This Sept. 7 report from AP notes what seems to be a growing trendâand vindicates our observation of a strategic tilt to the Sunnis on the part of the US. US and Iraqi troops backed by attack aircraft clashed with… Read moreIraq: US bombs Shi’ites âagain
From the Iraq Freedom Congress, Sept. 3: The Anti-Oil Law Front Stages a Mass Demonstration in Baghdad US Forces Try to Provoke the Demonstrators The Anti-Oil Law Front staged a demonstration in the center of Baghdad (Liberation Square) under Liberty… Read moreIraq: more protests against oil law
The Secretary of the Navy Sept. 5 handed down letters of censure to three US Marine officers for improper performance of duties in the reporting and investigation of the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians at Haditha in November 2005. A… Read moreMarine officers censured in Haditha probe
Bush’s Sept. 3 visit to Iraq was his first not involving a stop in Baghdad. Instead he visited the former Sunni-insurgent stronghold of Anbar province, in what The Wall Street Journal calls a “a symbolic nod to the emerging administration… Read moreIraq: WSJ paints rosy scenarios
It seems the US has been inadvertently arming the PKK these past four years since the Iraq invasionâthe same quasi-Maoist Kurdish separatist group that is seeking to secede from NATO ally Turkey and is on the State Department “foreign terrorist… Read moreUS arms to Iraqi Kurds slipping through to PKK?
We recently posed the question of whether the relentless bloodshed in Iraq is fundamentally a national liberation struggle or a sectarian civil war. Which does it look like to you? From AP, Aug. 28: 31 killed at Iraqi religious festival… Read moreShi’ites clash in Karbala; Sunni mosque attacked in Fallujah
Two days after launching aerial attacks on Shi’ite enclaves in Baghdad, the US is accused of air raids on police stations in the Kurdish autonomous zone. Jabar Yawer, spokesman for the Kurdish peshmerga militia, said a US helicopter attacked two… Read moreIraq: US attacks Kurds?
The LA Times reports Aug. 25: U.S. forces firing from helicopters Friday pursued militiamen loyal to a radical anti-U.S. Shiite cleric into a west Baghdad district, killing at least 18 people, reportedly including some civilians… U.S.-led forces said Friday’s predawn… Read moreIraq: US bombs Shi’ites, tilts to Sunnis?
The New York Times reports Aug. 25: “The number of detainees held by the American-led military forces in Iraq has swelled by 50 percent under the troop increase ordered by President Bush, with the inmate population growing to 24,500 today… Read moreIraq: detained, displaced rise along with “surge”
Reports The Guardian, Aug. 24: An American military commander in Iraq today said a senior Republican senator’s call for a troop withdrawal would represent “a giant step backwards” in one of the country’s most precarious regions. Major General Rick Lynch,… Read morePentagon divided on Iraq withdrawal?
The sadâand frighteningâthing is that Americans generally have such a poor sense of history that many will get taken in by Bush’s warped Vietnam analogies, delivered to applause at a National Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Kansas City Aug…. Read moreBush draws wrong lessons from Vietnam
Remember back in March when the Brits pulled out of southern Iraq, citing “progress“? Looks like the only thing which has “progressed” is a violent internecine Shi’ite struggle for political control. From the LAT, Aug. 21 (links and emphasis added):… Read moreIraq: Sadr-Badr struggle for the south
