That is the cover of Newsweek from the first week of March, the month in which we will mark the seventh anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was 2,555 days ago this Saturday, in fact, when televisions all across America lit up with the pyrotechnic images of "Shock and Awe," when explosions and fire roared over the city of Baghdad, when men, women and children were incinerated, when we all became war criminals whether we liked it or not.

"The Western world that slaughtered Iraq and Iraqis, through 13 years of sanctions and seven years of occupation, is now turning its back on the victims. What has remained of Iraq is still being devastated by bombings, assassinations, corruption, millions of evictions and continued infrastructure destruction. Yet the world that caused all this is trying to draw a rosy picture of the situation in Iraq."

People are fed up and just want safety and stability. A lot of people would say things like "At least Saddam kept the streets clean and didn’t kill millions of our people." Hundreds of thousands have been killed to date and over a million have left to start new lives outside of Iraq. As bad as Saddam’s dictatorship was, things back then were never as bad as they are now post the US invasion. Iraq will never be the same.

There is nothing new in a government lying to their people to start a war. Indeed because most people prefer living in peace to bloody and horrific death in war, any government that desires to initiate a war usually lies to their people to create the illusion that support for the war is the only possible choice they can make.

Conservative apologists for the George W. Bush crew are swinging hard these days to defend their man -- and themselves -- from the charge that W. and his gang misled the nation into war. They must worry that they are going to end up on the wrong side of history. After all, a 2008 Gallup poll found that 53 percent of Americans believed that the Bush administration "deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction." (This was a big change from a poll taken two months after the 2003 invasion that noted that 67 percent believed Bush had played it straight.)

The US military cannot account for 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to the Iraqi security forces, an official US report says.

Insurgents in Iraq had vowed to disrupt the election, and the attacks appeared timed to frighten voters away from polling sites. If that were the intent, it did not succeed entirely.

Defense juggernaut KBR Inc. was awarded a contract potentially worth $2.8 billion for support work in Iraq as U.S. forces continue to leave the country, military authorities said Tuesday.

KBR was notified of the award Friday, a day after the company told shareholders it lost about $25 million in award fees because of flawed electrical work in Iraq.

Acinetobacter, which killed Mr. Armbruster, came to wide attention a few years ago in infections of soldiers wounded in Iraq.

Kirkuk, a city rich in natural resources that may represent up to one-quarter of Iraq's oil reserves, is the center knot in a tug of war between the Kurdish Regional Government and central Baghdad.

The Kurds and central Baghdad are both keenly aware that Kirkuk's oil would be enough of an economic resource to allow Kurdistan to finance a move for autonomy.

The Bush administration introduced Ahmad Chalabi, the former U.S. ally and perennially controversial Iraqi politician, as a secular, pro-Western Mr. Fix-It who could slide right into Saddam Hussein's old seat.

Now, he's No. 3 on an electoral ticket alongside Iraq's biggest Shiite Muslim factions and his name is cropping up regularly as a potential prime minister. If Chalabi does, finally, ascend to an elected post in Iraq, Washington won't be cheering. These days, the nimble politician's fortunes are more closely tied to militant Shiite factions and their allies in Tehran than they are to Washington.

Forget for a moment about quagmire, the growing heaps of U.S. and Iraqi dead, and the rebellious population. George Bush, Paul Bremer, and gang have pulled off the biggest heist in history. They and no one else own 100 billion barrels of crude oil-a windfall of at least $3 trillion-along with the entire assets and resources of Iraq.

Since March 2003, a series of executive orders by Bush, UN documents, and regulations and orders issued by Iraqi Proconsol Paul Bremer have put the U.S. in absolute control of the state of Iraq, its oil industry and monies, all while lifting barriers to repatriating profits.

Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency—much of it belonging to the Iraqi people—was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Some of the cash went to pay for projects and keep ministries afloat, but, incredibly, at least $9 billion has gone missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed. Following a trail that leads from a safe in one of Saddam's palaces to a house near San Diego, to a P.O. box in the Bahamas, the authors discover just how little anyone cared about how the money was handled.

"Super notes" -- forged U.S. dollars of such high quality that even experts have trouble detecting them -- have taken on an almost mythic status among national security watchers. Supposedly, they're part of a plot to undermine confidence in the U.S. economy, and at times they've been called an act of war.

Their origins have tended to shift with the political winds; it was said that they originate in Iran, some have speculated that they come from the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon (where they were supposedly produced by Syria) and lately the consensus has been that they're part of a sinister North Korean plan. Others have accused Israel of printing them.

With the deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of next year creeping nearer, the U.S. has to find some way to convince the Iraqi government to allow a continued military presence, which is the likely outcome despite the U.S.-Iraq status of forces agreement containing the deadline.

Private American security guards working for the US military in Afghanistan removed hundreds of handguns and automatic weapons from stores intended for the exclusive use of the Afghan police and used them on drunken shooting rampages that killed two Afghan civilians and injured at least two more.

The guards included a former US Marine with a criminal record of assault and battery and a former soldier discharged from the US Army after testing positive for cocaine, Congress heard yesterday.

