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Frist Stance Setback to American Taliban Senator Frist’s flip flop on the stem cell issue may or may not help his rumored presidential bid in 2008, but it is a potentially historic shift in Republican policy. The contemporary Republican Party is a coalition of 1) the corporate wealthy; 2) Southern whites (former Democrats) who are […]

Constitution Unfinished as Deadline Looms 17 Dead in Violence Saturday Sunni Arab members of the constitution drafting committee are still rejecting language that would make Iraq a “federal” republic. In practice, this language would formally acknowledge Kurdistan and perhaps Shiite federations of provinces in the south as having a good deal of autonomy and a […]

London Bombings: State of Play After the dramatic arrests on Friday in London and Rome, it appears that the foot soldiers of the July 21 bombing are all in custody. Whether the police have been able to go up the cell structure to find handlers, bomb makers and logisticians is unclear. This is what we […]

Sunnis Demonstrate in Baghdad As Bombings Kill 28, wound 46, with 3 US Soldiers Dead 1 Million Iraqis say “US Out”! Maher al-Thanoon of Reuters reports that one thousand Sunni Arabs staged a demonstration outside the Green Zone (barricaded government offices) against the elected Iraqi government, which is dominated by Shiites in coalition with Kurds. […]

Nation Forum on Middle East “Unintended Consequences: A Forum on Iraq and the Mideast,” in The Nation is now available online. Journalists Helena Cobban and Nir Rosen, academic Middle East expert Shibley Telhami, and I all responded to questions about the state of the region. This is my answer to the first question asked by […]

Attacks in Baqubah, Mansur Train, Pipeline bombed Reuters reports on deaths in the guerrilla war on Thursday: In Baqubah and Khan Bani Saad northeast of Baghdad, guerrillas fought battles with Iraqi soldiers, killing six of them. In the tony Mansur district of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber struck at an Iraqi army checkpoint. He killed […]

Turks threaten to Invade Iraq Just a reminder how much of a tinderbox Iraq is, and how easily neighboring countries could be drawn into a war there: The Kurdish Marxist party, the Kurdish Worker’s Party (Kurdish acronym PKK) has been committing violence in eastern Turkey near the Iraqi border. The Kurdish guerrillas are suspected of […]

War on Terror Over The Bush administration is giving up the phrase “global war on terror.” I take it this is because they have finally realized that if they are fighting a war on terror, the enemy is four guys in a gymn in Leeds. It isn’t going to take very long for people to […]

The Consequences of Nuking Iran Readers have asked me about this discussion at Daily Kos. It notes that former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi wrote in the American Conservative: The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be […]