Watada told Truthout’s Sarah Olson that at first he gave the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt as it built the case for war. But when he discovered he was being sent to Iraq, he began reading everything he could, such as James Bamford’s Pretext for War. He concluded that the war was based on false pretenses, ranging from the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction to the claim that Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda and 9/11 to the idea that the United States is in Iraq to promote democracy.

His investigation led him to question the very legality of the war. In an interview with Democracy Now!, he explained that as he read articles by experts on international and constitutional law, reports from governmental and nongovernmental agencies, revelations from independent journalists, writings by the Iraqi people and the words of soldiers coming home, “I came to the conclusion that the war and what we’re doing over there is illegal.”

First, he concluded that the war violates the Constitution and War Powers Act, which, he said, “limits the President in his role as commander in chief from using the armed forces in any way he sees fit.” Watada also concluded that “my moral and legal obligation is to the Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders.”

Second, he claims the war is illegal under international law. He discovered that “the U.N. Charter, the Geneva Convention and the Nuremberg principles all bar wars of aggression.” The Constitution makes such treaties part of American law as well.

These are not wild legal claims. Watada’s conclusions are supported by mountains of evidence and experts, including the judgment of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who in 2004 declared that the U.S. invasion was “not in conformity with the U.N. Charter, and from our point of view … was illegal.”

Watada said he came to recognize that the military conduct of the occupation is also illegal: “If you look at the Army Field Manual, 27-10, which governs the laws of land warfare, it states certain responsibilities for the occupying power. As the occupying power, we have failed to follow a lot of those regulations.” He told ABC News that the “wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of the Iraqi people” is “a contradiction to the Army’s own law of land warfare.”

Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith | TheNation.com (read more. . .)

Ask George Washington what he thinks about fighting a war on credit. Back in his day, Congress printed money to pay for the Revolutionary War but neglected to tax anybody to back up this funny money of theirs. The bills were called continentals and in due course they lost all their value, hence the once-popular expression, “not worth a continental.”

When your money is not worth a continental that means you are suffering from inflation big time. It happened 230 years ago in our War of Independence from the British. We are seeing it beginning to happen now in our war with, well, whoever it is we are fighting. We may not know the names, the whereabouts or the precise whys of the Iraq War but the costs are approaching a trillion dollars.

The Continental Congress was controlled by rich people and rich people do not like to pay taxes. Not then and not now, when we have another Congress controlled by rich people. Different war, same stupidity.

Nicholas von Hoffman | The Nation  (read more. . .)

Wartime appropriations do not, for example, include the cost of disability payments to veterans wounded in the war, payments that will continue throughout their life spans. Nor do they cover the costs of medical treatment for those seriously injured in the war, or even such basic war-related costs as the replacement of equipment and munitions expended in the conflict or the need to transport soldiers back to their home bases when they rotate out of country. The war has also substantially increased the military’s overall recruiting costs, reflected in bigger bonuses and additional recruiters. What’s more, by combining the war with aggressive tax cutting, the administration has ensured that the operation is paid for entirely by borrowing money on which interest will need to be paid. The shocking truth, according to Bilmes and Stiglitz, is that if one applies the Congressional Budget Office’s basic assumptions about the duration of the conflict (”a small but continuous presence”), it will cost nearly a staggering $1.27 trillion dollars before all is said and done.

The number is so high as to defy human comprehension. All the numbers ending in “-illion” sound the same. But a trillion is what you get if you spend a million dollars a day … for a million days. That’s 2,737 years — a cool mil a day, every day, in other words, until the Year of Our Lord 4743. Or, working backward, from the time when Homer wrote the Iliad up to now.

The $270 billion in rounding error is worth another 750 years at the million-a-day rate. That takes us up to the year 5493 — or back to when Moses fled Egypt.

Anyway you slice it, it’s a lot of money. More than enough to fund any sort of “too expensive” pie-in-the-sky liberal domestic scheme. Universal preschool, for example, clocks in at about $35 billion annually — cheap enough to get 37 years’ worth. But Bush never said invading Iraq would educate our children or fight domestic poverty, so let’s not even get into that, for now.

What the President did promise was the following: that regime change would curb nuclear proliferation, weaken al-Qaeda, and create a shining beacon of democracy. What happened? We eliminated a nuclear program that didn’t exist, encouraged Iran and North Korea to speed theirs along, offered terrorists a gigantic recruiting opportunity and training ground, and turned Iraq into a venue for chaos and civil war plagued by death squads and offering local despots a handy cautionary tale about the dangers of liberalization.

For $1.27 trillion, we have our hands full in a quagmire; the world hating us; worldwide acts of terrorism on the sharp rise; and much more. We could have done better. Much better. You might even say a trillion times better. Economists use the term “opportunity cost” to refer to the cost of an endeavor in terms of the opportunities that endeavor foreclosed. Iraq foreclosed advancing important humanitarian goals, killing and capturing terrorists more effectively, eliminating nuclear threats, and securing the homeland among other goals.

