Will there be autocracy in Iraq or renewed civil war? The country seems headed for either one or the other, as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tightens the noose on Iraqi democracy and sectarian bombings resume. Mohammed Shayaa al-Sudani, Iraq’s human rights minister, recently declared that casualties in the roughly nine-year period since the American invasion …
Continue reading “The Already Forgotten Iraq War”
Watching Diane Sawyer of ABC News help former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promote his memoir, Known and Unknown, gives one a definite feeling of, as Yogi Berra put it, “déjà vu all over again.” Listening to Rumsfeld field Sawyer’s softball questions, delivered in a deferential tone normally reserved for sympathetic conversations with senior U.S. …
Continue reading “Rumsfeld Revives Old Lies in New Book”
Updated at 6:25 p.m. EDT, July 6, 2009
At least 9 Iraqis were killed and 17 more were wounded in the latest round of violence. Again, Mosul was the target of multiple attacks. British authorities are looking into allegations that British troops tortured Iraqi civilians in 2004. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government has banned organized trips to Saddam Hussein’s grave, even as the final resting place for the former dictator’s gun is under discussion.
Gordon Prather on the reason for all that waterboarding