Middle East

137 Killed by Guerrillas US to Talk to Iran In a tidal wave of violence, 137 persons were killed or found dead in Iraq on Sunday. Thousands of US troops searched south of Baghdad for 3 captured GIs. The Islamic State of Iraq (a guerrilla group) claimed to have been behind the ambush of two […]

Cheney in Saudi Arabia 5 US Troops Killed, 3 Missing Iraqi Parliament Decries Walls Cheney is trying to convince King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia not to write off the al-Maliki government or the US military surge strategy. He also tried to smooth over US/Saudi conflicts. King Abdullah is said to have concluded that Iraqi PM […]

Jordanian Dailies on Cheney’s Middle East Trip The USG Open Source Center paraphrases reports in the Jordanian press on US Vice President Dick Cheney’s current round of diplomacy in the Middle East. Jordanian Dailies Comment on Cheney’s Middle East Tour, ObjectivesJordan — OSC SummaryFriday, May 11, 2007 Jordanian newspapers published on 10 May are observed […]

SCIRI Adopts Sistani, emphasizes Iraqiness Bombings kill 26, wound 60 The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq held its annual party convention on Thursday and Friday and, according to Mariam Karouny of Reuters has decided to make some significant changes. They will drop the part of their party platform where they say that they […]

Congress Passes Short-Leash Bill for Bush 9 Iraqi captives executed Congress passed an appropriations bill that only funded the Iraq War for about three months on Thursday. Bush has said that he will veto it. Senate Dems are working to find 12 moderate Republicans who also want toe war to end. WaPo confirms the report […]

Radical Poem on Sharm el Sheikh The USG Open Source center has paraphrased an ironic poem by a Muslim militant about the Sharm el Sheikh conference on Iraq. The frankly racist remarks about US Secretary of State Condi Rice and the implication that any male Middle Eastern politician who cooperated with her was effeminate and […]

Cheney Greeted by Mortars, Demonstrations: Iraqi Parliament pleads for US withdrawal Al-Hayat writes in Arabic that US Vice President Dick Cheney was greeted, on his surprise visit to Baghdad, by a rain of mortar shells on the Green Zone and by protests in several cities organized by Puritan Shiite followers of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. One […]

Decoding Iraq Violence US Planes Take out Elementary School, Kill Children Kufa Blast Kills 16: US Blamed Irbil Bombing Kills 12 Violence in Iraq at first seems episodic and hard to decipher. It doesn’t take much speculation, however, to see patterns. For instance, the bombing on Wednesday morning in Irbil, Kurdistan, which killed at least […]

Sunnis Threaten to Pull out of al-Maliki Government, Demand a Unitary Iraq; 65 Killed in Civil War Violence In an interview with Nic Robertson of CNN, Iraq’s Sunni Arab vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, has laid down an ultimatum. He said that he would pull the Iraqi Accord Front (Sunni fundamentalists) out of the al-Maliki “national […]