Arab World

Here are the Iraq-related conversations in the USG Open Source Center roundup of Pan-Arab satellite talk shows for the past week. For the non-Iraq portions, see our Global Affairs group blog. Weekly Roundup of Pan-Arab TVs Talk Shows 5-11 Aug Corrected version; replacing text; changing Subject Qatar — OSC Summary Thursday, August 16, 2007 At […]

Patrick Cockburn correctly put the bombings in Sinjar province in the context of the upcoming referendum on whether the oil-rich Kirkuk province will accede to the Kurdistan Regional government. That is, a territorial struggle is going on in the north among ethnic groups that is likely to worsen later this year. Cockburn also provides this […]

Just taped a segment for the Lehrer News Hour on Iraq. Will be aired today, 8/15.

Local officials in the two villages of of Al-Qataniyah and Al-Adnaniyah in northern Iraq (not far from Mosul) maintained Wednesday morning that 4 car bombs had killed over 200 persons and wounded a similar number. Police were expecting the death toll to rise, since many bodies are in buildings collapsed by the conflagrations. The US […]

Cheney was head of Halliburton in Dallas from 1995 until July, 2000, when he resigned in preparation for running for vice president. During that time, Halliburton subsidiaries allegedly did business with Iraq. This article gives Cheney’s position in 1996: ‘ Halliburton was headed for a financial crisis in the mid-1990s. Cheney said sanctions against countries […]

The BBC says that Ninevah Province police are reporting that three car bombs targeted a Yazidi village in northern Iraq near Sinjar not far from the Syria border. One of them was a fuel truck. The bombings destroyed buildings and 175 are now being reported dead, with 200 wounded. The death toll is expected to […]

Four more US troops have been announced killed in Iraq. In the wake of PM Nuri al-Maliki’s talks with Turkey and his commitment to expel the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) from Iraq, the PKK has threatened both Turkey and Iraq with terroist acts if they follow through on any crackdown: ‘ The Iraqi government should […]

Sunni Arab guerrillas deployed an explosively formed projectile (a kind of roadside bomb) against 4 soldiers who had come in a humvee to investigate the sniping death of a fifth soldier. All four were killed. Unfortunately the LA Times calls the guerrillas “al-Qaeda-allied.” This terminology is from the Bush administration lexicon. I very much doubt […]