Month: June 2008

Updated at 8:28 p.m. EDT, June 21,2008At least six Iraqis were killed and 10 more were injured on a day of very light violence. No Coalition deaths were reported. Meanwhile, little news is coming out of Maysan province where a security crackdown is moving into it’s second phase. In Baghdad, a taxi driver was shot … Continue reading “Saturday: 6 Iraqis Killed, 10 Wounded”

An informal truce between Israel and Hamas went into effect early Thursday morning, temporarily suspending a year of fighting that has left more than 600 Palestinians – many of them civilians – and 18 Israelis dead. The guns fell silent at 6 a.m. amid skepticism that the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire will actually hold. The next 48 … Continue reading “Respite on the Road to Nowhere?”

According to the Washington Post, David Albright – a man their sycophantic reporter inexplicably considers to be "a prominent nuclear weapons expert" – has charged that an "international smuggling ring," having already "sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea," has somehow acquired "blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon," which Albright contends were intended … Continue reading “Another Tenet Sting Failure?”

President George W. Bush recently visited Slovenia for a summit between the United States and the 27-nation European Union. Slovenia is the only success story emanating from the violent ethnic break up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s after the Cold War ended. The reasons for its success, and lack thereof in some of the other … Continue reading “Lessons for Iraq from the Former Yugoslavia”

Updated at 11:41 p.m. EDT, June 20, 2008At least 17 Iraqis were killed and 37 more were wounded in the light violence on the prayer day. The security crackdown in Amara continues without violence, but Sadrists complain Iraqi forces are violating ceasefire conditions. Also, one American soldier was killed and five more were wounded in … Continue reading “Friday: 1 U.S. Soldier, 17 Iraqis Killed; 37 Iraqis Wounded”

Despite a marked reduction in violence due in part to more aggressive US counterinsurgency efforts in 2007, Iraq was the biggest source of the world’s newest refugees for the third year in a row, according to the latest annual report of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) released here Thursday. Last year’s exodus … Continue reading “Iraq Still a Major Source of Refugees in 2007”

“What Would Winston Do?” So asks Newsweek‘s cover, which features a full-length photo of the prime minister his people voted the greatest Briton of them all. Quite a tribute, when one realizes Churchill’s career coincides with the collapse of the British empire and the fall of his nation from world pre-eminence to third-rate power. That … Continue reading “Was the Holocaust Inevitable?”

Unlike the attack on Iraq five years ago, to deal with Iran there need be no massing of troops. And, with the propaganda buildup already well under way, there need be little, if any, forewarning before shock and awe and pox – in the form of air and missile attacks – begin. This time it … Continue reading “Bomb Iran? What’s to Stop Us?”

John Yoo stands outside the Anglo-American legal tradition. His views lead to self-incrimination wrung out of a victim by torture. He believes a president of the US can initiate war, even on false pretenses, and then use the war he starts as cover for depriving US citizens of habeas corpus protection. A US attorney general … Continue reading “John Yoo, Totalitarian”

As I write, the House of Representatives is passing a “supplemental” war-funding bill – an event that one would think ought to be the occasion for a renewed debate on the war, whether to end it or, as John McCain would like, to escalate it. One, however, would be quite wrong. The halls of Congress … Continue reading “The Welfare-Warfare State”