British PM Gordon Brown, in Baghdad and Basra for consultations with PM Nuri al-Maliki, with British commanders, and with his US allies, announced that he would withdraw another 1,000 British troops from Basra by Christmas. A majority of the British public wants all the troops out now, but the US is putting enormous pressure on […]
Blackwater Accused of Cover-ups Deaths Drop in September Iraqi Parliamentarians want to Debate US Senate on Partition
Iraqi authorities are not only accusing Blackwater guards of an unprovoked shooting of 11 persons at Nisur Square on Sept. 16, but also of engaging in an hour-long firefight with Iraqi police later that day. The firm appears to have deployed attack helicopters in the firefights. The NYT reports that a new congressional report on […]
19 Killed in Mosul Wave of Violence Petraeus: Iran May be Helping
A wave of violence rolled over the northern city of Mosul (pop. 1.5 million, Iraq’s second largest) on Sunday. A member of the Ninevah Provincial Council and his three body guards were assassinated by machine gun fire; gunmen killed two policemen in the east of the city; armed men killed two people in a market; […]
The End of Bonapartism and the War on Terror
NYT columnist Tom Friedman’s column, “9/11 is over,” sounds the death knell for the Neoconservative use of 9/11 and is in particular an attack on Rudy Giuliani. Friedman’s main arguments are that the Bush administration’s approach to dealing with al-Qaeda has so damaged the US image abroad, has so inconvenienced foreign travelers and visiting business […]
Iraq Preachers Lambaste Senate
The USG Open Source Center translates or paraphrases sermons given in Iraq on Friday, both Sunni and Shiite. ‘Round-up of Iraqi Friday Sermons 28 SepIraq — OSC SummarySaturday, September 29, 2007 Major Iraqi television channels – Baghdad Al-Iraqiyah, Baghdad Baghdad Satellite Channel, Baghdad Al-Sharqiyah, Baghdad Al-Furat, Cairo Al-Baghdadiyah, and Baghdad Al-Diyar – are observed on […]
Saturday roundup
At the Global Affairs blog, Philip Cunningham, who teaches at Dosisha University in Japan considers the ways in which W.’s Iraq debacle has weakened the ability of the US to play a positive role in the Burma / Myanmar crisis. Susie Madrak links to a real soldier who upbraids the chickenhawk Rush Limbaugh for calling […]
Iraqi Establishment Rejects US Senate Resolution Al-Maliki: A Disaster for Iraq and the Region
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Friday rejected the US Senate resolution calling for a soft partition of Iraq. Reuters reports: ‘ “They should stand by Iraq to solidify its unity and its sovereignty,” Maliki told Iraqi state television . . .”They shouldn’t be proposing its division. That could be a disaster not just for […]
Senate Partitions Iraq
The US Senate voted for a soft partition of Iraq on Thursday. First they messed up Iraq by authorizing Terrible George to blow it up, now they want to further mess it up by dividing it. It makes no sense to me; the US Senate doesn’t even have the authority to divide Iraq. Wouldn’t that […]
Bush-Aznar Transcript: The War Crime of the Century
I made two claims about the transcript published by El Pais of Bush’s conversations with Spanish leader Jose Maria Aznar on 22 February, 2003, at Crawford, Texas. The first is that the transcript shows that Bush intended to disregard a negative outcome in his quest for a UN Security Council resolution authorizing a war against […]
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