Month: March 2009

Updated at 8:53 p.m. EDT, Mar. 22, 2009 At least eight Iraqis were killed and eight more were wounded in attacks across the country. No Coalition deaths were reported, but two American soldiers were injured during a bombing in Fallujah. Meanwhile, hundreds marched in Washington D.C. to protest the war on the sixth anniversary of … Continue reading “Sunday: 8 Iraqis Killed, 8 Wounded”

Updated at 8:45 p.m. EST, Mar. 21, 2009 At least five Iraqis were killed and 11 more were wounded in the latest reported attacks. No Coalition deaths were reported, but a bomb blast targeted a U.S. patrol in Baghdad. Almost all Awakening Council (Sahwa) guards are now under the authority of the Iraqi government. The … Continue reading “Saturday: 5 Iraqis Killed, 11 Wounded”

U.S. Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, whose commando raids and airstrikes against suspected Taliban targets have caused large numbers of civilian casualties that have angered Afghans, have quietly been put under the "tactical control" of the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, for the first time. An order issued Tuesday … Continue reading “McKiernan Gets Control of Disputed Raids”

Bosnian Serb leaders have threatened to withdraw from Bosnia-Herzegovina, the decentralized entity created by the 1995 Dayton Accords, which ended a brutal civil war in the Balkans that killed more than 100,000 people in the early 1990s.  Under the accords, Bosnia-Herzegovina were partitioned into a confederation of the Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation.  Critics … Continue reading “Warning from Bosnia for Iraq”

The Likudniks, here and abroad, are running scared. Why? Well, it may turn out that President Obama genuinely intends to solve Middle East conflicts peacefully, diplomatically. For example, Obama just had Secretary of State Clinton send, Jeffrey Feltman, her Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, in company with Dan Shapiro, head of … Continue reading “Certifying Syria’s Nuclear Program”

The new arms race in space is shaping up to be the largest industrial project in Earth’s history. To pay for this project, the aerospace industry has been lobbying Washington for a dedicated funding source. Budget allocations for missile defense – Star Wars – are only part of the huge sums of money redirected toward … Continue reading “The Space Arms Race and the NASA Scam”

Ahmed Zuhair, a 35-year old Saudi prisoner at Guantánamo – and a father of ten – has been on a hunger strike since June 2005, at the start of a fraught summer at the prison in which up to 200 prisoners (over a third of Guantánamo’s total population at the time) embarked on a mass … Continue reading “Guantánamo’s Long-Term Hunger Striker Should Be Sent Home”

Many Americans, in fact, many people in the world, have been under the impression that Obama’s approach to foreign policy, especially as it pertains to the Middle East, would be the antithesis of that of the Bush administration. This dichotomy, however, is increasingly questionable as the professed advocate of change looks more like a proponent … Continue reading “Obama and the Neocon Middle East War Agenda”

Although the prayer day saw few casualties, tensions were high as thousands of Shi’ites protested the U.S. occupation on the sixth anniversary of the invasion. At least three Iraqis were killed and another six were wounded. Also, a U.S. soldier died from non-combat causes. Meanwhile, a party candidate’s home in Diyala was raided in what … Continue reading “Friday: 1 US Soldier, 3 Iraqis Killed; 6 Iraqis Wounded”