The clip from Revelations in which Bill talks about Iraqis converting "machine tools" and "farming equipment" into military equipment.

Tony Cartalucci: Reuters: US to Strike Syria Before UN Evidence Collected
Syrian Radio & TV: Information Minister : US has no evidence on Syria's use of chemical weapons
Reuters: Remember bogus U.S. excuses for Iraq war before attacking Syria: China's Xinhua
LibertyBlitzKrieg: CIA Documents Show the U.S. Helped Saddam Hussein Use Chemical Weapons

■ The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America’s military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen, Foreign Policy has learned.
■ In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq’s war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.

The Iraqi government has said it will not allow its airspace or territory be used in any action against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Army PFC Bradley Manning’s sentencing hearings concluded Monday as US government prosecutors and Manning’s defense presented closing arguments. Earlier this month, Manning was convicted on 19 criminal counts—including five violations of the Espionage Act—for making public information detailing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The government used the final pre-appellate phase of the trial to call for a 60-year prison term for the young whistleblower. Army Colonel Judge Denise Lind is expected to issue a sentence today. If you “betray your country, you do not deserve the mercy of a court of law,” said the government’s lead prosecutor, Army Captain Joe Morrow. Repeating the government refrain that Manning is a traitor, Morrow declared that Manning’s leak “wasn’t a greater good. It wasn’t a good at all. It was destructive,” and that the whistleblower serves as an example of “arrogance meet[ing] access to sensitive information.” Morrow emphasized that the sentence “must send a message to any soldier contemplating stealing classified information” to “ensure we never see an act like this again.”

● The US military’s use of depleted uranium in Iraq has led to a sharp increase in Leukemia and birth defects in the city of Najaf – and panicked residents are fearing for their health. Cancer is now more common than the flu, a local doctor told RT. ● The city of Najaf saw one of the most severe military actions during the 2003 invasion. RT traveled to the area, quickly learning that every residential street in several neighborhoods has seen multiple cases of families whose children are ill, as well as families who have lost children, and families who have many relatives suffering from cancer. ● Speaking on the rooftop of her house instead of her laboratory, Dr. Sundus Nsaif says the city has seen a “dramatic rise” in cancer and birth defects since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Nsaif said the alternative location was chosen because there is an active push by the government not to talk about the issue, perhaps in an effort not to embarrass coalition forces. ● “After the start of the Iraq war, rates of cancer, leukemia and birth defects rose dramatically in Najaf. The areas affected by American attacks saw the biggest increases. We believe it’s because of the' illegal' weapons like depleted uranium that were used by the Americans. When you visit the hospital here you see that cancer is more common than the flu," Nsaif told RT's Lucy Kafanov.

The former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, said he’s going to reveal new details behind the ‘dodgy dossier’ if he disagrees with the findings of the Chilcot Inquiry into UK’s role in the Iraq War. - Dearlove provided intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) that was allegedly exaggerated and “sexed-up” by Tony Blair's government. The 68-year-old intelligence veteran has spent the last year writing a detailed account of events leading up to the Iraq War, which started in 2003. Initially, he intended to make his work available to historians after his death but Sir Richard told the Daily Mail that he could well change.

“What I have written (am writing) is a record of events surrounding the invasion of Iraq from my then professional perspective,” he wrote in an e-mail addressed to the paper. “My intention is that this should be a resource available to scholars, but after my decease (may be sooner depending on what Chilcot publishes). I have no intention, however, of violating my vows of official secrecy by publishing any memoir.”

Dearlove is expected to face criticism from the inquiry’s chairman, Sir John Chilcot, over the accuracy of intelligence provided by the MI6 agents inside Iraq, which was used in the so-called “dodgy dossier.”

Daily Mail: Ex-MI6 boss makes sensational threat to reveal secrets of Iraq dodgy dossier

A long-awaited study on congenital birth defects by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Iraq is expected to be very extensive in nature. According to WHO, 10,800 households were selected as a sample size for the study, which was scheduled to be released early this year but has not yet been made public. Many scientists and experts have started questioning the time delay in publishing the study, but there is another aspect that is a cause for concern among some health experts. The report will not examine the link between the prevalence of birth defects and use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions used during the war and occupation in Iraq, according to WHO. A by-product of the uranium enrichment process, DU is prized by the military for its use in ammunition that can punch through walls and armoured tanks. The main problem, experts say, is that DU munitions vaporise on contact, generating dust that is easily inhaled into the lungs. The WHO study will also not consider pollutants such as lead and mercury as factors or variables, Syed Jaffar Hussain, representative and head of mission for the WHO in Iraq, told IPS.

Abel Bult-Ito: Nothing depleted about 'depleted uranium'
Gerry Georgatos: Victims of war - Iraqi children and families - Depleted uranium and trauma

Felicity Arbuthnot: Lies, Perfidies and Tony Blair - Having learned nothing from the catastrophes of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, it seems President Obama, the equally clueless UK Prime Minister Cameron and his culturally challenged Foreign Secretary William Hague are cheer-leading another bloodbath in formerly peaceful, secular, outward looking Syria. Having covertly provided arms and equipment to insurgents from numerous different countries for over two years, they have now moved to the overt stage, a move over which even arch hawks such as former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and former Republican Senator Richard Luger, six term leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged caution. Luger said such action would boost extremists, with Brzezinski dismissing Obama’s talk of “red lines” as thoughtless and risking: “a large-scale disaster for the United States.”

■ In the early morning of April 26, 2006, the 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon of the Kilo Company abducted Hashim Ibrahim Awad from his home. Members of the eight-man squad testified that they had planned in advance to select a random Iraqi male for ambush.
■ The Marines captured Awad, a 52-year-old father of 11 children, at around 2 a.m. They bound and gagged him, and brought him to a roadside ditch prepared by the squad to look like the site of an attempted IED bomb placement. Half an hour after Awad was abducted, the squad opened fire on the man and killed him.
■ Afterward, the squad removed the bindings from their victim, and positioned his body with a shovel, an AK-47, and empty bullet casings, to make the scene resemble that of a firefight. Afterward, Hutchins and his comrades described the incident as an ambush and a “good shoot.” Afterward, the squad filed a formal report that asserted Awad had been caught digging a hole for a roadside bomb and had engaged them in a firefight.

"I Am Sorry That It Has Come to This": A Soldier's Last Words. - Daniel Somers was a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was part of Task Force Lightning, an intelligence unit. In 2004-2005, he was mainly assigned to a Tactical Human-Intelligence Team (THT) in Baghdad, Iraq, where he ran more than 400 combat missions as a machine gunner in the turret of a Humvee, interviewed countless Iraqis ranging from concerned citizens to community leaders and and government officials, and interrogated dozens of insurgents and terrorist suspects. In 2006-2007, Daniel worked with Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) through his former unit in Mosul where he ran the Northern Iraq Intelligence Center. His official role was as a senior analyst for the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and part of Turkey). Daniel suffered greatly from PTSD and had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and several other war-related conditions. On June 10, 2013, Daniel wrote the following letter to his family before taking his life. Daniel was 30 years old. His wife and family have given permission to publish it.

In March 2006 four US soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division gang raped a 14 year old Iraqi girl and murdered her and her family —including a 5 year old child. An additional soldier was involved in the cover-up. One of the killers, Steven Green, was found guilty on May 07, 2009 in the US District Court of Paducah and is now awaiting sentencing. ■ The leaked Public Affairs Guidance put the 101st media team into a “passive posture” — withholding information where possible. It conceals presence of both child victims, and describes the rape victim, who had just turned 14, as “a young woman”. The US Army’s Criminal Investigation Division did not begin its investigation until three and a half months after the crime, news reports at that time commented. This is not the only grim picture coming out of Iraq U.S. forces being accused of using rape as a war weapon. ■ The release, by CBS News, of the photographs showing the heinous sexual abuse and torture of Iraqi POW’s at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison opened a Pandora’s Box for the Bush regime wrote Ernesto Cienfuegos in La Voz de Aztlan on May 2, 2004. Journalist Cienfuegos further states “Apparently, the suspended US commander of the prison where the worst abuses took place, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, has refused to take the fall by herself and has implicated the CIA, Military Intelligence and private US government contractors in the torturing of POW’s and in the raping of Iraqi women detainees as well.”

Baghdad has warned Israel that it would respond to any attempts by Tel Aviv to use Iraqi airspace for a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, a top Iraqi minister told. The remarks from Hussein al-Shahristani, deputy prime minister responsible for energy affairs, mark the first time a senior Iraqi official has publicly warned Israel against entering its airspace -- the most direct route -- to hit targets in Iran. Asked how Iraq would react to any such Israeli attempt to target Iran’s nuclear program, Shahristani said, “Obviously, Iraq wouldn’t be disclosing its reaction, to allow Israel to take that into account.”

