Freyburg

The always excellent Frontline has pulled out the stops for the fifth anniversary of the War in Iraq with a huge documentary entitled “Bush’s War,” detailing the build-up from 9/11 onwards, the initial invasion and the continued bloodshed in Iraq today. It’s long, but worth the watch. Unfortunately, PBS hasn’t quite gotten the glory that is embedding video just yet, so you’ll have to head to their page to check it out.

The war, now in its fifth year, will cost the United States one TRILLION dollars. Not only that, but a lot of it is borrowed money. Noted economist Joseph Stiglitz crunched the numbers, and according to the Guardian, the numbers ain’t good.

The move of moderate but marginalized Iraqi Sunnis to the U.S. military and away from Al Queda’s unique brand of crazy-ass seems to have put AQ in a bit of a tizzy. The loss of Anbar province, which the United States military seems to have quelled for the moment, was a particular thorn in the side of Iraqi Al Queda leaders. On the other hand, I can’t totally hate any leader who refers to defectors from his organization as “scoundrels.”

Not exactly “a year in Provence,” is it? Documentarian Julian Sher spent a year making films for the CBC, and in the process got to experience war both in Iraq and Afghanistan. What he saw in both places left him less than optimistic for further progress.

According to the Times, the recent declaration by American intelligence agencies that Iran doesn’t actually have any nukes and froze plans to get them a while back isn’t going over too well in Washington. And in an ironic twist of fate, war with the United States is probably about the only thing that’ll keep Ahmadinejad, Iran’s increasingly unpopular president, in power.

Yeah, it’s a total shocker to me that the Iranians aren’t actually ready to trot out a nuclear weapon, though it is amazing to hear it from American intelligence agencies. Looks like the y might have finally grown a set and not just told Bush what he wants to hear, like they did in the “slam dunk” days building up to the Iraq war. Still, the sterling record of spot-on analysis from the American intelligence community leading up to both 9/11 and the war means Iran probably DOES have nukes.

One of Donald Rumsfeld’s big goals for the American military was “transformation,” a process by which the armed forces modernized and adopted a more “network-centric” approach to combat. It worked spectacularly during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, with Special Forces troops laser-targeting opposing forces and ground commanders getting a God’s-eye view of their operations theatre. But network-centric warfare has turned out to be a bust for winning the peace, as Wired Magazine details.

There’s a village in Morocco called Tetouan that’s the home town of a disproportionate number of young jihadis, including some of the men responsible for the Madrid train bombings in 2004. The New York Times Magazine investigates (at length) what turns normal young men from Tetouan into suicide bombers.

Amnesty International made a film featuring a performance artist going through six hours of the allegedly non-tortuous treatment that prisoners of American forces endure when being interrogated. The artist isn’t acting; every single whimper out of the guy is the real thing. Kind of puts the whole “war on terror” thing in perspective.

Ah, more shaping of questionable intelligence to fit Dick Cheney’s homicidal whims. How delightful!