Archives for 2004

The Case of the Three Dead Clerics Al-Zaman and Al-Jazeerah.net say that two important figures in the Sunni fundamentalist Association of Muslim Scholars [Board of Muslim Clerics] were assassinated on Sunday and Monday. Hazim al-Zaidi was found in front of the Sajjad Mosque in Sadr City, a largely Shiite area. Al-Zaidi had been imam to […]

Bin Laden Doesn’t Care Who Wins The remark of Speaker of the House Denis Hastert that al-Qaeda would like to manipulate the US election with a terrorist bombing and would be happier with Kerry as president is simply wrong. The Democrats are correct that such comments are a form of fear-mongering aimed at stampeding the […]

McCain vs. Iraqi Public The rather bloodthirsty demand launched by Arizona Senator John McCain that the US military conquer Fallujah and other Sunni Arab cities of al-Anbar Province will not in fact enhance the possibility of free elections in January. There are bad characters in those al-Anbar cities, without any doubt. There are persons responsible […]

Letter to a Marine Reserve Officer This is a piece of private correspondence with a thoughtful reserve officer who kindly took the time to remonstrate with me about comments he took to be “anti-military” on my web log. Dear . . . I can’t thank you enough for your detailed and (under the circumstances) gentlemanly […]

Sharon Repudiates the Road Map Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in remarks on Wednesday repudiated the American-sponsored “road map” to a peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Sharon insists on acting unilaterally, intends to occupy the Palestinian population indefinitely, and intends to permanently incorporate much of the West Bank, conquered in 1967, into […]

Aladdin’s Genie Run over by Humvee The US military announced that a marine had been killed in Anbar province on Tuesday. Wire services report that on Wednesday in Iraq *In Ramadi, running gun battles broke out between local Sunni nationalists and US Marines. Guerrillas set off a bomb, killing 1 person. Altogether the fighting killed […]

Sistani Insists on Elections Al-Zaman: Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called on Wednesday for general elections to be held at the scheduled time (January 2005). He made the statement during a meeting of the Shiite leadership held in his office in Najaf. Present were Muhammad Said al-Hakim, Bashir Najafi, and Ishaq al-Fayyad in adition to Abdul […]

Kurdish Settlement in Kirkuk and Geopolitics Jim Krane of AP has an excellent piece today on the demographic struggle taking place in Kirkuk, Iraqi’s northern oil city of some 750,000. In April of 2003 one reporter estimated that the population was 250,000 each, Turkmen, Arab and Kurd. The Arabs were settled there by Saddam and […]

Carbomb Kills 47, Wounds 114 in Karkh Luke Harding writes for The Guardian in Baghdad that a huge car bomb killed 47 and wounded 114 at the al-Karkh Police station. Targeted were prospective recruits to the police force. In Baqubah, guerrillas attacked a mini-bus full of police, killing 11 along with a civilian, as they […]