the great awakening to the iraq deception

Justin Raimondo is IMO the most important writer on anti-war issues today. His articles are always extensively fact-checked, heavily laden with links and references, and written in an engaging and often humorous style. No mere opinion pieces, he expends much effort gathering facts from diverse sources and attempting to piece the various puzzle pieces together.

His website Antiwar.com has likewise become the first and most essential source for anti-war news and opinion, thanks to not only Raimondo but his small plucky crew of writers and editors. I believe that a key reason for their success is their willingness to join forces with writers of widely divergent political stripes, even if their only common interest lies in reigning in our country's disastrous foreign adventures.

Yet to this day, since starting this blog, I have yet to link to one of Raimondo's columns. Looking back, I think the main reason for this is that to me his thrice weekly "Behind the Headlines" column is essential reading. I don't always have time to digest every column word for word, but they are always worth at least a quick overview. With this blog I usually try to find news and opinion items that might be overlooked by the general reader, and I just assume that you are reading Raimondo, or at least that you should be!

With all that preamble, I now provide this link to his latest and rather long column, which covers the Conyers hearings on the Iraq war and the attempts of one elite press buffoon (Dana Milbank) and several democrats in Congress, including Howard Dean, Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi, to downplay some of the facts being revealed, especially regarding any role that Israel may have played in the drive to war. Even Conyers himself, who to his credit is at least holding the hearings, is not above cowardly attempts to ridicule any ideas that come out of these hearings that might offend the powers that be.

This column once again reminds us of how worthless the majority of the democrats are, who could have capitalized on the country's growing suspicion of the war and the motives for war, but who give us instead empty posturing and no real substance.

Rather than excerpting bits from this column, which wouldn't do it justice, I simply encourage you to read the whole thing.