Antiwar.com

The Bush Administration has made much of Iraq’s oil reserves. It wants to use the proceeds from the sale of petroleum to pay off the country’s debts, cover the costs of reconstruction and government expenses. It has been hectoring European governments and the Russian government to write off much of the debt that Iraq owes … Continue reading “The Curse of Oil”

It’s summer vacation time! Yeah, one whole weekend of it. Oh well, it’s better than nothing. I was going to write about how the Green Party’s vice presidential candidate isn’t even sure she’s going to vote for herself, but, suddenly, a wave of ennui swept over me, and I decided that vacationing would be the … Continue reading “Negotiations Now!”

June 28, the day in 2004 that the Americans transferred sovereignty to Iraqis and proconsul Paul Bremer hastily departed Baghdad, is a day freighted with historic significance. On June 28, 1914, 90 years before, Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip fired the shots that killed the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and led, five weeks later, to World … Continue reading “Three Steps to Sanity”

An influential Washington think tank with close ties to the Kerry presidential campaign is calling for Washington to send 25,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq, even as the U.S. supposedly gives the Iraqis more authority. In a 12-page report released as the Bush administration formally transferred limited sovereignty to the interim government, the Center for … Continue reading “A Preview of Kerry Foreign Policy”

From Dahr’s weblogAbu Talat picks me up at my hotel and we’re off through the uncharacteristically empty streets of central Baghdad en route to the airport. It’s early enough that we drive with the windows down rather than running the air conditioner, and the warm breeze carries the sounds of shop owners sweeping the sidewalks … Continue reading “Leaving Iraq”

A year ago, I urged readers to forget about President Bush’s “Road Map to Peace” – on which so much attention was wasted at the time, by now a dead letter – and concentrate on the real map of Palestine, radically changed by the construction of Israel’s Apartheid Wall, which was virtually ignored by the … Continue reading “Don’t Call it a Wall”

Billions of dollars of Iraqi oil money have gone unaccounted for by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), according to a new report released Monday. The British charity Christian Aid says that at least $20 billion in oil revenues and other Iraqi funds intended to rebuild the country have disappeared from banks administered by the CPA. … Continue reading “Did CPA Take the Money and Run?”

In a major defeat for President George W. Bush, the U.S. Supreme Court Monday ruled that detainees captured in Bush’s “war on terrorism” and detained at a U.S. base in Cuba or in U.S. territory have the right to challenge their detention in federal court. In an 8-1 decision, the justices found that U.S. citizens … Continue reading “Supreme Court Deals Bush Major Defeat on Detainees”

UNITED NATIONS – Despite the positive responses Monday from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and members of the Security Council who praised the U.S. “transfer of sovereignty” to an interim government in Iraq, Middle East experts and political analysts dismiss the regime change in Baghdad as a “monumental fraud.” “The truth is that Iraqi sovereignty is … Continue reading “Regime Change in Iraq a Sham, Say Mideast Experts”

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s new minister of the interior Falah al-Nakib and his staff were so taken by surprise by the unexpected handover of sovereignty by the U.S.-led occupation Monday that they failed to make it to the brief ceremony. They stayed in their office, an air-raid shelter meant for one of Saddam Hussein’s daughters, and … Continue reading “Handover, Yes, But to What?”