Middle East

Bush made a surprise visit to Al-Anbar Province on Monday, as part of his propaganda drive to get Americans to think we should stay in Iraq because “progress” is being made. The debate over al-Anbar province is driven by the Bushies’ desire to find any ‘good news’ to grasp at. Indeed, from 2003 forward, their […]

Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has pledged not to allow Iraq to become a base for regional or international powers to settle scores. (This announcement seems to me to be an attempt to forewarn the Bush administration that it may not use Iraq as a base for an attack on […]

The Shiite world has been roiled for weeks by statements of Saudi, Wahhabi clergy in Mecca that Shiite shrines are works of idolatry and should be pulled down. Prime Minsiter Nuri al-Maliki used these anxieties politically to explain the violence at Karbala on Tuesday. Problem: the violence in Karbala was between two factions of Shiites […]

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered the arrest of 300 persons in Karbala connected to the Mahdi Army on Friday, blaming it for the outbreak of violence in the holy Shiite city on Tuesday. Apparently many of the arrests were arbitrary in the sense that being in the Mahdi Army was the basis for the arrest […]

The Nation has gotten hold of a secret USG report that says that profound corruption is the norm in the Iraqi government. The intrepid David Corn writes: ‘ according to the working draft of a secret document prepared by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the Maliki government has failed in one significant area: corruption. Maliki’s […]

Two senior aides to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani–Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala’i and Ahmad al-Safi– were kidnapped on Tuesday by the Mahdi Army and are still being held as captives, according to the Kuwaiti News Organization. This report seems to confirm that the Mahdi Army attempted to take over the shrine of Imam Husayn in Karbala under […]

Clashes between rival militias in the Shiite holy city of Karbala left some 52 dead and 206 wounded on Tuesday, according to late reports from Iraqi security officials. About a million Shiite pilgrims had converged on the city to commemorate the birthday of the Twelfth Imam, the 12th in the line of succession from the […]

My Salon column for Wednesday is now available: “The war against Iraq’s prime minister:” Sens. Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin are calling for Nouri al-Maliki’s ouster as a way of attacking Bush’s Iraq policy. But do they understand the consequences?” Excerpt: ‘ In his remarks to the American Legion in Reno, Nev., Bush said that […]