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The Zarqawi Effect My article on the aftermath of the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the Muslim world is out in Salon.com. Excerpt: ‘ Whatever the meaning of the killing of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by a U.S. airstrike earlier this month, it has not lessened Iraq’s violent nightmare, or calmed tensions in […]

Civil War Violence Leaves 60 Dead over 100 Wounded 130,000 Displaced in Past 4 Months Bombings and other civil war violence took the lives of at least 60 Iraqis on Monday. In addition, guerrillas kidnapped 10 Sunni students who were attending a technical institute in Shiite East Baghdad. In the worst incident, guerrillas detonated a […]

Iraqi Petroleum Exports up 25 killed in Civil War Violence Borzou Daragahi of the LA Times reports severe doubts about PM Maliki’s reconciliation plan in the Sunni Arab al-Anbar province. Iraq’s petroleum production has recently surged to above 2 million barrels a day, according to petroleum minister Husain Shahristani. The government recently managed to get […]

23 Killed in Renewed ViolenceReconciliation Plan to be Unveiled US troops had briefly arrested, then released, Shaikh Jamal Abdul Karim al-Dabaan. He is the chief Sunni jurisconsult (mufti) of Iraq, and the US military called his arrest “a mistake.” A thousand people gathered to picket the house of the governor of Salahuddin Province in protest. […]

Militias Oppressing Iraqi Women The USG Open Source Center translates an article about the oppression of women in the new Iraq. Woman’s Rights Observatory on Retreat of Women’s Role in Political Process Organized acts of oppression against Iraqi women The National Observatory for the Iraqi Woma’s Rights: The militias prevent women from going to the […]

Bombings in Basra, Hibhib kill at least 20 Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number 2 man in al-Qaeda, released a video Friday in which he pledged that the organization would take revenge on the United States for the killing of Zarqawi. He quoted Bin Laden as saying that the Americans would never rest easy until the Palestinians […]

CAIR: Miami Cult not Muslims I just saw the spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations on CNN saying that the Miami cult members just arrested are not Muslims. I’d say that is a fair statement. For one thing, they are vegetarians! It seems pretty obvious that they are just a local African-American cult […]

Senate rejects Withdrawal Bombings in Basra, Baghdad, Diyala 25 Executed at Mosul 53% of Americans want a timetable for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq. How unrepresentative the Senate is is demonstrated by the lack of majority there for any sort of withdrawal from Iraq. The Senate rejected the withdrawal plans put forward by […]

Press Access to Internet being Censored Journalists at the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere are suffering a loss of internet access as a result of censorship programs that routinely filter out blogging sites such as Boing, Boing. Readers should please let me know if Informed Comment is being routinely blocked by such software.