Middle East

Former White House press spokesman Scott McClellan has come to the realization that Bush’s presidency veered badly off course and that the Bush White House was in “permanent campaign mode”– by which he appears to mean that the honesty and transparency necessary to govern were foregone in favor of constant propaganda of the sort it […]

Muqtada al-Sadr is urging Iraqis to hold weekly demonstrations after mosque prayers on Fridays against the proposed security agreement being negotiated by the al-Maliki government with the US. Sadr fears al-Maliki will give up too much of Iraq’s sovereignty. McClatchy says that Bush wants to give $600 million for the Iraqi police; but he wants […]

In a grim Memorial Day reminder of the risks facing US troops in Iraq, two sets of guerrillas used roadside bombs to kill and wound GIs on Monday. Sunni Arab guerrillas hit a US convoy in Salahuddin Province, killing one and wounding 2. Then in southern Iraq, a dissident Shiite group blew up a US […]

Hoda Abdel Hamid of Aljazeera English has made a multi-part documentary on the Iraq conflict from January, 2006, through the present, entitled “War Without End.” Truth in advertising: I make a couple of appearances as a commentator. This is Part I: and here is Part II:

Mark Kukis at Time reports on Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s insistence with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that Iraq recover its sovereignty on all levels. The report is bolstered by this one on Iran’s al-Alam channel: The USG Open Source Center translates transcripts of Arabic language satellite stations reporting on the controversies over recent statements of […]

Memorial Day is about honoring those who have sacrificed themselves for the nation, in our armed forces. We cannot honor them properly unless we know the full extent of their sacrifice. We have to count the victims of Post Traumatic Distress Syndrome, what we used to call being shell-shocked, as victims of the war. The […]

Fars News reproduces in Persian on May 24, 2008, another anti-American fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf. It says that its correspondent in Najaf reports that an Iraqi Shiite submitted the following to Sistani: ‘I sell foodstuffs. Sometimes the Occupying Powers or their associates come to my establishment. May I sell them foodstuffs?’ […]

Al-Sharq al-Awsat writing in Arabic carries a follow-up article on the AP story regarding Sistani’s oral rulings on the permissibility of attacking multinational troops in Iraq. The article seems to me to reverse the best practices of journalism. It interviews two Sistani aides, one far away from Iraq in London and one in Najaf. It […]

Hamza Hendawi and Qassim Abdul Zahra of AP get the scoop: Their sources in Najaf tell them that young Shiite men belonging to the “Troops of the Ayatollahs” (Jund al-Marja`iyyah) militia that protects the leading Shiite clerics in the Middle Euphrates have been imploring Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani for a fatwa or formal legal ruling […]