The Obama administration protects its “credibility” by refusing to budge on its claims about the 2013 Syria-sarin case or the 2014 plane shoot-down in eastern Ukraine even as the evidence shifts, writes Robert Parry. What surprised me most about the Iraq War wasn’t how wrong the expectation of happy Iraqis showering American troops with flowers was or even how badly the war would turn out [...]

The former chief judge that presided over Saddam Hussein’s trial told RT in an exclusive interview how the tribunal, which was dependent on the US, lacking in legitimacy, and overshadowed by the killing of lawyers, sentenced the Iraqi strongman to death. In November of 2006, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging three years after a US-led “coalition of the willing” invaded Iraq [...]

An investigation into a massive global oil bribery scandal has been launched by authorities in the US, Britain, and Australia, after leaked confidential files indicated that some of the world’s most powerful corporations were part of the racket. [...]

An Islamic State fighter from the US was arrested in Iraq after emerging from territory controlled by the militant group in Syria, a local commander told Kurdish media. The man reportedly mistook the area for the Turkish border. A local commander told Kurdish news outlet Rudaw that the arrested man was 27-year-old Muhammad Jamal Amin, a Virginia-born US citizen of a Palestinian father and an Ir [...]

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair kept members of his cabinet and numerous high-profile Whitehall officials in the dark over his plans to create a “regime change” in Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein, a new memoir has revealed. “Broken Vows,” a new book about the former PM by investigative journalist Tom Bower, reveals that Blair had decided as early as 2002 that Saddam Hussein should be remo [...]

AP is reporting: “Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press confirm what church leaders and Middle East preservationists had feared: The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group’s relentless destruction of heritage sites it considers heretical.” [...]

Former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton is the only candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination who supported the invasion of Iraq. That war not only resulted in 4,500 American soldiers being killed and thousands more permanently disabled, but also hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, the destabilization of the region with the rise of the Islamic State and other ex [...]

Monitoring group Airwars has presented Britain’s defense secretary with evidence that could link multiple civilian deaths in Iraq to British airstrikes. The group’s director Chris Woods, an investigative journalist with expertise in conflict studies, has written to Defence Secretary Michael Fallon requesting an investigation into the allegations. [...]

Saying he had “helped create ISIS,” an Iraq War veteran and US Marine is speaking out about the atrocities and criminal activities he and his fellow soldiers engaged in during the Iraq War, claiming he knew it would lead to “blow-back” in the Middle East.   [...]

More than 30 Iraqi soldiers have been killed and 20 more injured in an airstrike carried out by the US military, an Iraqi said in a statement cited by Sputnik. “30 Iraqi servicemen from the 55th brigade of the Iraqi Army have been killed and 20 injured after an airstrike carried out by US aviation in the town of Al-Naimiya, Fallujah province ,” Hakim al-Zamili, the head of the Parliamentar [...]

As the war in Syria and Iraq drags on, and violence in Afghanistan continues, the War on Terror seems to be lost. Will the US rethink its strategy? Will Washington have enough courage to admit mistakes and learn lessons? Will other countries - including Russia and Iran - be able to overcome their differences and unite in the face of terror? We ask CIA veteran, former National Intelligence Officer [...]

The threat by an Iraqi parliamentary committee to cancel the country’s security pact with the United States reflects Baghdad’s growing fears that Washington will not rein in Turkey, so that it must seek protection from Russia and Iran, analysts told Sputnik. Last week, Turkey deployed troops to a camp in Mosul in northern Iraq. Baghdad condemned the move as a violation of sovereignty and as [...]

The deployment of Turkish tanks and troops in Iraq is a gross violation of international law, and is being carried out with the implicit blessing of the United States, according to Russian Middle East expert Boris Dolgov. In an interview with Sputnik, Boris Dolgov, a prominent Russian expert on the Middle East, said that Turkey's move to send troops to Iraq is a gross violation of international [...]

Turkey’s “incursion” into Iraq is a cold, calculated move. And once again, the name of the game is – what else? – Divide and Rule. Turkey sent to Iraqi Kurdistan – which is part of the state of Iraq - no less than a 400-strong battalion supported by 25 M-60A3 tanks. [...]

The Iraqi parliament's Security and Defense Committee has called for a review and cancelation of the agreement with Washington on security, a committee member has stated. Iraq needs either to overhaul the terms of the agreement on security or annul it, Hamid Mutlak, an Iraqi Parliamentarian and member of the Defense and Security Committee told Sputnik. [...]

Following the serious violation of Iraq’s sovereignty by Turkish ground troops, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi has accused its neighbor of being a hub for the “majority” of illegal oil smuggled by ISIS terrorists. During a meeting with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Abadi stressed the importance of stopping oil smuggling from jihadi-controlled parts of Iraq and Syri [...]

The Iraqi government has demanded that Ankara withdraw the more than 100 Turkish forces that entered Iraq with tanks and artillery for alleged “training” of troops near Islamic State-occupied Mosul. Baghdad stressed the unsanctioned move was a breach of its sovereignty. The Iraqi foreign ministry said in a statement early on Saturday that the Turkish troops were acting in violation of the c [...]

Iraq has not requested that any country send ground troops into its territory and will regard any such move as a “hostile act,” the country’s prime minister, Haider Al-Abadi, said in view of a US decision to deploy special forces in the country. Iraq “will consider any country sending ground combat forces a hostile act and will deal with it on this basis,” Al-Abadi said in a stateme [...]

RT reporter Roman Kosarev, who was recently caught in shelling in Syria, says the atrocities he has seen at hotspots such as Syria and Eastern Ukraine have at times rendered him speechless, but this is also where unprecedented compassion can be found. We live in scary times. War, death, destruction, tears, hunger, refugees, indifference, carelessness, the glorification of the heinous and vulgar [...]

Amid intensifying U.S. military operations in Iraq and Syria, a group of 35 bipartisan House lawmakers issued an open letter on Friday calling for Congress to fulfill its responsibility by voting "as quickly as possible" on whether to authorize a war that is well over a year old. [...]

The US is not interested in defeating ISIS but would want to control its movements to create a geopolitical balance on the ground and provide the US-led coalition with leverage at the Vienna talks, said Middle East geopolitics analyst Sharmine Narwani. [...]

The US-led coalition has been "unbelievably" inefficient in fighting the terror group Islamic State, possibly because some members have their plans for the terrorists, Iraq's former PM told RT. [...]