Let the Israelis Do It?

Hours before his "ratification" inaugural, Vice President Dick Cheney was chatting with Don Imus on MSNBC about Iraqi and Iranian "nuclear programs." Now, Cheney appears to know the difference between a "nuclear program" and a...

read more

Resisting the Homeland Security State

Okay, under the rubric of "the war on terror" (which turns out to be just so versatile, so useful for so many much-desired but once back-burner policies, programs, and products), the military is having a grand old time protecting us from the Enemy up close and...

read more

Kurds Make a Strong Showing in Relative Safety

ARBIL - It is 8:30 in the morning, and the roads of Arbil appear for a moment to be eerily silent. Most cars have been banned from the streets of this Kurdish city of 800,000. Roadblocks are up all over town. But the city is hardly abandoned. The local peshmerga...

read more

The Iraqi Ballot, Translated

I had the opportunity to participate in the long-awaited Iraqi elections this weekend. Contrary to popular belief, this was not the first time my opinion has mattered to the Iraqi state. It was actually the third. Saddam Hussein had asked us Iraqis in both 1995 and...

read more

Iraq Election: Sistani’s Triumph

The man most responsible for Iraq's election didn't vote because he wasn't eligible. No, not George W. Bush – I mean the Grand Ayatollah Ali al Husseini al-Sistani, the man who single-handedly faced down the Americans, demanded direct elections rather than the...

read more

This Democracy Could Be Paper-Thin

ARBIL, Northern Iraq, (IPS) – Many Kurds in Northern Iraq are facing new threats – and they do not come from masked Arab terrorists. They come from the two main Kurdish parties doing all they can to gain strength in the election Sunday, independent local...

read more

Worried Turkey Keeps Close Watch Over Kurdistan

ARBIL, Kurdistan - The afternoon call to prayer sounds on the final Friday before election on Sunday, and thousands of Kurds across Northern Iraq file into their mosques. At each one of them, imams appointed by the ruling Kurdish factions give the same message: go out...

read more

In Mosul, Hunters Become the Hunted

MOSUL - Mosul could be the most dangerous city in Iraq on election Sunday. The city is something of a Sunni island in the Kurd-dominated north of Iraq. Troop reinforcements from the U.S.-supervised Iraqi National Guard (ING) are being brought from Kurdistan into the...

read more

Backtalk, January 29, 2005

My Husband Is Defending DemocracyMonica Benderman and her husband are practicing their faith in the truest sense of the word. Those like George Bush who profess to be Christians but persist in breaking the commandments are demonstrating what many of us reject: false...

read more

Targeting Iran

Pulitizer Prize Winner Seymour Hersh first revealed – and neocrazy sycophants at the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and UPI reluctantly confirmed – that the Bush-Cheney Administration has been conducting secret "reconnaissance" missions...

read more