Patrick Cockburn discusses his recent articles about how the U.S. is blackmailing Iraq to submit to permanent enslavement with 58 military bases and U.S. soldier immunity, how the Iranian influenced factions will respond to this treaty, Iraq’s history of foreign occupation by the British eighty years ago, the sectarian destabilization caused by all occupations, the free-flow of arms in Iraq caused not by the Iranian government but by free-market economics, and the inevitable blowback from immoral invasions and occupations.

MP3 here. (30:25)

YouTube here.

Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent of The Independent, has been visiting Iraq since 1978. He was awarded the 2005 Martha Gellhorn prize for war reporting in recognition of his writing on Iraq. He is the author of, his memoir, The Broken Boy (Jonathan Cape, 2005), and with Andrew Cockburn, Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession (Verso, The Occupation: War, Resistance and Daily Life in Iraq (Verso, 2006) and Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the Struggle for Iraq.