Mike Huckabee is a smooth-talking, fanatical country preacher who has learned to make himself likeable on camera but who spews all kinds of hateful nonsense when among like-minded devotees. The dark side of Huckabee, the anti-science and anti-gay side of Huckabee, and the anti-Palestinian genocidal side of Huckabee, are all much more dangerous than the […]
Benazir Bhutto Buried; Riots, Rallies Continue in Pakistan on Friday; Imran Khan: Musharraf Must Resign
Benazir Bhutto was buried in her ancestral village near Larkana in Sindh Province on Friday. Her widower, Asif Ali Zardari and 19-year-old son Bilawal helped lower her coffin into the grave. The Pakistani government predictably blamed the assassination on “al-Qaeda,” but Hillary Clinton and other US politicians rightly called for an independent United Nations commission […]
Mobs Rampage through Pakistani Cities; Cars, Banks, Gas Stations Torched Sharif’s Party will Boycott Elections
My column, “With Bhutto gone, does Bush have a Plan B?” is online at Salon.com. Excerpt: ‘ Pakistan’s future is now murky, and to the extent that this nation of 160 million buttresses the eastern flank of American security in the greater Middle East, its fate is profoundly intertwined with America’s own. The money for […]
Pakistan’s 2007 Crises Come to a Crescendo; Benazir Assassinated Implications for US Security
Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, has been assassinated at a rally held Thursday evening near Islamabad. She appears to have been shot by the assassin, who was wearing a suicide bomb belt, which he then detonated to make sure he had finished the job. The Bhuttos are sort of the Kennedys […]
2 US Troops Killed, 3 wounded; Turkey Bombs KRG again; Iraqi Cabinet Proposes Amnesty
The banner under all CNN stories on Iraq on Wednesday in the US was “Progress in Iraq 2008,” with the ‘reduction in violence’ the subtext. This is not news, it is propaganda. CNN can’t know what 2008 in Iraq will be like, and this ‘progress’ banner gives a positive impression of what is still a […]
Top Ten Myths about Iraq 2007
10. Myth: The US public no longer sees Iraq as a central issue in the 2008 presidential campaign. In a recent ABC News/ Washington Post poll, Iraq and the economy were virtually tied among voters nationally, with nearly a quarter of voters in each case saying it was their number one issue. The economy had […]
Two Bombings Kill 36 in N. Iraq Iraq Threatens S. Korea on Oil Exports
Guerrillas in the oil refinery town of Bayji killed at least 26 persons and wounded 80 others with a suicide truck bombing. In Diyala province to the southeast, a suicide bomber killed 10 persons and wounded 5 others in the provincial capital of Baqubah. A day earlier in Diyala Province, gunment kidnapped 14 Shiites from […]
Christmas in Iraq
There was no midnight mass among Christians in Iraq again this year. Too dangerous. And of the estimated 800,000 Christians in the country in 2002, as few as half, 400,000, may be left. Many have fled to Syria, joining the 1.5 million Iraqi refugees there. Even some Christians still in the country have been internally […]
Barzani Slams Turks
Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani on Monday lashed out at Turkey for its air strikes on Iraq. Turkey says it hit terror bases. Bush strongly backed Turkey with a call to PM Erdogan. The US had depended heavily on the Kurds in Iraq. Is this the beginniing of a major rift? Turkey says that its […]