Iraq

McClatchy reports that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has reneged on the security agreement that his office negotiated with the Bush administration, and now says he will not sign it and will not submit it to parliament. Instead, it is likely that Iraq will go back to the United Nations Security Council for a further mandate […]

A car bomber attacked a convoy he thought was conveying the Iraqi labor minister, Mahmoud al Radhi on Thursday, killing 13 persons and wounding 24, according to McClatchy. Al Radhi is a member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a fundamentalist Shiite party close to the ayatollahs in Tehran. […]

Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh reacted sharply on Wednesday to comments of US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen last Tuesday that Iraqis did not have much time to pass the agreement and might not understand the full consequences of failure to do so. Dabbagh said, “It is not correct to […]

The debate between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama about a timetable for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq may have just been overtaken by events. Without a bilateral agreement on the rules governing US military actions in Iraq, US soldiers and officers would become liable to prosecution for acts committed in the course of […]

Jonathan Landay carefully traces John McCain’s transformation from pragmatist to Neoconservative warmonger, which took place while Bush was still just a Texas politician. He rather amusingly quotes Max Boot claiming that McCain is not a warmonger. I mean, in 2003 Boot acknowledged that the US killed thousands of Filipino civilians in the early 20th century […]

A church in the northern metropolis of was bombed in Mosul on Tuesday, as Christian leaders accused the government of PM Nuri al-Maliki of minimizing the seriousness of the crisis facing their community. Meanwhile, members of the hard line Shiite Sadr Movement reached out to the Christians. The Sadrists are Iraqi nationalists and enemies of […]

The UN is concerned about the continued flight of Christians from the northern metropolis of Mosul. Sunni radicals are targeting them and several have been assassinated. Iraqi refugees who try to return to their old homes are often still facing violence on their return, McClatchy reports. The UN High Commission on Refugees staff in Amman […]

Turkish war planes again bombed positions in northern Iraq where guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) were thought to be holedup. Iraqi authorities ordered 1,000 police into the districts of Mosul where Christians tend to live to stanch the flow of emigrants sparked by a series of assassinations of Christians. About 3,000 Christians are […]

Is this part of a Bush attempt at an October surprise? Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that its sources in Baghdad say that the al-Maliki government will sign off on a security agreement with the Bush administration “within days.” The report says that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has assured the government that he will accept the […]