Middle East

4 Multinational Force troops Killed Turks Shell northern Iraq Turkey intensively shelled Kurdish PKK positions inside Iraq, drawing a sharp rebuke from the Iraqi side. Turkey views the PKK as a terrorist organization, and blames it for a roadside bomb that recently killed several Turkish troops. One of the heartening things about the current US […]

Sunni Bloc Returns to Parliament ABC News Raw Footage The LAT is reporting that the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accord Front is ending its suspension of participation in parliament. It had demanded that deposed speaker of the house be returned to his post, and the Shiites and Kurds have given in and allowed it (with the […]

Two Deadlocked Parliaments The Democratic senators held an all night session Tuesday night, to underline that they are unable to get through their plan on an Iraq withdrawal plan because of Republican threats of filibuster. Despite what some commentators are saying, the Democrats (unlike the Republicans when they had a majority) are not trying to […]

NIE: Iraq Fueling al-Qaeda Threat to US Fred Kaplan at Slate points out that it does not take much reading between the lines to conclude that the new National Intelligence Estimate indicates that Bush`s Iraq War has generated a new and deadly threat against the US. In other words, the US had al-Qaeda on the […]

Dozens Massacred in Diyala 80 Dead in Kirkuk Bombings Sunni Arab gunmen massacred dozens of Shiite villagers near Muqdadiya in Diyala province the night of Monday into Tuesday morning, according to a police source. Also on Tuesday, “In Baghdad, the deadliest bombing occurred when a suicide driver detonated his vehicle near an Iraqi army patrol […]

Egyptian, Sudanese Jihadi Volunteers Suspected by Iraq　 This wire service compilation done by the Daily Star adds more information on foreign detainees in Iraq. As I read it, in addition to the over 160 suspected foreign fighters held by the US, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior is holding another 560 such foreigners. They had arrested […]

Few Foreign Fighters in Iraq; Many are Saudi Al-Maliki Says Iraqi Troops ready Manan Ahmed gives further insights into the motivations of the Glasgow bombers. Ned Parker of the LA Times reports that of 19,000 “insurgents” held by the US military in Iraq, only 135 are foreigners. Think about that when you hear Bush say […]

Pace: Independent Iraqi Battalions in Decline Gen. Peter Pace says that the number of Iraqi battalions (about 500 men) who can operate wholly independently of the US forces has fallen in the past year from 10 to only 6. He also says we should not worry about that statistic. He points out that the number […]