Middle East

Manning says US public lied to about Iraq from the start (via AFP) The detained US soldier convicted of leaking a trove of secret documents to WikiLeaks made a rare foray into public life Saturday to warn Americans they were being lied to about Iraq once more. Chelsea Manning is serving a 35-year prison sentence […]

Featured

7 Myths about the Radical Sunni Advance in Iraq

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole Already in the past week and a half, many assertions are becoming commonplace in the inside-the-Beltway echo chamber about Iraq’s current crisis that are poorly grounded in knowledge of the country. Here are some sudden truisms that should be rethought. 1. “The Sunni radicals of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria […]

Iraq

The seven people who need to STFU about Iraq right now

contributors

We at Raw Story’s Oh God Here We Go Again desk know that we can’t be the only ones whose stomachs are turning at the thought of a renewed military engagement in Iraq. We marvel at the Big Brass Ones on some people who feel the need to offer their…

Bush

Blair-Bush & Iraq: It’s not just the quagmire but the Lawbreaking & Deception

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is complaining that he is unfairly blamed for causing the current mess in Iraq and that if Saddam had still been in power it would be just as unstable. He is, perhaps deliberately, missing the point. His invasion of Iraq was illegal and based on deception […]

Egypt

Can Egypt face up to its sexual assault problem?

contributors

At first, the blurry video of a celebration in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, captured by an onlooker’s cellphone, is difficult to make out. Fireworks explode nearby as the shaky camera captures a crowd of men, jostling and shouting. Then, flashes of a…

Featured

Iraq: Radical Shiite Militia fights Sunni Extremists as US Carrier reaches Gulf

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole Saturday was a day of militia pushback against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS]. In a sign of growing polarization on both the Sunni and the Shiite sides, the best fighters on the Shiite side against Sunni al-Qaeda wannabes. When the worst elements of two communities go at one another, […]

Barack Obama

When will they ever Learn? America on Brink of another Military Engagement

contributors

By William R. Polk America appears once again to be on the brink of a war. This time the war is likely to be in Syria and/or in Iraq. If we jump into one or both of these wars, they will join, by my count since our independence, about 200 significant military operations (not all […]

Bush

“If you take down the central gov’t…you could… see… pieces of Iraq fly off”- Dick Cheney 1994

contributors

Dick Cheney on why the US shouldn’t invade Iraq (1994): “Because if we had gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. It would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were […]

Featured

Enter the Ayatollah: Sistani calls on Iraqis to enlist in Fight against “Terrorists”

Juan Cole

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, spiritual leader of most Iraqi Shiites, intervened forcefully in Iraqi politics on Thursday and Friday, giving his support to the national army and urging Iraqi men to volunteer to enlist and to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He termed the hyper-Sunni group, which has taken over the […]