Archives for 2008

“… on Tuesday, a U.S. soldier died after his unit came under small arms fire in northern Baghdad, the U.S. military said.” He was the 25th US fatality in September. A bombing near a restaurant in the Karrada district of Baghdad marred Eid al-Fitr, the festival of the end of the month-long Ramadan fast on […]

Remember how Sarah Palin said that she explored foreign countries through books and how implausible that was? Now it turns out that she can’t even name any newspapers or magazines that she reads reqularly. Pressed by Katie Couric, she said she reads ‘all of them, any of them.’ In a 2006 Pew poll, only 40 […]

Rice led Bush administration discussions of torture techniques, according to documents secured and released by Sen. Carl Levin as part of a congressional inquiry. I can’t tell from this article how complicit Rice was in authorizing torture; that she was complicit in policy-making on the issue now seems clear. We also know what the outcome […]

Witness flips in troopergate. A private contractor now admits under oath that she was pressured by Palin’s office over Palin’s attempt vindictively to fire her ex-brother-in-law.

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai believes that the new civilian government will take more effective steps against the Pakistani Taliban on the Afghan border. This stance is the opposite of that of John McCain, who supported military dictator Pervez Musharraf (who was forced to resign as president in August under threat of impeachment). Pakistani forces claim […]

Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) on how the Reality Game, “Wall Street Bailout,” is played: See also Chalmers Johnson at Tomdispatch.com on the Pentagon Bailout Fraud.

These bombings in Baghdad follow a major such attack in Damascus, Syria, which was probably carried out by radical revivalist Sunnis (“Salafis”) to punish the Syrian regime for cracking down on their movements, both into Iraq and between Lebanon and Syria. The Syrian regime, as Borzou Daragahi points out, is also a strong backer of […]