Iraqis

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 9 ALBUHISHMA, Iraq - The smoke above the American air base was sometimes thick enough to blot out the sun. At first, residents had no idea what the foreign troops were burning. Before long, they were struggling to breathe. Farmers would return home with soot streaks on their forearms and stories about what soldiers had tipped into the burn pit that day: batteries, human waste, plastic ration packs, even refrigerators. "We were always coughing," recalls Tamim Ahmed al-Tamimi, who worked the fields back then outside Joint Base Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad. "But we didn't know that this smoke could kill people. We thought that only rockets could kill people." Twenty years on from the American-led invasion of Iraq, the scars are still visible in shot-up walls and bombed out buildings. But there is another legacy too, more insidious and enduring … [Read more...] about U.S. veterans won justice for burn pit exposure. Iraqis were forgotten.

There are Freudian slips and there's what former president George W. Bush said during a speech last May. Speaking to an audience in his presidential library in Texas, Bush condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin for launching a full-scale invasion of his country's neighbor, Ukraine. But Bush then made a rather profound gaffe, publicly bemoaning "the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq." He swiftly corrected himself, saying "the Ukraine" with a shake of the head, and appealed to his septuagenarian status. Light chuckles swept through the sympathetic crowd. But there are many others who weren't laughing. The U.S. invasion of Iraq, which occurred 20 years ago this week, was seen at the time by critics as both "wholly unjustified" and potentially "brutal" - views that have only become more widespread in the years that followed. The Bush administration sold a false bill of goods to justify its "preemptive" intervention against the regime of … [Read more...] about 20 years later, U.S. invasion of Iraq hangs over war in Ukraine

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 12 TUBA CITY, Ariz. - Brandon Whiterock stared at his mother's grave, a collection of incongruous stones carefully configured above the ruddy, dusty desert soil, and contemplated all that had changed since her second burial. Twenty years ago, in March 2003, Lori Piestewa, a U.S. soldier, was listed as missing in action during the hellish and confused early hours of America's war in Iraq. Her convoy was ambushed, leading to the capture and eventual deaths of several troops, Piestewa among them. As her family would learn, the 23-year-old was fatally wounded in a frantic race to help others flee the kill zone, and her remains were crudely buried outside of an Iraqi hospital. U.S. personnel were dispatched later to recover the captives and remains, including Piestewa's body. Anguish washed over the Hopi tribal community in Arizona, … [Read more...] about The children of troops lost to Iraq War are all grown up