Month: April 2007

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a piece of work, an anti-Semitic demagogue with a penchant for the unpredictable. The Iranians can do better, declares U.S. President George W. Bush. As President Bush put it: “My message to the Iranian people is: You can do better than to have somebody try to rewrite history. You can … Continue reading “America to George W. Bush: We Can Do Better”

Christopher Hitchens “had a perfectly swell time” in “Iraqi Kurdistan,” as he calls it, where he spent the Christmas holidays, and he tells us all about it in the current issue of Vanity Fair. He has always been sympathetic to the Kurdish cause, and to say that Hitchens lionizes the peshmerga would not be putting … Continue reading “Hitchens’ Kurdish Sojourn”

"Just because we volunteered, doesn’t mean we volunteered to throw our lives away for nothing. You can only push human beings so far," says Marc Train, a 19-year old soldier from America’s heartland. "Soldiers are going to Iraq multiple times. The reasons we’re there are obviously lies. We’re reaching a breaking point, and I believe … Continue reading “Another Soldier Goes AWOL Rather Than Deploy to Iraq”

Several days after the mass killings at Virginia Tech, grisly stories about the tragedy still dominate front pages and cable television. News of carnage on a vastly larger scale – the war in Iraq – ebbs and flows. The overall coverage of lethal violence, at home and far away, reflects the chronic evasions of the … Continue reading “Bowing Down to Our Own Violence”

Updated at 7:15 p.m. EDT, April 19, 2007Following one of the deadliest days there since the U.S. invasion, violence continued but as a slower pace. Overall, 82 Iraqis were killed or found dead and another 70 were wounded in various attacks. Three U.S. and two British servicemembers were killed in separate events as well.The U.S. … Continue reading “Thursday: 3 GIs, 2 Britons, 82 Iraqis Killed; 70 Iraqis Injured”

DAMASCUS – The massive influx of Iraqi refugees into Syria has brought rising prices and overcrowding, but most Syrians seem to have accepted more than a million of the refugees happily enough. "I’m looking at it this way," 35-year-old Amri Alaby told IPS. "There are more people who can now consume, money circulation has increased, … Continue reading “In Damascus, a Lot of Uninvited Guests”

Following the defeat of efforts by Washington and London to ram the Ahtisaari plan through the UN Security Council earlier this month, the Empire seems to have pulled out all the stops in a campaign to achieve the independence of Kosovo, the Albanian-dominated, NATO-occupied southern Serbian province. American and British ambassadors in Serbia have penned … Continue reading “War of Words”

Monday’s paper gave us a small reason to be happy. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas for the second time in just a few weeks. Reporting the meeting – described by Palestinian sources as “fruitless” – Ha’aretz noted: "An IDF lieutenant-colonel also attended the meeting. The officer briefed the Palestinians … Continue reading “The Legend of the
Removed Checkpoints”

Updated at 11:29 p.m. EDT, April 18, 2007A series of coordinated bomb attacks shook Baghdad hours after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said that security would be in Iraqi hands by the end of the year. Overall, at least 312 people were killed and 302 wounded throughout Iraq. One American soldier died yesterday of non-battle releated … Continue reading “Wednesday: 312 Iraqis, 1 GI Killed; 302 Iraqis Wounded”

DAMASCUS – Syria’s decision to accept Iraqi refugees streaming into the country has brought the government of President Bashar Assad more power within Syria and the region, but at significant cost. The ministry of interior in Syria estimates the total number of Iraqi refugees to be around 1.5 million. The Syrian government has maintained an … Continue reading “Iraqi Refugees Complicate Syria’s Position”