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Sistani’s Office Calls on Aides to Encourage Voting Kurdish Troops to Guard Polling Stations? Al-Hayat: The office of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called on supporters and aides of the Shiite religious authority in all Iraqi provinces and cities to encourage the people to participate in the elections scheduled for the end of January, and to […]

Mosul Paralyzed as House to House Searching Continues 10 Die in Samarra, Mahmudiyah Violence Az-Zaman: Schools, offices and shops were closed in Mosul, a city of over a million, on Wednesday as US troops conducted house to house searches in the southern and western areas of the city for the guerrillas who planned the bombing […]

Going to War with the Clothing We Have The Civil Air Patrol at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany is making a plea for help for wounded US soldiers sent there. I quote the original letter below in full. Note that getting things all the way to Ramstein requires more postage than the APO address […]

Iraq Digital Photo Archive at Washington Post The Washington Post online is setting up what is essentially a digital photograph archive for the US soldiers in Iraq, called “Duty in Iraq.” This archive could end up being of great historical importance, and I hope readers will be generous with their photos. Another interesting use of […]

Racism and Orientalism in the Israeli Academy I can’t see anything but racism in the discourse of either side in this court case in Haifa, which is considering whether a Palestinian group in the city has affinities to Hamas. “The Arab mentality is made of “a sense of being a victim,” “pathological anti-Semitism,” and “a […]

Press Roundup for Wednesday 12/22 Josh White of the Washington Post reports that US soldiers at a base near Samarra routinely take mortar and machine gun fire, and that an incident similar to the luncheon massacre in Mosul could easily happen at other bases in the country. Skyrocketing security costs have forced Contrack International, a […]

Brooks on Moment of Hope David Brooks has a glib op-ed today in the New York Times in which he celebrates a moment of hope in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. He suggests that all the factors analysts have been complaining about– the hegemony of the Likud in Israel, Ariel Sharon as PM, the re-election of George […]

Mosul Attack leaves 22 Dead, 51 Wounded The Guardian reports that a rocket and mortar attack on a US military base has left nearly two dozen dead and over 50 wounded. The shells landed on a tented mess hall, wreaking havoc among US troops, Iraqi national guards, and civilians. The Guardian notes that US bases […]

Poll Shows American Public Wising Up A new CNN poll shows that the views expressed here at Informed Comment on most issues related to Iraq and Donald Rumsfeld have become mainstream in the American public. A majority of Americans thinks Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld should resign. I called for his resignation after the Abu Ghraib […]