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 sad—and frightening—thing 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
Freedom’s on the march. From Reuters, Aug. 18: BAGHDAD — Rare footage from inside a Baghdad prison camp shows hundreds of inmates packed into wire-mesh tents, protesting their innocence. “I have been jailed for two years and have never been… Read moreImages show pleading inmates at Iraq prison camp
The Iranian military has shelled territory in Iraqi Kurdistan intermittently over the past three days, wounding two women and forcing the evacuation of 200 families, local officials reported Aug. 18. Hussein Ahmed, the mayor of Qal’at Dizah, a town close… Read moreIran shells northern Iraq?
In a July report, Oxfam warns that while armed violence is the greatest threat facing Iraqis, the population is also experiencing another kind of crisis of an alarming scale and severity. Eight million people are in urgent need of emergency… Read moreOxfam: humanitarian crisis in Iraq
This piece is far too optimistic and soft on Bush, but perhaps the writer wants the president to listen, and is phrasing his critique thusly. We think that’s a lost cause, but the historical analogy is still worth considering. Richard… Read moreBush in Iraq; Napoleon in Egypt
Did you happen to see this one? From AP, July 31: NASHVILLE — A proud enclave of Kurds has lived in this city for decades, starting businesses and soccer leagues, holding down good jobs and blending into the immigrant neighborhoods… Read moreKurdish street gang rocks Nashville
At least 250 and perhaps up to 500 are dead in four coordinated truck-bomb attacks that devastated Tal al-Azizziyah and Sheikh Khadar, two northern villages outside the town of Qahataniya near the Syrian border in Iraq’s Nineveh province, Aug. 14…. Read moreIraq: Yazidis targeted again
On Aug. 3, some 100 activists from the Japanese anti-war group Zenko (National Assembly for Peace and Democracy) gathered near the US embassy in Tokyo’s central Shinbashi district to protest the July 4 slaying of Abdelhussein Saddam by US Special… Read moreProtest at US embassy in Tokyo over slaying of Iraq civil resistance leader
Media revealed this week that at a high-level meeting in Riyadh in January, Saudi officials confronted then-US Iraq envoy Zalmay Khalilzad with incriminating documents on Iraq’s prime minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki. One purported to be an early alert from al-Maliki… Read moreSaudis rewarded with high-tech arms for destabilizing Iraq
