People are asking me the significance of the fighting going on in Basra and elsewhere. My reading is that the US faced a dilemma in Iraq. It needed to have new provincial elections in an attempt to mollify the Sunni Arabs, especially in Sunni-majority provinces like Diyala, which has nevertheless been ruled by the Shiite […]
Dozens Dead in Basra Clashes; Mahdi Army Occupies Kut
There was heavy fighting Wednesday and Thursday morning in the Jumhuriya district of the southern oil port of Basra. That is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of Muqtada al-Sadr, now under assault by the Iraqi military, with rocket propelled grenades, mortars and small arms fire raining down on the civilian neighborhood. Al-Zaman reports […]
Cole on Lehrer News Hour
I’ll be on the Lehrer News Hour, PBS, Wednesday evening March 26.
Sadrists clash with Iraqi, US forces in Basra; Curfews in Shiite cities
The truce between the Mahdi Army and the US military has broken down, putting a question mark over the future of the ‘surge’. Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that members of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI, formerly SCIRI, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim); the Da’wa Party led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki; and the […]
Frontline on the Iraq War
Don’t miss part II of Frontline’s (PBS) special on the Iraq War tonight. Part I, aired last night, is or will be available in streaming video, as will the whole thing.
Sadrists’ Civil Disobedience Campaign
On Tuesday morning, major clashes broke out between government security forces and local Basra militias (including the Mahdi Army) that sent black smoke billowing in the air above the oil port. A strict curfew was imposed and schools were closed. Reuters reports: ‘ “Basra is half empty. There are no vehicles and no one is […]
Problems in Firefox with Text Blanked Out
Some readers have complained that occasionally postings are partially obscured when viewed with the Firefox browser. I haven’t seen this effect in Firefox myself, so I assume it is a setting problem. Or CSS formatting conflict? It can also occur in in I.E., apparently, and it positively does not in Safari 3.0. A reader has […]
4,000 US Troops Dead; Nearly 60 Dead in Iraq Attacks; Sadrists Threaten General Strike
All hell broke loose again in Iraq on Sunday, with political violence killing nearly 60 persons according to official statistics. A roadside bomb killed 4 US troops, bringing the total dead in Iraq on the American side to 4,000. The thing I most mind about the deaths of those brave warriors is that our government […]
Unger: The Iraq War was a Conspiracy
Craig Unger’s email, part of an interchange on a private discussion group, is reprinted here with permission: [A critic, let us call him X, objected] to Jim Lobe’s suggestion that Iraqi WMDs and ties to Al Qaeda had nothing to do with starting the Iraq War. But Lobe is right. X is off base when […]
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