Middle East

[pdf]: The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has an important new publication: Bombers, Bank Accounts and Bleedouts: Al-Qa’idah’s Road in and Out of Iraq. If the US were actually serious about the War on Terror, the CTC at West Point would be very well funded instead of struggling year to year with few assurances […]

The Iraqi parliament proved unable to pass a provincial elections law on Wednesday despite a marathon 4-hour extraordinary session. They adjourned for the rest of the month. The sticking point was finding an acceptable formula for holding the elections in the mixed province of Kirkuk, which is being fought over by Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs. […]

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad of the Guardian on Iraq’s killing fields:

The LA Times summarizes the case made by journalist Ron Suskind that the Bush administration orchestrated the forging of a document by Iraqi defector and former intelligence chief Tahir Jalil Habbush. Habbush was allegedly paid $5 million and settled in Jordan because of his cooperation. The document, which alleged that 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta received […]

The Guardian’s Ghaith Abdul-Ahad went back to Baghdad to see the effects of last year’s troop escalation (“surge”). He argues that the US military’s blast walls and forcible division of the city into isolated micro-neighborhoods are the cause of the reduction in deaths, not extra troops. The Real News provides a transcript.

For critics of Ron Suskind’s revelations that Bush and Cheney suppressed evidence that Iraq had no WMD, check out the below: Tyler Drumheller from a 2006 “60 Minutes” interview. Or how about the column of Imad Khadduri, an actual, living breathing Iraqi nuclear scientist, who before the war condemned Bush administration charges on WMD as […]

The Iraqi parliament will make another attempt on Tuesday to pass a provincial elections law that resolves controversies over how to treat troubled Kirkuk Province. AFP summarizes political violence in Iraq on Monday, which included the killing of 2 US GIs, strikes at Iraqi security forces on Palestine Street in Baghdad and an attempt on […]

An extraordinary Iraqi parliamentary session planned for Sunday to settle the provincial election law was cancelled at the last minute. Parliament is on recess in August. So to recap: No provincial election law means, probably, no provincial elections this year. No oil law. No significant Shiite-Sunni reconciliation. Politics gridlocked in Iraq. Westerners look for public […]

Guerrillas used a car bomb to kill 8 persons in Baghdad and wound 14 The Iraqi government will order $9 billion in weapons from US firms. This sort of thing, if it continues, would make the Iraq War worthwhile to the Military-Industrial Complex. If you want to turn an enemy into a customer, nothing does […]