Scott McClellan admits on Hardball that the White House fed Fox News hosts talking points. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow point out that in the US, the government is forbidden to propagandize the public. It has long been known that Fox Cable News head Roger Ailes (a former Republican Party official) and other high executives […]
Taliban Resurgence threatens Elections
Obama Obama in Newsweek: ‘ Our success in Afghanistan is going to be deeply dependent not just on getting more troops there, which we need, but also some sustained high-level engagement with Pakistan—something that I discussed before but I think is significantly more urgent than even I had imagined. Basically there doesn’t appear to be […]
Kurdistan Seeks to Annex Other Iraqi Provinces
Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Kurdistan Alliance has responded to the Iraqi parliament’s passage of a bill concerning provincial elections. (The bill was vetoed by Kurdish President Jalal Talabani). The committee in the Kurdistan Parliament in charge of revising the Kurdistan constitution has proposed language that would formally incorporate portions of four provinces into […]
Female Suicide Bomber Kills 8 in Diyala; Turks bomb Iraq again
A female suicide bomber killed 8 Iraqis in Diyala province on Thursday, including the head of a local Awakening Council. Turkey bombed 13 targets in northern Iraq on Thursday, targeting positions of the Kurdish Workers Party or PKK. Turkish PM Tayyip Rejep Erdogan recently visited Baghdad and relations seemed to be improving, but apparently the […]
Obama ist ein Berliner
Obama addresses a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin. Some were shouting in English, “Yes we can!” Text transcript here.
CBS Edits McCain Whopper out of Broadcast
Keith Olbermann and Jedreport clear up the gaffe that John McCain made about the history of the surge and examine the Orwellian editing techniques of CBS News.
A Social History of the Surge
I want to weigh in as a social historian of Iraq on the controversy over whether the “surge” “worked.” The NYT notes: ‘Mr. McCain bristled in an interview with the “CBS Evening News” on Tuesday when asked about Mr. Obama’s contention that while the added troops had helped reduce violence in Iraq, other factors had […]
Bhasin: John McCain and Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy Choices: Different Bottles, Same Wine
Madhavi Bhasin writes in an IC Guest Editorial: The race to elect the successor to President George W. Bush is attracting more attention from across the globe than any previous Presidential contest in the United States. The next occupant of the White House is expected to manage the consequences of the infamous Bush Doctrine of […]
Cole in Salon: Obama is Wrong on Afghanistan
My Salon column, , “Obama is saying the Wrong things about Afghanistan,” , is now available online. Excerpt: ‘ The governor of the North-West Frontier province, Owais Ghani, immediately spoke out against Obama, saying that the senator’s remarks had the effect of undermining the new civilian government elected last February. Ghani warned that a U.S. […]
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