three years in Iraq

[Images: protestors gathered this morning in Kadıköy, İstanbul with signs saying "USA Go Home" and "Peace"]










Remember the acrid sense of failure when the bombs started falling three years ago, and the dread of what might be coming? I opposed this war from the start, above all because I feared it would cause more misery than it would alleviate, but I never dreamed the US government would fail so terribly and shamefully. I'm reading Anthony Shadid's excellent, heartbreaking, infuriating book Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War, and am overwhelmed with bitterness at the mendacity and carelessness of the entire enterprise.

Some links:

A British refusenik speaks out: "I did not join the British Army to conduct US foreign policy."

An urgent, prescient memo from Tony Blair's envoy to Iraq, on US post-invasion governance: "...an unbelievable mess." Why, why, why did no one listen to these people?

Iraqi blogger Riverbend reflects on the anniversary, and writes about the hardening of divisions along sectarian lines.

Finally, Salon.com lays out the complete Abu Ghraib dossier (warning, graphic photos) and the NYT breaks the news of another secret "detention camp" at which the US Army's most elite counterterrorism unit illegally abused Iraqi detainees before and after Abu Ghraib: Camp Nama.