Archives for March 2005

Huge Truck Bomb Kills at least 3, wounds Dozens Officials Assassinated A guerrilla detonated a huge truck bomb in downtown Baghdad early Wednesday morning, between the al-Sadeer Hotel and the Ministry of Agriculture, killing himself and at least three others, and wounding dozens. On Tuesday, guerrillas gunned down a high-ranking Interior Ministry official. In further […]

Hundreds of Thousands of Shiites Stage Pro-Syrian Demonstration in Beirut Hizbullah’s call for a huge pro-Syrian demonstration in Beirut was answered by hundreds of thousands of protesters on Tuesday. The largely Shiite crowds were huge compared to the smaller anti-Syrian demonstrations held for the past week. The anti-Syrian protesters had mostly been Christians, with some […]

Awful Crap from Wolfowitz I was looking at this rreport of Major Isaiah Wilson, official US army historian, which concluded that the US military lost control of Iraq by June, 2003, and has never regained control, and may well lose the guerrilla war. Then someone alerted me to an item about Paul Wolfowitz, who bears […]

Al-Hakim: “US Troops Out!” Le Monde reported Monday that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the cleric who leads the United Iraqi Alliance, rejects a long-term presence for US troops in Iraq: Permanent American bases in Iraq? The question seems so incongruous to His Most Austere “Eminence Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim,” (as the leader of the Shiite party which […]

Guerrillas Kill 33, Wound Dozens The guerrilla war in Iraq boiled along on Monday. In addition to the operations around Baquba reported yesterday morning, AP describes several further attacks: ‘ In Balad, southeast of Baqouba, a car bomb killed 12 people. In Baghdad, gunmen killed two police officers and wounded a third. Two civilians also […]

Foreign Occupation has Produced Radical Muslim Terrorism Fareed Zakariya argues that Bush got one thing right. Zakariya writes: ” Bush never accepted the view that Islamic terrorism had its roots in religion or culture or the Arab-Israeli conflict. Instead he veered toward the analysis that the region was breeding terror because it had developed deep […]

12 Killed, 26 Wounded at Baquba Roundup: Looting, Kidnapping, and Shortage of Recruits The Iraqi parliament will meet March 16, whether or not it can form a government at that time, it was announced on Sunday. The hang-up so far has been that the Kurds have insisted on up-front acquiescence in their demands by the […]

US Intervention in 1957 Lebanese Elections A reader writes by email concerning the question of whether the United States engineered the parliamentary elections of 1957 in Lebanon in an attempt to give President Camille Chamoun a second (unconstitutional) term: In regards to the US role in these elections, the remarks of former Ambassador Richard Parker […]

Asad Pledges 2-Stage Withdrawal President Bashar al-Asad of Syria gave a major policy speech [Arabic link] to the Syrian parliament on Saturday on Lebanon. He pledged a withdrawal of Syrian troops to the Biqaa Valley (a largely Sunni Arab area near the Syrian border), after which the troops would then be stationed along the Syria-Lebanon […]