WaPo says that the Obama administration is still on track to draw down to 50,000 troops in Iraq by September 1, despite press speculation to the contrary in the past couple of days. There are now roughly 92,000 – 94,000 US troops in that country, down from 160,000 when President Obama was first elected. Another […]
Karzai Defeats Obama 2-1
Afghanistan is already beginning to defeat Barack Obama. He came into office last year clearly hoping to find a way to move Hamid Karzai, the mercurial and ineffectual president of Afghanistan who only controls some 30 percent of the country, out of office in favor of someone more capable as a leader. Perhaps he had […]
Police: Shahzad has no Links to Taliban; Clinton Remarks Produce Firestorm in Pakistan
Pakistani authorities doing the hard police work in Karachi of attempting to trace the network of friends and contacts of attempted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad have come up empty-handed. There is nothing in Shahzad’s background that links him to the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP or Taliban Movement of Pakistan), based in the Federally Administered […]
Follow IC at Twitter, Facebook
Facebook keeps promising to lift the 5000-friend limit, but has not done it. So my account over there is more or less full. Just to let readers who are interested know that the Facebook Informed Comment fan page works nearly as well, and that I’ve been trying to spend some time there, making a few […]
Iraq Death Toll from Attacks rises to 119, Biggest since Start of Year
AP is reporting that the wave of bombings and attacks throughout Iraq on Monday is now estimated to have killed 119 persons. Although some analysts are attempting to tie the attacks to the failure of Iraq’s political class to form a government, thus creating a vacuum, I do not see it that way. The attacks […]
Guerrilla War Continues: 31 Killed in Iraq Attacks; Allawi, Maliki to Meet
A series of coordinated attacks on checkpoints and a Shiite mosque on Monday in Iraq demonstrated that the guerrilla opposition to the US-imposed new order in that country continues to be active and organized. Some 300-400 civilians and members of security forces are still being killed in political violence every month, not counting the insurgents […]
Salisbury: Times Square Rorschach Test
Stephan Salisbury of the Philadelphia Inquirer and author of Mohamed’s Ghosts writes in a guest essay for Informed Comment: In the smoke roiling up from the street of a busy Saturday night in Times Square can be found traces of endless fantasies and obsessions lurking in the nation’s post-9/11 primordial lobes. The stages of the […]
Afghanistan: 57 Insurgent Attacks a Day; Taliban Vow Major Campaign; Karzai to Visit Washington
The guerrilla forces in Afghanistan had launched new attacks on NATO and Afghanistan National Army targets in the past few days, after weeks in which they were busy making sure to get their cut of the profits from the poppy-based heroin trade. The return to the battlefield is an annual late spring and summer ritual […]
Feds still Granting Environmental Waivers to Big Oil in Gulf after Spill
McClatchy gets the story: Since the BP oil leak began on April 20, the Federal government has granted 22 waivers to oil companies allowing them to avoid doing environmental impact studies on their further drilling plans in the Mexican Gulf. The Department of the Interior’s “Minerals Management Service” has a history of ignoring environmental law. […]
© 2025 All Rights Reserved