Arab World

Ooops. A US military operation in Karbala province at Janaja resulted in the arrest of one Iraqi and the killing of another. The dead Iraqi is said to be a relative of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The governor of Karbala province, Uqail al-Khazali, complained that the US military had acted unilaterally and had not coordinated […]

Big bombs in Mosul and in Karma, al-Anbar. Questions are being raised about whether the Iraqi army can hold Mosul. DPA reports that two major bombings in Sunni Arab areas of Iraq on Thursday killed over 40 persons and left over 70 wounded. In al-Anbar province at Karma 50 km west of Baghdad, a meeting […]

Headlines you never want to see: “Family wiped out by US.” A US air strike on suspected insurgents at Tikrit went terribly wrong Wednesday, when an American missile instead killed a family of 6, including four children aged 4 to 11. Iraqis allege that the man had come out of his house and fired a […]

The late George Carlin did not like the phrase “post-traumatic stress disorder.” He famously said, ‘ I don’t like words that hide the truth. I don’t like words that conceal reality. I don’t like euphemisms, or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. […]

Guerrillas deployed a roadside bomb to kill 3 American soldiers and an interpreter in northern Iraq on Tuesday. McClatchy reports two major bombings in Iraq on Tuesday. In Mosul, guerrillas set off a massive bomb outside a coffee shop, wounding at least 90 persons. McClatchy is reporting 2 deaths, but said the total would rise. […]

A city council member in Mada’in (Salman Pak) abruptly opened fire on Americans who had been in a meeting with him. He killed 2 US troops and wounded 4 other Americans. He had been in India recently because Sunni-Shiite tensions made it too difficult for him in Mada’in. He had only been back one week […]

Rick Shenkman, is the author of the just-published Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter (Basic Books, 2008). He blogs at Howstupidblog and is editor of George Mason University’s History News Network Shenkman writes: I do not wish to engage in a debate about the Iraq War. But the thought […]

Readers who don’t read blogs on weekends should nevertheless look at my Sunday column on ‘The Real State of Iraq’. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Awakening Councils are afraid they will be discarded by their American sponsors. Abi Abd, formerly a guerilla in the “Islamic Army,” formed the “Knights of Amiriya” in the Sunni […]

American television loves natural disasters. The Burmese cyclones that may have carried off as many as 200,000 people offered the cameras high drama. The floods in Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri along the Mississippi River, which have wiped out thousands of homes, have been carefully detailed hour by hour. But American television is little interested in […]