U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen said that the United States remains on track to withdraw 50,000 troops from Iraq in August; however, the political situation will be watched until then. At least two Iraqis were killed and 10 more were wounded in the latest violence, which included an attack on Kurdish rebels launched from Iranian soil.
Although the Barack Obama administration continued to dismiss the May 17 Iranian fuel swap agreement Friday, there are indications that Iran’s move has shaken the agreement among U.N. Security Council members on sanctions, and is bringing Russian diplomatic pressure on the United States to participate in new talks with Iran on the swap arrangement – …
Continue reading “Fuel Swap Shakes Sanctions Draft, Prods US on New Iran Talks”
Updated at 8:22 p.m. EDT, May 29, 2010
The drawn-out selection of the next prime minister continues to vex both citizens and the men who propose to run the country, as the current prime minister continues to fight for a second term. Meanwhile, a Kurdish rebel leader threatens to bow out of the peace process with Turkey over disinterest from Ankara. Also, light violence left at least eight Iraqis dead and six more wounded.
The American Bar Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and numerous other legal organizations are demanding that the Senate Armed Services Committee reject a provision in a House of Representatives bill that would mandate an investigation into lawyers representing Guantánamo Bay detainees. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2011 requires the inspector general to …
Continue reading “Legal Groups Protest Probe of Guantánamo Lawyers”
Jack A. Smith has a solution
The United States continues to lead the world in defense spending, according to a new report released Thursday by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a U.S.-based non-partisan research organization. In fact, the U.S. outspends Russia, the next highest spender, by more than 800 percent. In 2008, the most recent year for which figures …
Continue reading “US Military Spending Far Outpaces Rest of the World “
At least one Iraqi was killed and seven more were wounded in light, prayer day violence. Meanwhile, Paul Bremer, the diplomat who governed Iraq’s Coalition Provisional Authority after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime said the Iraq War was poorly planned. Also, the U.S. handed over a base to their Iraqi counterparts near Baghdad.
Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam By Gordon M. Goldstein Holt, 300 pp., $16.00 (paper) The debate over foreign policy that culminated in President Barack Obama’s address to the nation on December 1, 2009, concerns a war that began with the attack of a mainly Saudi Arabian group of politically radicalized Muslim men on New York and Washington, targets symbolic of …
Continue reading “Mac Bundy Said He Was ‘All Wrong’”
Dilip Hiro on Obama’s rudderless foreign policy
Bricker and Shamoo fear the worst