US commander in Iraq General Ray Odierno today discussed the current Iraq pullout schedule, which would have the 96,000 troops cut to 50,000 by August, and then gone by the end of 2011.

“If you ask me today, I’m fully committed and that’s the right course of action,” Odierno insisted. If you ask him tomorrow, however, he conceded that things might be entirely different.

Several official sources have validated the studies conducted by the ORB pollsters and The Lancet demographers, thus certifying that the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Iraq has caused the death of over one million civilians. Whereas this information was disseminated by the media in countries which officially opposed the war, it was suppressed in those which endorsed the military operation. This is yet another example of how media conglomerates fall into line with the predominant interests of the countries they are in.

Psychological distress among Iraqis is on the rise. Though normalcy has returned to a large extent and the country is picking up gradually, the issue of displaced persons is yet to be resolved. According to estimates, millions of Iraqis are stateless, as a direct consequence of war and occupation, and are still languishing in neighbouring countries.

This is in addition to millions who are internally displaced. The New York-based International Rescue Committee has pointed out in a report that only a tiny faction of the displaced have returned home, and a vast majority remain uprooted. Such a precarious situation is likely to impact adversely as Iraq tries to rebuild itself from the ashes of destruction.

On May 10th, 2007, this video was banned in Congress.

Robert Greenwald, the director of IRAQ FOR SALE, was invited to testify before Congress by Rep. Jim Moran. He prepared four minutes from the documentary to show.

Republicans insisted this not be shown.

Iraq's main Sunni party said Saturday it is dropping out of next month's national elections, seizing on U.S. concerns about Iran's influence in the political process as proof that the vote will not be legitimate.

Saturday's announcement raises the likelihood that the results of the vote will be called into question. U.S. and United Nations diplomats have expressed fears that a Sunni boycott that hands victory to Shiites would throw the results of the election into doubt. In turn, that could open the door to a new round of violence and delay plans for American troops to leave Iraq.

ABC News has learned that the Obama administration has decided to give the war in Iraq — currently known as Operation Iraqi Freedom — a new name.

The new name: “Operation New Dawn.”

Risen reports that the CIA recruited and sent to Iraq – as spies – more than 30 relatives of Iraqi scientists alleged by the neo-crazies to be involved in nuke and chem-bio weapon programs. According to Risen, all of them – including American anesthesiologist Sawsan Alhaddad of Cleveland – returned to tell the CIA that all of those programs had been killed years before and never resuscitated.

But, of course, the CIA already knew that. In 1995, Saddam's son-in-law, Gen. Kamel, the man in charge of all Saddam's nuke and chem-bio programs, had defected to Jordan, and told the CIA and the UN Special Commission that every trace of those programs had been destroyed, either during the Gulf War, or – at Kamel's direction – in the immediate aftermath.

Quoth Kamel, "Nothing is left."

Miles added that the objective of the mission was to carry out arrest warrants against a number of wanted persons in the villages that belong to Ali al-Gharbi district, (100 km north of Amara), and the raiding force managed to arrest 22 wanted persons and seize a cache of munitions.

The Missan provincial council had convened an extraordinary session on Friday after 10 people were killed, five wounded and 12 others detained. The council decided that an ad hoc commission would be set up to investigate the incident.

Any lingering hope that Iraq can hold a credible and peaceful election suffered a further blow yesterday when the leading secular nationalist bloc suspended its participation.

The Iraqiya list, led by the former president Ayad Allawi, announced a three-day halt to its campaign after an appeals court upheld an exclusion order preventing Saleh al Mutlaq and Dhafer al Ani, two of its senior candidates, from standing on the grounds that they were pro-Baathist.

US forces have shot eight Iraqi people, most of them 'innocent bystanders,' in a raid in a village southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi provincial officials say.

Iraqi provincial council officials described the US raid as slaughter and demanded financial compensation for the relatives of the victims.

Maysan province governor Mohammed Shia al-Sudany told state-run television that eight people were killed, one wounded and 12 arrested in the village 75 km (46 miles) north of the provincial capital of Amara.

"What happened this morning was a massacre in every sense of the word. Eight people were killed. Most of them were innocent," Reuters quoted Sudany as saying.

Conquest is thought necessary by nation-states like Rome, forgetting that an imperially ambitious nation substitutes conquest for real productivity. Instead of employing persons, Rome seized their farms and sent them off on wars of aggression and conquest. Obvious examples are Dacia and Gaul both of which Rome invaded for 'gold'. More recently, George W. Bush attacked and invaded Iraq for its oil. Little has changed but names and commodities. If you are still inclined to believe the Bushco cover story, please tell me how many bona fide terrorists were captured by Bush and cite a scintilla of evidence that they were anything but Iraqis defending their nation, their homes and families, against an aggressor, a thief, a war criminal.

