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Basra Battle between Mahdi Army and British In apparent retaliation for the killing of their commander, Mahdi Army militiamen launched a fierce 2 and a half-hour assault on a British base in the southern Shiite city of Basra. The British military must have been alarmed by the assault, since they called in an air strike […]

Cheney Conniving at Iran War Says Bush Cannot be Trusted Shorter Steve Clemons: Cheney and his staff are colluding with the Neoconservatives at the American Enterprise Institute and with Israeli hawks to sideline Condi Rice’s negotiations with Iran by getting up an Israeli cruise missile strike on Iranian civilian nuclear research facilities at Natanz, in […]

Democratic Party Divided on Iraq Supplemental Although everyone is syaing that September is now the potential turning point in congressional support for the Iraq War, I don’t see how things will change much then. Supporters of the “surge” will be able to find some evidence of “progress” even if it is “slow.” Unless there are […]

Starving the Americans Out Someone in the Green Zone leaked the following memo, which shows that US personnel are now actually facing difficulties in getting food by convoy up from Kuwait. They avoid local food in the Baghdad region because of the danger guerrillas will poison it. ‘Due to a theater-wide delay in food delivery, […]

USG Defends Haleh After many days of silence, the US government finally spoke out on Tuesday against the absurd charges lodged by the Iranian government against imprisoned Iranian-American academic Haleh Esfandiari. Robin Wright has more, noting that Haleh is considered the “gold standard” with regard to academic scholarship. The Ibn Khaldun Center for Human Rights […]

Esfandiari charged with Serious Crime The Iranian government has now charged detained Iranian-American academic Haleh Esfandiari with trying to overthrow the current regime, according to the Washington Post’s Robin Wright. This AP article calls it a “soft revolution.” How was she going to do this? By academic interchanges and conferences! I think I speak for […]

Lebanon Crisis Veteran reporter Nicholas Blanford explains what is happening in Lebanon. 1. Fath al-Islam is a splinter guerrilla group established last December that has links to the international Salafi Jihadi movement (which some call “al-Qaeda” as shorthand). Its leader has ties to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It is tiny, with at most 300 fighters, and […]

Haleh Watch Don’t forget imprisoned scholar Haleh Esfandiari, in Iran. The link is to an article just out in the Chronicle of Higher Education. See also Andrew Sullivan. Amnesty International has a convenient form for sending protest emails to the Iranian government.

Wright: Boycott Threat Puts Pressure on Iran Robin Wright at the Washington Post has a piece online today on the growing pressure among US academics to boycott conferences and intellectual contact with Iran as long as Dr. Haleh Esfandiari is detained by Tehran. Wright quotes a statement from Noam Chomsky on Haleh’s imprisonment: ‘ “Now […]