With Salam Talib The Iraqi Oil Ministry's inspector general reported this week that $1 billion of Iraq's oil is being illegally smuggled out of the country every month. Smuggling on a large scale, coupled with increasing violence and the lack of basic services like...
Don’t Believe the
Handover Hype
There's a lot of hype about Iraq's new "government." In a speech to the National Restaurant Association in Chicago, George Bush called the new government a "turning point in the struggle between freedom and terror." He called the government "something new" – a...
America Loses Guns, Prisoners
with Salam TalibThe US government has lost track of over 200,000 machine guns that were supposed to be used by the Iraqi police. The 99-ton cache of AK47s was to have been secretly flown out from a US base in Bosnia. But the four planeloads of arms have vanished....
Korean Farmers Clash With the Empire
Sixty South Korean activists will face criminal after they attacked police as part of a thousand-strong protest against a government plan to expand a U.S. military base in Pyongtaek, about an hour's drive south of Seoul. According to press reports, clashes came after...
The Iraqi Government Is the Iraqis’ Business
There's a lot of talk these days about splitting Iraq into three parts. It's coming from almost every direction. Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, with an eye on his run on the White House, wrote in the New York Times that the U.S. government should create a new Iraq along...
Turkey Masses Troops
on Iraqi Border
Life for Kurds in northern Iraq is about to get a lot more complicated. The Turkish army has begun massing troops on Iraq's northern border in an effort to combat the Kurdish armed group the PKK. In the last week, the Turkish government has sent about 40,000 troops to...
Agent Orange Leaves Stigma Trail
*with Ngoc Nguyen HANOI - Nguyen Thi Thuy was 22 when she left her village to help build roads for the North Vietnamese army during the war. She remembers crawling into tunnels during the day and covering her mouth with a wet rag when the United States military...
Just What Iraq Needs
Just what Iraq needs: more prisons. Never mind that the country suffers from dirty water and shortages of medicine and electricity. Never mind that raw sewage regularly spills into the streets of Baghdad. Never mind that unemployment stands at over 60 percent. Never...
Abu Ghraib Is Not Old News
Here's a number to remember: 14,000. That's the number of Iraqis currently behind bars in U.S. military prisons. These so-called "security detainees" are usually hooded and beaten when they're brought into custody. Once incarcerated, they never receive anything...
Peace Takes Time
HANOI - Peace is good, but it takes time. Of all the similarities between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, perhaps the most painful is the wreckage America will eventually leave behind when it's imperial adventure is finally over. Whether the last U.S. soldiers leave...