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One hundred Pushtun guerrillas launched a major offensive in an attempt to take Spera District center. They drew down on themselves the full fury of US and NATO air forces that gave support to Afghan National Police, which killed up to 70 of them. Jang reports in Urdu that Khost governor Arsala Jamal said that […]

Scott McClellan admits on Hardball that the White House fed Fox News hosts talking points. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow point out that in the US, the government is forbidden to propagandize the public. It has long been known that Fox Cable News head Roger Ailes (a former Republican Party official) and other high executives […]

Obama Obama in Newsweek: ‘ Our success in Afghanistan is going to be deeply dependent not just on getting more troops there, which we need, but also some sustained high-level engagement with Pakistan—something that I discussed before but I think is significantly more urgent than even I had imagined. Basically there doesn’t appear to be […]

Obama addresses a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin. Some were shouting in English, “Yes we can!” Text transcript here.

Madhavi Bhasin writes in an IC Guest Editorial: The race to elect the successor to President George W. Bush is attracting more attention from across the globe than any previous Presidential contest in the United States. The next occupant of the White House is expected to manage the consequences of the infamous Bush Doctrine of […]

My Salon column, , “Obama is saying the Wrong things about Afghanistan,” , is now available online. Excerpt: ‘ The governor of the North-West Frontier province, Owais Ghani, immediately spoke out against Obama, saying that the senator’s remarks had the effect of undermining the new civilian government elected last February. Ghani warned that a U.S. […]

It is not looking good for the holding of provincial elections in Iraq this year. First the high electoral commission warned that if enabling legislation was not passed by the end of July, it would push them back from October to Dec. 22. Now, the contentious issue of the province of Kirkuk may have delayed […]

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama held consultations Saturday in Kabul with Afghan government officials. He discussed the rapidly deteriorating security situation in the country. I heard him on television at one point pledging to defeat the Taliban. Aljazeera is showing footage of him addressing US troops who are going wild for him, and shooting hoops in […]

The USG Open Source Center translates a report in Dari Persian on a parliamentarian and two close observers from Afghanistan who entertain the severest doubts about Barack Obama’s plan to send more US troops to Afghanistan. Afghan Observers Sceptical of Senator Obama’s Plan To Send More TroopsVoice of the Islamic Republic of Iran External ServiceSaturday, […]