It seems the US has been inadvertently arming the PKK these past four years since the Iraq invasion—the 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 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
