Iraq

For those of you with access to BBC World, the best 24 hour news channel in the English-speaking world check out the Doha Debate this weekend. I was one of the debaters in Qatar. Press coverage: The Christian Science Monitor The blurb: ‘ Watch the latest Doha Debate: ‘This House believes the Sunni-Shia conflict is […]

A double suicide bombing killed 35 and wounded 66 at a wedding party in Baladruz, a city northeast of Baghdad in troubled Diyala province. In Baghdad, 1 US soldier and 8 Iraqis were killed by a roadside bomb targeting a US convoy. In a sign of a reinvigorated American Left, longshore workers declined to come […]

Madhavi Bhasin writes from Calcutta: The Bush administration says it is waging a global war to fight terrorism and defeat Al-Qaeda. The human, financial and psychological costs of the war on terror have been immense. The U.S. is attempting to adopt every possible military and non-military approach to meet the challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan– […]

5 Years after George W. Bush’s infamous speech aboard the USS Lincoln, the mission seems incomplete. Bush imagined that he could get rid of Saddam Hussein and install exiled businessman and bank fraudster Ahmad Chalabi in his place. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told Congress that the US would be out of Iraq, except […]

According to BBC television, AFP is reporting that Mahdi Army militiamen killed 2 US troops in northern Baghdad on Wednesday morning. US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates admitted on Tuesday that the reduction in US troop casualties in recent months had ended in the past few weeks, because of the fighting in Sadr City […]

Baghdad has been roiled for the past three days with major fighting between Iraqi government/ US forces and the Mahdi Army militia in east and north Baghdad, leaving 45 militiamen dead and an unstated number of Iraqi troops. At one point on Sunday, the a Mahdi Army company nearly took a government checkpoint in the […]

Muqtada al-Sadr on Sunday rejected Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s terms for ending his campaign against Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Al-Maliki wants the militia to give up heavy weaponry and turn over wanted commanders. Salah al-Ubaydi, a Sadr spokesman, called the demands “illogical.” Some 50 Iraqi political leaders from various parties (including Sunnis) protested on Sunday against […]

Five US troops were killed in Iraq on Tuesday. Turkey bombed northern Iraq again on Wednesday, claiming to hit at guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) “attempting to infiltrate Turkey from the Khakurk region of northern Iraq.” Iran’s foreign minister, Manuchehr Mottaki, strongly backed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s attack on the Mahdi Army militia […]

The LAT says that 2 US troops were killed in Salahuddin Province north of Baghdad (a largely Sunni Arab area). Also, a roadside bomb struck a US troop transport in Basra, producing unspecified casualties. In addition, LAT reports that fighting continued on Monday in Sadr City between its Mahdi Army militiamen and Iraqi government forces […]