John Pilger: Like characters from The Great Gatsby, Britain and the US have arrogantly turned their backs and left a country in ruins. - The dust in Iraq rolls down the long roads that are the desert's fingers. It gets in your eyes and nose and throat; it swirls in markets and school playgrounds, consuming children kicking a ball; and it carries, according to Dr Jawad Al-Ali, "the seeds of our death". An internationally respected cancer specialist at the Sadr teaching hospital in Basra, Dr Ali told me that in 1999, and today his warning is irrefutable. "Before the Gulf war," he said, "we had two or three cancer patients a month. Now we have 30 to 35 dying every month. Our studies indicate that 40 to 48% of the population in this area will get cancer: in five years' time to begin with, then long after. That's almost half the population. Most of my own family have it, and we have no history of the disease. It is like Chernobyl here; the genetic effects are new to us; the mushrooms grow huge; even the grapes in my garden have mutated and can't be eaten."

After a massive series of sectarian bombings killed 133 people on Monday, more bombings hit Tuesday, killing scores of additional people. They cap a solid week of fighting that has seen more than 400 people killed and many hundreds more wounded. - The month of April had sparked major concerns about the rise of sectarian violence in Iraq, with a death toll the highest it had been since Summer 2008. The overall toll was 460, for the entire month, meaning May is set to blow past it dramatically. Summer of 2008 was the period when the last sectarian civil war was winding down, and the Maliki government has been downplaying the significance of the recent attacks and insisting it has things in control. Still, the sheer number of deaths suggests that the next sectarian war may no longer be “coming,” it may have already arrived.

Since the assaults on Fallujah in 2004, the city has seen an astronomical rise in birth defects and abnormalities, including some too new to even have a proper medical name. VICE went back to Iraq to investigate.

It was the video that put WikiLeaks on the map: “Collateral Murder” turned the tide of war in Iraq and landed Private first class Bradley Manning in military detention. But for Army veteran Ethan McCord, it was just another day on duty. - “The helicopters were approximately a mile and a half away and they were zooming in on these guys,” McCord recalls to RT’s Meghan Lopez. “And looking at it now you obviously can’t see anything.” The whistleblower website released the video on April 5, 2010, and instantly made international headlines by exposing what the War in Iraq really meant to some. The clip in question, taken from camera affixed to an Apache helicopter flown by US troops, showed Americans opening fire on civilians and journalists. Ethan McCord’s story is tragic, but he is not alone. Thousands of veterans suffer from the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). For those who can’t handle the stress, many have taken their own lives. They were fathers and brothers, soldiers and sons, and now they are just another casualty in American wars abroad. In the past two years alone, McCord has lost eight of his veteran brothers to suicide — and his own outlook on life hasn’t exactly improved either.

Tariq Aziz is being slowly assassinated by the current rulers of Iraq. Inhumane treatment that amounts to torture. The whole Western political class and human rights bodies should be held responsible if he dies in custody, because of their inaction and negligence. - What follows is a letter that Tariq Aziz’ son wrote to the BRussells Tribunal. We urge politicians, Human Rights Organisations and the media to finally take some decisive action for the release of Tareq Aziz and all other political prisoners. Human rights should be defended. We also republish the appeals of Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, both Former UN Assistant Secretary Generals & United Nations Humanitarian Coordinators for Iraq.

Stephen Lendman: Tariq Aziz: Victim of US Imperialism - He's ill, isolated and fading. His life hangs in the balance. Washington likely wants him dead. He blames America, Israel and Britain. They bear responsibility for destroying Iraq. [...] Separately, von Sponeck and Halliday said they know Aziz. They worked with him. He's a "highly motivated Iraqi nationalist." "He cooperated with the United Nations fully whenever he believed that the benefits of the humanitarian exemption for the Iraqi people could be enhanced." He and Halliday want him released. In 2005 and early 2007, they raised concerns. They "made public appeals for his release on humanitarian grounds." They made subsequent attempts to do so. He's still imprisoned. He's denied due process. He requires urgent medical care. None's forthcoming. He may not last much longer. America and complicit allies want him gone. They're killing him slowly. Death by willful neglect constitutes premeditated murder.

An American professor of politics says US President Barack Obama is following in the footsteps of his predecessor George W. Bush in fabricating pretexts for military strike on Iran. - “Despite ample evidence of the devastating effects of the gratuitous invasion of Iraq that began a decade ago, the president and his buddies are now drumbeating for an attack on Iran,” wrote Falguni A. Sheth, a professor at Hampshire College, in a column on salon.com "In essence, the increasingly menacing public posture of US officials toward Iran — coming in the same month as the 10-year anniversary of the jingoistic, imperially smug, and devastatingly destructive invasion of Iraq — cannot but remind us of the spurious calls for war made back in 2002," she said. She noted that no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), the pretext used for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, have been unearthed in Iraq.