Matthew Yglesias | The American Prospect  (read more. . .)

When Progressives shout “Incompetence!” it obscures the many conservative successes. The incompetence frame drastically misses the point, that the conservative vision is doing great harm to this country and the world. An understanding of this and an articulate progressive response is needed. Progressives know that government can and should have a positive role in our lives beyond simple, physical security. It had a positive impact during the progressive era, busting trusts, and establishing basic labor standards. It had a positive impact during the new deal, softening the blow of the depression by creating jobs and stimulating the economy. It had a positive role in advancing the civil rights movement, extending rights to previously disenfranchised groups. And the United States can have a positive role in world affairs without the use of its military and expressions of raw power. Progressives acknowledge that we are all in this together, with “we” meaning all people, across all spectrums of race, class, religion, sex, sexual preference and age. “We” also means across party lines, state lines and international borders.

The mantra of incompetence has been an unfortunate one. The incompetence frame assumes that there was a sound plan, and that the trouble has been in the execution. It turns public debate into a referendum on Bush’s management capabilities, and deflects a critique of the impact of his guiding philosophy. It also leaves open the possibility that voters will opt for another radically conservative president in 2008, so long as he or she can manage better. Bush will not be running again, so thinking, talking and joking about him being incompetent offers no lessons to draw from his presidency.

Incompetence obscures the real issue. Bush’s conservative philosophy is what has damaged this country and it is his philosophy of conservatism that must be rejected, whoever endorses it.

Conservatism itself is the villain that is harming our people, destroying our environment, and weakening our nation. Conservatives are undermining American values through legislation almost every day. This message applies to every conservative bill proposed to Congress. The issue that arises every day is which philosophy of governing should shape our country. It is the issue of our times. Unless conservative philosophy itself is discredited, Conservatives will continue their domination of public discourse, and with it, will continue their domination of politics.

George Lakoff, Marc Ettlinger, and Sam Ferguson | Rockridge Institute (read more. . .)

These three myths — WMD, Zarqawi and Iraqi sovereignty — are what members of Congress should be debating in their halls of power, the American media should be discussing either in print or across the airwaves, and that discussion should constitute the foundation of a movement towards accountability, where the citizens of the United States finally point an accusatory finger at those whom they elected to represent them in higher office, and who have failed in almost every regard when it comes to Iraq.

But then again, silly me for thinking this way, believing that there was an engaged constituency within America that knows and understands the Constitution of the United States and seeks to live each day as a true citizen empowered by the ideal and values set forth by that document. I had overlooked the Fourth Myth — that American citizens are engaged in our national debate.

Scott Ritter | AlterNet  (read more. . .)

The Republicans will try, as they have in the past, to claim that it’s everyone’s war. That the Senate and House voted for it.

Fact #1 is that’s not literally true. The war powers bill voted to allow the president to go to war without coming back to them if he determined that Saddam was an actual threat and there was no way short of invasion to deter that threat. There were ways. He didn’t employ them. He avoided them. And went to war instead.

Fact #2 is they did so under false pretenses.

It’s George Bush’s war. It’s not America’s.

If he can win it, great. So far, George Bush has been losing it. That’s right, so far George Bush has been losing George Bush’s war. Not the army, not the liberals, not the media. Like Frank Sinatra, he got to do it his way.

After we accept that it was his war – and that he lost it – then America, led by someone better, can step forward and apologize on his behalf.

That’s not cutting and running. That’s America, taking the high road, to make up for someone else’s mistake.

Larry Beinhart | CommonDreams  (read more. . .)

Sergeant Patrick R. McCaffrey, Sr. and First Lieutenant Andre D. Tyson died on this day two years ago in Balad, Iraq. Back then, military officials reported that enemy insurgents ambushed them. The Army subsequently conducted an investigation and learned the men were targeted and killed by Iraqi troops they were training.

Although the Army completed its investigation on September 30, 2005, it failed to clarify the initial notification to the families for nine months. It took a May 22 letter from Senator Barbara Boxer’s office to force the Army to finally come clean.

A month before he died, Patrick told his father that Iraqi forces they were training had attacked his unit. When he filed a complaint with his chain of command, Patrick “was told to keep his mouth shut,” his mother said.

After Patrick died, his parents conducted their own investigations. The Army denied requests to see autopsy reports. The McCaffreys persisted. They talked to soldiers in their son’s unit and managed to learn what really happened.

Bob McCaffrey was informed by members of his son’s company that insurgents were offering Iraqi soldiers about $100 for each American they could kill. “Iraqi troops are turning on their American counterparts,” Bob said. “That puts a knock in the spin that the White House is trying to put on this story — how the Iraqis are being well trained and are getting ready to take over.”

Nadia McCaffrey learned that after her son was shot, a US truck arrived. It picked up Lt. Tyson, who was dead, but did not take her son who was still alive. The truck returned later and took him to the base, where he bled to death.

Marjorie Cohn | CommonDreams  (read more. . .)