Regarding China...you have both the Democrats and Republicans taking an increasingly hostile posture... if you look at the recent comments of Xi Jinp… - Jeremy Scahill

Fifteen years ago this week, on April 9, 2003, television networks across the globe cut to a live scene unfolding in ’s . A motley hybrid of what appeared to be ordinary Iraqis and uniformed U.S. troops — who had begun to occupy Baghdad — pulled down a massive statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a brilliant, semi-staged propaganda exercise meant to reinforce the neoconservative promise that ordinary Iraqis would be exuberant over the fall of the regime and welcome the U.S. troops as liberators. It was with this image firmly tattooed on the public consciousness of the war that George W. Bush stepped off a fighter plane onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, ridiculously dressed in a flight suit, and told the world that the American mission was accomplished. There was a massive banner with that message created just for that moment. In reality, this particular war was just beginning and it continues on to this day. It is important to examine what happened in this war and how it happened: the lies, the crimes, the , the destruction — all of it. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the neoconservatives should all hold a special place in the hall of shame for mass killers for what they did to Iraq. But they did it with the support of many in Congress, including some of the most prominent and elite Democrats, including the 2016 nominee for president, Hillary Clinton.

As the war rages on in Afghanistan and—despite spin to the contrary—in Iraq as well, and the are engaged in parallel, covert, shadow wars that are waged in near total darkness and largely away from effective or meaningful or journalistic scrutiny. The actions and consequences of these wars is seldom discussed in public or investigated by the Congress. The current US strategy can be summed up as follows: We are trying to kill our way to peace. And the killing fields are growing in number.

All across the so-called liberal media, the reporting and analysis on Venezuela the past weeks has been atrocious. And actually, it has been this way for a long time. We should remember that The New York Times actually openly supported the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez. But in the wake of the recent Venezuelan elections, there has been a total uniformity to the characterization of Venezuela’s suffering and chaos as the sole fault of Nicolás Maduro. The elections are being denounced by anchors as though it’s just accepted fact that Maduro is only president because of corruption. Almost never mentioned prominently is the fact that Venezuela has been systematically targeted by the United States and its allies and its puppets in Latin America or the impact the economic sanctions have had on the country or the fact that there was an attempt to kill Nicolás Maduro with a drone packed with explosives. The story is just “Maduro is a corrupt Socialist dictator. He needs to be taken out so that Venezuela can be free.” The central role that the U.S. has played under Bush, under Obama, and now, under Trump in destabilizing Venezuela