The Guardian has published a report based on new interviews with British soldiers who witnessed torture and abuse of Iraqi detainees at the US-run prison Camp Nama following the invasion in 2003. The full extent of the torture and abuse that took place in US-run facilities in Iraq will never be known. Most Americans think the scandal went no farther than a few bad apples at Abu Ghraib, where leaked photographs revealed blood-streaked floors, detainees on dog collars, sadistic sexual abuse, evidence of homicide and more. But the true scandal was bigger. Much bigger.

The US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost American taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion in the long run, according to a new study by the Harvard University. - The report that was released on Thursday has taken into account the medical care of injured war veterans and expensive repairs to US military force worn out by over a decade of fighting, The Washington Post reported. Linda J. Bilmes, a public policy professor, wrote in the report, “As a consequence of these wartime spending choices, the United States will face constraints in funding investments in personnel and diplomacy, research and development and new military initiatives.” “The legacy of decisions taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will dominate future federal budgets for decades to come,” Bilmes noted.

McClatchy: Iraqi oil: Once seen as U.S. boon, now it’s mostly China’s

Absurd demands were put forth by US Secretary of State John Kerry, regarding Iraqi airspace and alleged aircraft passing through it with arms and cash supposedly destined for the Syrian government. The Washington Post reported in its article, "Kerry: Iraq helping Syria’s Assad by allowing arms flow," that: Iraq is helping to shore up the besieged regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by allowing Iranian arms and fighters to cross into Syria from Iraq, Secretary of State John F. Kerry charged Sunday.

Ten years ago this week, British forces entered Iraq’s second city, Basra, as part of the U.S.-led invasion of the country. No one remembers that decisive event more so than librarian Alia Baqer. Known locally as a cultural hero, Baqer moved to rescue the contents of Basra’s central library before everything was lost. “At the beginning of the war on Iraq, the governor [of Basra] took the library over as a headquarters for himself and his guards, mounting machine guns on top of the building. So, we asked the governor if we could take the important books to our homes, but he rejected the idea. Eventually we took the responsibility ourselves to transfer the books, without the governor’s approval,” she said, looking back ten years. As U.S.-led forces took over the country, security broke down and looting spread. Baqer and her staff moved fast to carry the most precious books to safety, transporting them in curtains to the Hammdan restaurant next door.

The United States may be finished dropping bombs on Iraq, but Iraqi bodies will be dealing with the consequences for generations to come in the form of birth defects, mysterious illnesses and skyrocketing cancer rates. - Al Jazeera’s Dahr Jamail reports that contamination from U.S. weapons, particularly Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions, has led to an Iraqi health crisis of epic proportions. “[C]hildren being born with two heads, children born with only one eye, multiple tumours, disfiguring facial and body deformities, and complex nervous system problems,” are just some of the congenital birth defects being linked to military-related pollution. In certain Iraqi cities, the health consequences are significantly worse than those seen in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Japan at the end of WWII.

Dispatches: What You Won’t Hear About the #IraqWar from the Establishment

The war in Iraq is not over, not by a long shot. For decades to come we will have to deal with what the United States and its allies have unleashed. [Video]

It’s anyone’s guess if those responsible for this war of aggression will ever be held accountable for their crimes, what we do know however, is that the decision to invade Iraq has transformed the global political landscape (emphasis added):

“Kofi Annan, declared explicitly… that the US-led war on Iraq was illegal. Mr Annan said that the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN security council or in accordance with the UN’s founding charter. In an interview with the BBC World Service… he was asked outright if the war was illegal. He replied: ‘Yes, if you wish.’ “He then added unequivocally: ‘I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view and from the charter point of view it was illegal.’… “American officials have defended the war as an act of self-defence, allowed under the UN charter, in view of Saddam Hussein’s supposed plans to build weapons of mass destruction… “Mr Annan issued a stern critique of the notion of pre-emptive self-defence, saying it would lead to a breakdown in international order.”

The People's Voice: A reminder, according to the UN charter, the invasion was illegal
AWIP: James Steele: America's mystery man in Iraq

Cheney Caught In Another Major Lie: Everyone knew that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction (update here). Dick Cheney admits that he lied about 9/11. [...] Postscript: Indeed the entire torture program was implemented in an attempt to justify the Iraq war. And the 9/11 Commission was set up with false torture testimony. More background on the Iraq war.