Iraq

A new wave of bombings and attacks in Iraq, especially one at Tarmiya targetting Awakening Council members that may have left nearly a dozen people dead and scores wounded (one US soldier was killed and 2 were wounded) Georgia is pulling its 2000 troops out of Iraq. They had been interdicting arms shipments from Iran […]

Outbreak of armed conflict in Kirkuk feared. Fighting between Russia, Georgia risks wider war. Iraq will try to ensure that its army is “self-sufficient” by summer of 2009, when the Iraqi government wants US troops out of its cities and stationed on bases. The CIA official who told Ron Suskind that the White House had […]

BBC Monitoring carries a translation of a discussion of the Kirkuk crisis on al-Iraqiyah televisions between a Kurdish and an Arab member of parliament.: August 8, 2008 Friday Iraqi MPs discuss problem of Kirkuk on Al-Iraqiyah TV discussion programme LENGTH: 1704 words [“Al-Iraqiyah and the Event” political talk show moderated by Abd-al-Karim Hamadi, interviews Iraqi […]

A huge bomb blast in the northern Turkmen city of Tal Afar killed 21 and wounded 70 on Friday. Tal Afar has been taken over by Shiite Turkmen, after having been dominated in the Saddam period by Sunnis, so there are a lot of Sunnis who want revenge. It also has Turkmen-Kurdish tensions, which are […]

The US has virtually ignored the 4.7 million Iraqis displaced by its illegal war in Iraq and its after-effects. In an honest republic, this issue would be on American television screens every day. We didn’t directly cause all of it. We kicked it off. Some links on the worsening situation for these millions of homeless, […]

US out of Iraq at end of 2010? McClatchy reports that two high Iraqi officials are leaking details of an “almost completed” security agreement between Washington and Baghdad. AP also has some details. It would be unwise to consider it a done deal, but these are the main points: US troops out of Iraqi cities […]

[pdf]: The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has an important new publication: Bombers, Bank Accounts and Bleedouts: Al-Qa’idah’s Road in and Out of Iraq. If the US were actually serious about the War on Terror, the CTC at West Point would be very well funded instead of struggling year to year with few assurances […]

The Iraqi parliament proved unable to pass a provincial elections law on Wednesday despite a marathon 4-hour extraordinary session. They adjourned for the rest of the month. The sticking point was finding an acceptable formula for holding the elections in the mixed province of Kirkuk, which is being fought over by Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs. […]

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad of the Guardian on Iraq’s killing fields: