Archives for 2008

Helena Cobban, proprietor of the JustWorldNews web site, has been covering global issues as a professional journalist for 35 years, most recently for the Christian Science Monitor. She writes: ‘Five years into the still unfolding tragedy of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, it is clearer than ever that this intervention has inflicted significant […]

Thousands of followers of Shiite leader Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr peacefully protested across southern Iraq on Friday, according to McClatchy. They prayed and then stood silently in solidarity against the security agreement being negotiated by PM Nuri al-Maliki with George W. Bush. Sadrists Demonstrate in Kufa. Courtesy Amara.net, a Sadrist site. (On both the Iraqi and […]

At least 35 persons died in political violence in northern Iraq on Thursday. Suicide bombers killed 20 persons and wounded dozens in three attacks on police and recruits, with the largest attack at Sinjar. In Tikrit, Awakening Council tribesmen armed and paid by the US shot to death 15 jihadis in a tanker headed for […]

The USG Open Source Center translates the fatwa of Ayatollah Kadhim al-Ha’iri (Haeri) condemning any security agreement between Iraq and the United States (Via BBC Monitoring). Haeri, an Iraqi, lives in Qom because he refuses to reside under foreign military occupation. He is sometimes called Iraq’s ‘fifth grand ayatollah.’ The other four live in Najaf […]

CNN is reporting that Shiite leader Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr is demanding that any US-Iraqi security agreement be submitted to a national referendum. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that he is in good company: ‘ Sources close to the office of the Shiite Supreme Exemplar, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, told al-Hayat that he called on the Iraqi prime […]

On Wednesday, the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front (IAF, Tawafuq) withdrew from talks on rejoining the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of the Shiite fundamentalist Islamic Mission Party (Da’wa). Despite the confidence of Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, that his bloc would eventually rejoin the government, the development was a blow to […]

Former White House press spokesman Scott McClellan has come to the realization that Bush’s presidency veered badly off course and that the Bush White House was in “permanent campaign mode”– by which he appears to mean that the honesty and transparency necessary to govern were foregone in favor of constant propaganda of the sort it […]