In a grim Memorial Day reminder of the risks facing US troops in Iraq, two sets of guerrillas used roadside bombs to kill and wound GIs on Monday. Sunni Arab guerrillas hit a US convoy in Salahuddin Province, killing one and wounding 2. Then in southern Iraq, a dissident Shiite group blew up a US […]
Archives for May 2008
White: UK Deportation of Yezza "Orwellian"
Ben White writes from Nottingham, UK with a guest editorial: “I don’t like to use clichés, but this is really Orwellian”. So said my friend Hicham Yezza, speaking to me this weekend from Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre where he was being held awaiting deportation. Moved last night to Campsfield detention centre near Oxford, for “Hich”, […]
War without End
Hoda Abdel Hamid of Aljazeera English has made a multi-part documentary on the Iraq conflict from January, 2006, through the present, entitled “War Without End.” Truth in advertising: I make a couple of appearances as a commentator. This is Part I: and here is Part II:
Trotta: Take Obama Out
Liz Trotta, a veteran journalist who helped pioneer a place for women at the front as war correspondents, was being interviewed on Fox News on Sunday by Eric Shawn, when she commented on Hillary’s Clinton’s reference to RFK’s assassination: ‘ “And now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off […]
Sistani Opposes SOFA; "As Long as he is Alive; Al-Maliki Advisor seems to, Too; 5 Killed, 22 Injured in Baghdad
Mark Kukis at Time reports on Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s insistence with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that Iraq recover its sovereignty on all levels. The report is bolstered by this one on Iran’s al-Alam channel: The USG Open Source Center translates transcripts of Arabic language satellite stations reporting on the controversies over recent statements of […]
Memorial Day, 2008
Memorial Day is about honoring those who have sacrificed themselves for the nation, in our armed forces. We cannot honor them properly unless we know the full extent of their sacrifice. We have to count the victims of Post Traumatic Distress Syndrome, what we used to call being shell-shocked, as victims of the war. The […]
Sistani Forbids Feeding Americans; Warns against Security Agreement; Hundreds of Sadrists Arrested
Fars News reproduces in Persian on May 24, 2008, another anti-American fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf. It says that its correspondent in Najaf reports that an Iraqi Shiite submitted the following to Sistani: ‘I sell foodstuffs. Sometimes the Occupying Powers or their associates come to my establishment. May I sell them foodstuffs?’ […]
Clinton Touches off National PTSD
Senator Clinton’s reference to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in June of 1968 does not seem to me consequential, for all the brouhaha it has provoked. She was just saying that many previous primaries have gone on into June, including that of Bobby Kennedy before he was cut down. The idea that she was […]
6 Marines Injured, 1 Soldier Killed; Sistani Aide: Jihad Fatwa May Come; Karbala’i: Punish Blasphemous GI
Al-Sharq al-Awsat writing in Arabic carries a follow-up article on the AP story regarding Sistani’s oral rulings on the permissibility of attacking multinational troops in Iraq. The article seems to me to reverse the best practices of journalism. It interviews two Sistani aides, one far away from Iraq in London and one in Najaf. It […]
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