US troops targeting a Sunni Arab guerrilla appear instead to have killed an Iraqi family of 8 in a town 70 mi. north of Baghdad on Friday. Three women were among the dead. AFP reports of Tikrit, ‘Large crowds protested against the US raid after the main weekly Muslim prayers in the city, capital of […]
McCain: Deregulate Health Care just Like Banking!
H t Josh Marshall: John McCain: “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”
Ahmadinejad Censored, Distorted in US Media
60 Minutes Interviewed Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad a couple of years ago. They cut some key passages out of the interview. I’ve made the same point at Informed Comment in the past. It is legitimate to decry his positions, and I decry a lot of them. It is not legitimate to misrepresent what he has […]
"Bring’em on"? Are the Sanaa Embassy Attacks Blowback from Iraq?
Newsweek asks if the fundamentalist vigilantes (my term) who hit the US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen included returnees from the fighting in Iraq. If the answer is yes, then it is a refutation of the right-wing US ‘flypaper theory’ and instead a vindication of those who feared a long US military occupation of Iraq would […]
Provincial Election Law Stalled Again; Arab-Kurdish Disputes Deepen; Da’wa Security Committees Protested by Badr Head
The Iraqi parliament failed for a fifth time to pass a law on provincial elections. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that after months of wrangling in parliament over the enabling legislation for provincial elections, parliament has failed to find a mutually agreed-upon formula. Worse, the parliamentary debates on this issue have deepened the dispute between the […]
The Rain in Spain falls Mainly on McCain
John McCain seems to have gotten confused in an interview about Spanish prime minister Zapatero and someone in Latin America. When pressed he kept talking about Latin America and “this hemisphere.” Did he get mixed up with the Mexican peasant protest movement, the Zapatistas? Did he just assume the question was about one of those […]
Arab Reaction to Ascent of Livni
Reuters on Tzipi Livni’s likely stance on negotiating with the Palestinians. Palestinian reactions to Tzipi Livni becoming head of the Kadima Party, a rightwing party that splintered from the even more rightwing Likud Party over the withdrawal from Gaza. (i.e. a Kadima supporter is a Likudnik who has been mugged by demographic reality); via Aljazeera […]
7 US Soldiers Killed; Al-Maliki Doubts Security Agreement
A helicopter crash in southern Iraq killed 7 US troops on Wednesday. The crash may or may not be the result of hostile action by elements of the Mahdi Army. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki signaled on Wednesday that the security agreement being negotiated by Iraq with the Bush administration is in trouble. Apparently the big […]
Obama smeared by Taheri on Iraq Troop Withdrawals; Journalist Notorious for False Story on Iranian Jews; Odierno Warns Iraq still Unstable
Amir Taheri, the rightwing Iranian ‘journalist’ who is the least accurate reporter to feign practicing journalism since Gutenberg invented movable metal type accused Barack Obama of seeking “a deal to delay US troops’ from Iraq when he was in Baghdad last summer. That makes no sense. The Iraqis have published their negotiating points, and they […]
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