Month: March 2008

Updated at 12:20 a.m. EDT, Apr. 1, 2008Relative calm has returned to most of Iraq today as Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s truce with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government seems to be holding. New violence left at least 50 Iraqis killed and another 45 wounded. Also, the remains of an American soldier listed as captured since … Continue reading “Monday: 2 US Soldiers, 50 Iraqis Killed; 45 Iraqis Wounded”

It was shocking, hearing CIA director Michael Hayden tell Tim Russert on Sunday morning that we’re wide open to another 9/11-style terrorist attack. Al-Qaeda, he said, is turning to operatives who “look Western” and “wouldn’t attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles with you.” These new recruits, he averred, … Continue reading “Is Another 9/11 Inevitable?”

We at TomDispatch love anniversaries. So how could we have forgotten DARPA’s for so many months? This very year, the Pentagon’s research outfit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), turns 50 years old. Happy birthday, DARPA! You were born as a response to the Soviet Union’s launching of the first Earth-girdling satellite, Sputnik, which … Continue reading “The Pentagon’s Battle Bugs”

Some things never change. In a continuation of the Bush administration’s Orwellian doublespeak on the Iraq War, President Bush recently gave an upbeat speech in Dayton, Ohio, extolling the progress in Iraq and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s military offensive in the southern oil port of Basra against "criminal" elements. Strangely, as violence erupted in … Continue reading “Putting Lipstick on a Pig”

Updated at 12:10 a.m. EDT, Mar. 31, 2008After almost a week of heavy fighting throughout the southern provinces and Baghdad, clashes between the Mahdi Army and Iraqi security forces may be drawing to and end. Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has offered a truce as he called on the government to stop their raids. In the … Continue reading “Sunday: 2 GIs, 144 Iraqis Killed; 59 Iraqis Wounded; Sadr Offers Truce”

Updated at 12:25 a.m. EDT, Mar. 30, 2008At least 171 Iraqis were killed and 289 were wounded across Iraq. These casualty figures may include updated numbers from previous days of fighting in the Mahdi Army clashes. Still, a significant number of people were killed or injured since yesterday, including a several PKK separatists near the … Continue reading “Saturday: 2 US Soldiers, 171 Iraqis Killed, 289 Wounded”

As Anna’s King of Siam might have put it: "Is a puzzlement." As the grim milestones of five years of U.S. involvement in war and insurgency and possible civil war in Iraq and 4,000 U.S. deaths (and more than 29,000 wounded, but who’s counted) occurred only a few days apart, various elements of what are … Continue reading “Getting It Wrong Again”

On March 17, New York Senator and Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton gave a speech at George Washington University outlining her plans to de-escalate U.S. military involvement in Iraq. Though she called for the gradual withdrawal of U.S. combat brigades over the next several years, she continued to refuse to apologize for her 2002 vote … Continue reading “Hillary Clinton’s Iraq Lies”

Well, now that you’ve seen the Frontline expose, entitled “Bush’s War,” based upon documentary videos and more than 400 extended interviews with major participants and media sycophants, you may yet have a few unanswered questions. Chief among them is the question many of those major participants and media sycophants have asked (or certainly ought to … Continue reading “Tenet’s War”

On his recent trip to Iraq, John McCain acted relentlessly upbeat about the outlook there, even as he mangled basic facts and inspired mockery from some in the media. That made me realize that McCain sounds more like the notorious “Baghdad Bob” every day. Baghdad Bob, of course, was Saddam Hussein’s wacky minister of information, … Continue reading “John McCain:
The New ‘Baghdad Bob’?”