The U.S. military command in Iraq continues to talk about an alleged pipeline of Iranian weapons to Iraqi Shiites opposing the U.S. occupation, implying that they have become dependent on Iran for indirect-fire weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

But U.S. officials have failed thus far to provide evidence that would support that claim, and a long-delayed U.S. military report on Iranian arms is unlikely to offer any data on what proportion of the weapons in the hands of Shiite fighters are from Iran and what proportion comes from purchases on the open market.

I really believe that the Arab Sunnis and secular forces of Iraq are really in a tight spot now, in particular the Sunnis. If they don't participate in the elections, the sectarian Shiite parties of Iran will have it all for themselves along with the Kurds and this is exactly what is asked for and wanted.

Some say that this may trigger another round of serious sectarian violence and I say this is exactly what is also aimed at because only then can the Americans stay on a little longer and the full partition plan of Iraq into 3 statelets can be turned into an official reality.

So, in short, Blair did reveal an Israel connection to the war, that the official gatekeepers of the US (and UK) media have sought to deny, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It should be pointed out, however, that even Walt tends to downplay somewhat the actual extent of the Israel connection. For while it was the neocons who from the late 1990s onward pushed the strategic plan to first attack Iraq before moving on to Iran and Israel’s other Middle East adversaries, their entire plan paralleled earlier schemes developed in Israel, especially by the Likudniks (e.g. Oded Yinon), to destabilize Israel’s enemies by war, starting with a war on Iraq.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and top election officials denied charges that the bans disproportionately targeted Sunnis, but the fact that only two MPs were banned from reelection, and both were high profile Sunnis, will renew these allegations and likely also calls for a Sunni boycott. The identities of all of the banned candidates have yet to be made public.

This week, yet another piece of evidence surfaced that suggests we were right all along (HT to Mehdi Hasan at the New Statesman and J. Glatzer at Mondoweiss). In his testimony to the Iraq war commission in the U.K., former Prime Minister Tony Blair offered the following account of his discussions with Bush in Crawford, Texas in April 2002. Blair reveals that concerns about Israel were part of the equation and that Israel officials were involved in those discussions.

Take it away, Tony:

Tony Blair today launched an extraordinary attack on the Iraq Inquiry - as the chairman warned that he and others could be recalled over 'gaps' in their evidence.

In an outspoken interview in the U.S. the former prime minister dismissed the inquiry as part of a ‘continual desire to sort of uncover some great conspiracy’.

Ex-Downing Street communications chief Alastair Campbell has emotionally denied Tony Blair misled MPs over the intelligence ahead of the Iraq war.

But make no mistake, the spectre of my late, former husband Robin Cook should haunt the collective conscience of all those who have given their testimonies. The inquiry cries out for his evidence - the only minister who spoke out and walked out of a shamed government that, seven years ago, waged what Robin knew to be 'an illegal war built on a false prospectus. . . without any international authority'.

Wriggle and obfuscate as they have done at the inquiry, those former ministers and aides who have given evidence have only been able to cover their backs partially.

For we now know they either followed blindly and willingly into the conflagration or they saw the folly, but failed to speak out.

We were ­supposed to have learned the lessons of the Iraq war. That's what Britain's ­Chilcot inquiry is meant to be all about. But the signs from the Middle East are that it could be happening all over again. The US is ­escalating the military build-up in the Gulf, officials revealed this week, boosting its naval presence and supplying tens of billions of dollars' worth of new weapons systems to allied Arab states.

After the French revolution, Maximilien de Robespierre in 1793 famously concentrated almost all power in a committee called Comité de salut public or the committee of public safety. Until its dissolution in 1794, this body fought a relentless war against real and imagined enemies of internal and external origin. Its preferred method for dealing with dissent was the guillotine; its year in power became known as "the reign of terror.

The end is not in sight and the outcome still unclear. Will the vast Iraqi oil reserves be developed and sent into the hungry world market any time soon? If they are, who will determine the rate of flow, and so wield the power this decision-making confers? And once this ocean of oil is sold, who will receive the potentially incredible revenues? As with so much else, when it comes to Iraqi oil, the American war has generated so many problems and catastrophes -- and so few answers.

Plans to bring a war crimes prosecution against Tony Blair based on last week’s bombshell evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry have been launched by a leading law professor.

'Tony Blair should be tried for his crimes against Iraq—and the legacy the war has left there.

A million Iraqis have died, leaving millions orphaned and widowed. The war and occupation have made as many as four million people into refugees.

The whole infrastructure of Iraq has been devastated by the occupation. Our heritage has been looted and destroyed, the environment has been poisoned and vital water sources have been lost.

Iraq used to be the breadbasket of the region—now once fertile lands are in danger of being transformed into a desert. Children are growing up suffering from disease and deformities.

Tony Blair has today faced hours of relentless questioning as part of the Iraq inquiry's process. Did his performance convince you?

TONY Blair should be tried in a Scottish court for his decision to take the country to war in Iraq, according to a group of SNP MSPs.

Sir John appealed for calm as a heckler shouted: "What, no regrets? Come on!" His voice fading, Mr Blair insisted that Britain – especially its armed forces – should feel an "immense sense of pride" over the Iraq war.

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.