Middle East

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Kurdistan Alliance has responded to the Iraqi parliament’s passage of a bill concerning provincial elections. (The bill was vetoed by Kurdish President Jalal Talabani). The committee in the Kurdistan Parliament in charge of revising the Kurdistan constitution has proposed language that would formally incorporate portions of four provinces into […]

A female suicide bomber killed 8 Iraqis in Diyala province on Thursday, including the head of a local Awakening Council. Turkey bombed 13 targets in northern Iraq on Thursday, targeting positions of the Kurdish Workers Party or PKK. Turkish PM Tayyip Rejep Erdogan recently visited Baghdad and relations seemed to be improving, but apparently the […]

Keith Olbermann and Jedreport clear up the gaffe that John McCain made about the history of the surge and examine the Orwellian editing techniques of CBS News.

I want to weigh in as a social historian of Iraq on the controversy over whether the “surge” “worked.” The NYT notes: ‘Mr. McCain bristled in an interview with the “CBS Evening News” on Tuesday when asked about Mr. Obama’s contention that while the added troops had helped reduce violence in Iraq, other factors had […]

First there was going to be a status of forces agreement between the US and Iraq, which would be ratified by the Iraqi parliament and would grant the US long-term bases. Private security guards and US troops would be immune from Iraqi law. US commanders would launch operations at will, would decide who a terrorist […]

Senator Barack Obama is in Iraq for consultations with American military commanders and Iraqi leaders. Despite all the talk about Iraq being “calm,” I’d like to point out that the month just before the last visit Barack Obama made to Iraq (he went in January, 2006), there were 537 civilian and ISF Iraqi casualties. In […]

Bush has agreed in all but name with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on a timetable for US troop withdrawal from that country. As usual Bush’s staff made up an implausible euphemism for the timetable, calling it a “time horizon” for “aspirational goals?” Language like that is a sure sign that Bush is too embarrassed […]

Guerrillas launched a series of bombing campaigns in the eastern mixed province of Diyala and in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, killing at least 40 and wounding dozens. In Diyala, recruiting stations for security forces were hit, as potential recruits lined up. In Mosul, likewise, the targest were Iraqi security forces. Prime Minister […]

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Iraqi government is about to send troops into Diyala in an attempt to tamp down violence and combat local militias there, just as was done in Basra, Maysan and Mosul. I have begun to wonder whether the secret of these campaigns is not so much the show of military […]