Security forces are often targets for violence, but the government-backed Sahwa or Awakening Council members took the brunt of attacks. At least 11 of them were killed and one more was wounded. Another seven Iraqis were killed and 16 more were wounded in other attacks.
Behind a mysterious Dec. 22 Associated Press story about “finding of fact” by a district judge in Manhattan Friday that Iran assisted al-Qaeda in the planning of the 9/11 attacks is a tapestry of recycled fabrications and distortions of fact from a bizarre cast of characters. The AP story offers no indication of the nature …
Continue reading “Crackpot Anti-Islam Activists, ‘Serial Fabricators,’ and the Tale of Iran and 9/11”
Iraq enjoyed a relatively quiet prayer day, but at least four Iraqis were killed, and another nine were wounded across the country. Also, at least two significant demonstrations took place.
As a 17-year-old in 1962, I was one of a group of about 10 Iraqi students doing A-levels in a college in the UK. The group included three Christians and one Kurd; the rest were Muslims. Please do not ask me how many of the Muslims were Shia and how many were Sunni. I had …
Continue reading “The Agony of Iraq, the Country of My Birth”
“Between government in the republican meaning, that is, constitutional, representative, limited government, on the one hand, and Empire on the other hand, there is mortal enmity. Either one must forbid the other, or one will destroy the other. That we know. Yet never has the choice been put to a vote of the people.” Garet …
Continue reading “Ron Paul and the Future of American Foreign Policy”
During the recent Republican presidential primary debates, three candidates said without hesitation that they would authorize waterboarding as an interrogation technique if elected president. In their recent memoirs, both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney admitted with evident pride that they had approved the technique. This defense and approval of waterboarding has been voiced despite …
Continue reading “The Return of Waterboarding?”
US Drones misook civilians for rebels at the border between Turkey and Iraq. The attack, which may have taken place inside Iraqi territory left 35 Turkish Kurds dead and wounded 15 more who were apparently smuggling fuel. Meanwhile, at least five Iraqis were killed and 18 more were wounded.
It’s been a year of populist uprisings, economic downturns, political assassinations, and one scandal after another. Gold prices soared, while the dollar plummeted. The Arab Spring triggered worldwide protests, including the Occupy Wall Street protests here in America. Nature unleashed her forces with a massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan, flooding in Thailand and Pakistan, …
Continue reading “2011: The Year in Civil Liberties”
Mark Twain is credited with saying that “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Today’s United States is often compared to other historic nations, whether at their prime or about to decline and fall depending on one’s own political perspective. Neoconservatives frequently eulogize Washington as a new Rome, promising a worldwide empire without end carried …
Continue reading “A Tale of Two Cities: Weimar and Washington”
Population of Bahrain: 1.2 million Number of citizens: 535,000 Percentage of citizens who are Shia Muslim: 70 Percentage of those in government: 13 Number of senior positions they fill in the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Cabinet Affairs, the National Guard, the Supreme Defense Council, and the Royal Court: 0 Percentage …
Continue reading “The Bahrain Uprising in Numbers” 
