Clashes between rival militias in the Shiite holy city of Karbala left some 52 dead and 206 wounded on Tuesday, according to late reports from Iraqi security officials. About a million Shiite pilgrims had converged on the city to commemorate the birthday of the Twelfth Imam, the 12th in the line of succession from the […]
Bush, Ahmadinejad Trade Barbs Iranian Delegates Arrested, Released by US
First Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran was read to step into the vacuum when the US was forced out of Iraq. He oddly said that Iran’s friends, including Saudi Arabia, would help in this task. The hyper-Sunni Saudi government is actually not very friendly with Shiite Iran at all. Then Bush rattled sabers […]
Cole in Salon: The War on al-Maliki
My Salon column for Wednesday is now available: “The war against Iraq’s prime minister:” Sens. Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin are calling for Nouri al-Maliki’s ouster as a way of attacking Bush’s Iraq policy. But do they understand the consequences?” Excerpt: ‘ In his remarks to the American Legion in Reno, Nev., Bush said that […]
Rubin: Proposal on Narcotics in Afghanistan
Barnett Rubin has just posted another entry in his brilliant series on counter-narcotics in Afghanistan.
Gonzales Gone for Wrong Reasons
The great shame of it all is that Alberto Gonzales was confirmed as Attorney General despite it being widely known that he had played a central role in attempting to authorize the use of torture on prisoners in US custody. He had tossed aside the US Constitution’s own prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” (such […]
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Terrorism
At the Global Affairs group blog, Farideh Farhi tells us how Tehran is reacting to the Bush adminstration’s threat to declare sections of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a ‘terrorist organization. She argues that through such threats, Bush is merely strengthening the Iranian Right.
War in a Time of Cholera
Violence at Karbala, Baghdad, Falluja dogged the al-Maliki government on Monday, while the significance of the agreements reached by the presidential council on national reconciliation remained in doubt. Unless parliament passes them, they remain a dead letter. The Sunni Arabs continued to decline to rejoin al-Maliki’s government. Meanwhile, the public health crisis that is Iraq […]
Churchill on When to Throw in the Towel on Iraq
Glenn Greenwald once remarked that “the highest achievement to which one can aspire in the neocon universe it to be compared to Winston Churchill.” So Churchill would advocate another surge and toughing it out forever in Iraq, right? Here is what he wrote in 1922, a couple of years after Britain was awarded Iraq by […]
Williams Guest Op-ed: W. and Graham Greene
John S. Williams writes: “One of the most curious comments in Incurious Boy George’s recent speech before the Veterans of Foreign War in Kansas City was his totally uninformed reference to Graham Greene’s novel about American involvement in Vietnam, The Quiet American. Perhaps the best article on the matter I’ve read thus far is one […]
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