Middle East

Aaron Glantz writes in a guest op-ed for IC: On Veterans Day, we as a nation pause to honor those who have served their country. Problem is the Bush Administration doesn’t want us to know about their sacrifice. From refusing to allow the press to photograph flag-draped coffins of the dead, to covering up the […]

Two suicide bombers struck at a village near Ramadi in al-Anbar Province on Saturday, killing 8 and wounding 27. Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that officials in charge of “Operation Impose Law and Order” in Baghdad admit that the security situation in the capital has deteriorated and that there is a spike in the number and […]

The daily bombings in Baghdad that appear to signal a resurgence of the guerrilla movement continued on Thursday, with three bombings in the capital killing 5 persons and wounding dozens. Time asks whether President Obama will stick to his 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. The article quotes. Gen.Ray Odierno and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar […]

Mark MacKinnon writes that everybody in the Middle East is with Obama: ‘There’s yearning across the Middle East – at least outside of Israel and Iraqi Kurdistan – for a new face in the White House, and John McCain doesn’t fit the bill. He’s seen both by the governments of this region, as well as […]

A series of bombings in Baghdad and Baquba on Monday killed 10 persons and wounded over 30, including 10 policemen. The powerful blast in Baquba destroyed 22 automobiles. The NYT spoke of the attacks as a wave of violence These bombings, which continue to occur regularly in Iraq, announced that the Sunni Arab guerrillas still […]

Guerrillas deployed a bomb to wound Iraq’s deputy oil minister on Monday morning. Steven R. Hurst at AP correctly argues that if there is no Status of Forces Agreement between Iraq and the US by January 1, the resulting military and diplomatic mess could end up consuming the new president. For US troops to operate […]

After the Iraqi government receives a response from the US on five changes to the draft security agreement proposed by the cabinet of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, al-Maliki says he will share the text with Iraq’s neighbors, so as to reassure them about the continued presence (until 2011) of US troops. Presumably Iran is the […]

Three quarters of American voters say that the Iraq War is a very important or extremely important issue for them. I talk around the country on Iraq and I also find widespread concern about and interest in the subject. A smart television news program that gave renewed attention to Iraq instead of ignoring it would […]

Remember how John McCain insisted to Wolf Blitzer that the security pact being negotiated by Iraq and the Bush administration talks about the withdrawal of US troops as “conditions-based” rather than tied to a strict timetable? That was not true of the draft, which called for US troops out by 2011 but did contain language […]