Arab World

On the Mystery of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Disappearance US government sources are saying that nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr fled to neighboring Iran three weeks ago. Sadrist aides denied the report. This on a day when two major bombings left 66 persons wounded or dead in the capital, and 20 bodies were found in the streets […]

NYT Falls for Bogus Iran Weapons Charges Completely Implausible Numbers are Thrown Around Repeat of Judy Miller Scandal This NYT article depends on unnamed USG sources who alleged that 25 percent of US military deaths and woundings in Iraq in October-December of 2006 were from explosively formed penetrator bombs fashioned in Iran and given to […]

Putin Denounces Unilateral US Iraq War Jaafari Calls for US Troops to Depart The US military on Saturday announced 3 GIs killed and 4 wounded in al-Anbar province. Reuters reports political violence in Iraq for Saturday, including a car bombing in Karrada that killed 5 Iraqis and wounded 10. There also other killings, in east […]

Feith in the Situation Room: Three Lies Former No. 3 at the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, has been found guilty by the Inspector General of “inappropriate” behavior in setting up a rogue unit inside the Pentagon to cherry pick intelligence so as to get up a war. Of course, the […]

Crash Kills 7 GIs Arab Demonstration in Kirkuk A helicopter crash killed 7 US GIs on Wednesday. AP interviewed an Iraqi farmer in the area who said he heard a missile being fired before the crash, and a radical Muslim group took responsibility. Only an investigation will settle if it was a shoot-down, but the […]

Is Tokyo Going Wobbly on Iraq? The Shengetsu Newsletter follows: ‘ Newsletter No. 508 News-Analysis February 6, 2007 IS TOKYO “GOING WOBBLY” ON IRAQ? Just two weeks after Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma described the US invasion of Iraq “based on an assumption that weapons of mass destruction existed” in Iraq a mistake, comes a new […]

1,000 Killed in Iraq in Past Week;Parliamentarians call for Expulsion of Arabs, Iranians The Reuters headline says it all: ‘Iraq: Children living without limbs lack support.’. Al-Hayat [Life] reports in Arabic that a tit for tat debate broke out in the Iraqi parliament on Sunday. Shiite delegates from the United Iraqi Alliance demanded the expulsion […]

Shams’s Parody of Bush: Video Clip as Resistance When I hear Bush and Cheney keep talking about “getting the job done” in Iraq, the thing that most amazes me is that they don’t know they are laughingstocks in the region. It isn’t just that they are widely hated, or distrusted, or viewed as failures. It […]