories of a Forgotten America; Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America)


• Ralph Nader
  (The Ralph Nader Reader)


• Noam Chomsky
  (American Power and the New Mandarins (his first political book); The Political Economy of Human Rights and Edward Herman, coauthor; Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media and Edward Herman, coauthor; Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies)


• Eduardo Galeano
  (Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent ; Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World; Memory of Fire trilogy)


• Taylor Branch
  (Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63; Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65; At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68)


• Eqbal Ahmad
  (The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad; Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire; Terrorism: Theirs and Ours)


• Vandana Shiva
  (Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development; Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, And Peace; Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply; Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit)


• Howard Zinn
  (People's History of the United States: 1492 - Present; You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times; A Power Governments Cannot Suppress)


• Ben Bagdikian
  (The New Media Monopoly; Double Vision: Reflections on My Heritage, Life, and Profession)

Scott Horton, Rumblings of a Trade War, No Comment, Harper's Magazine, 08 August 2007.

Horton refers to this article:
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, China threatens to trigger US dollar crash, The Daily Telegraph, 08 August 2007.

Finally, the fundamental weakness of the U.S. economy and the consequences of the historically unprecedented U.S. government debt are exposed for all to see, at least for those willing to look.