Yesterday, nine members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) testified about the dehumanization of the Iraqi people, the abuse of detainees, the changing rules of engagement and the killing of innocent civilians before members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Unless you watched C-SPAN 3, you probably didn’t hear about it (my Comcast cable […]
There is still no end in sight after seven weeks of fighting Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Sadr City, reports Bill Roggio on The Long War Journal. U.S. Army units building a three-mile-long wall through Sadr City continue to meet heavy resistance.
The attacks occurred during construction on the barrier along Qods Street, the main […]
Last week, I saw this post Leading America Into the Wildnerness, at Kos:
Whether it’s finance or science, health care or education, America isn’t leading the way — it’s not even pointing the direction. Instead, we’re on the sidelines, trying to squeeze the grip of our still considerable military leadership ever tighter, only to have more […]
Map of Sadr City and vicinity: Green lines indicate completed sections of wall, red is uncompleted wall. Blue diamonds are joint security stations (forts). Yellow symbols are checkpoints sealing off the area of operations, where more than two million people live.
From Bill Roggio on The Long War Journal:
US and Iraqi forces continue […]
Via The Washington Independent we learn that Helen Thomas went to Tuesday’s White House press briefing with Dana Perino and asked the questions few dare to ask, even of the most unpopular administration ever:
THOMAS: Yesterday, according to The New York Times, we dropped a bomb on a home in Sadr City and burned alive a […]
Fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity.
– General George S. Patton, Jr.
U.S. Army soldiers from 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division guard construction of a concrete wall running through the Shiite enclave of Sadr City, Baghdad, on Sunday, May 4, 2008.
Why is the U.S. Army building […]
Postcard from the Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq
The best thing about blogging is it takes no imagination, which is good because I would never be able to make this stuff up myself. Via Think Progress:
The AP reports that the Pentagon is backing a $5 billion dollar plan to “transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone” into a […]
MoveOn.org has come up with the best way to commemorate five years of mission accomplishment in Iraq. Heckuva job. If you can’t see YouTube, it’s a “Mission Accomplished” birthday cake… and the five candles keep multiplying until there are a hundred.
Think back to when President Bush and the neocons wanted to justify the invasion of Iraq. We heard the same words over and over. The Iraqis were “terrorized, tortured, and brutalized” by Saddam Hussein. Saddam “used weapons against his own people.” After it was clear that Iraq did not possess any […]
The propagandistic name of Operation Iraqi Freedom must seem like a cruel joke to people trying to live in Iraq amid the chaos of the occupation and resistance. From Reuters:
Um Aziz is an elderly woman whose three daughters and a son were killed when the roof of her house collapsed because of the force […]
According to a new report (PDF) from Refugees International, the Maliki Green Zone government’s failure to respond to the needs of an estimated 2.7 million internal refugees has provided militias with a valuable propaganda tool and a way to strengthen their respective bases of support.
Following the Hezbollah model, it’s Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army that […]
Today our friend and fellow blogger Frank Staheli, with a little help from HBO, reminded me of something important– what used to be the foundation stone of American foreign policy, in fact. Frank coined a term, “the Radical Islamic Monster,” in an attempt to somehow explain who our nation is supposed to be fighting […]
Condoleezza Rice may be the worst National Security Advisor ever (9/11), but she’s not one to rest on her laurels. She is now trying to be the worst Secretary of State ever. Never has the acronym “SOS” been more appropriate. Just the other day, Rice issued an ill-advised challenge to Moqtada al-Sadr, […]
Members of the military can now show how many tours of duty they’ve had in Iraq when they wear their Class A uniforms. The Department of Defense has announced that campaign stars are authorized for the Iraq Campaign Medal (ICM), also for the Afghanistan Campaign Medal (ACM).
Service members who have qualified for the medals […]
The news from Iraq in recent days has gone from bad, to very bad, to extremely bad. Now it’s unbelievably bad. Here’s the headline: Secretary of State Rice Mocks Muslim Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr as a Coward. American diplomacy at work, as 107mm rockets and mortar shells rain down on the Green Zone.
“I […]
While John McCain travels the campaign trail talking happily about how “al Qaeda is on the run,” Iraq is on the verge of a total breakdown. Americans are not even fighting al Qaeda in Iraq or anywhere else thanks to the incompetence of the Bush administration.
Anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr gave a final warning […]
Today, we learned about a new report on the Iraq fiasco, Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath (PDF) from the Institute for National Strategic Studies of the National Defense University. The author is Joseph Collins, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations.
Here are the first two paragraphs of […]
The Government Accountability Office released a report (PDF) today concluding that the United States has no plan to combat al Qaeda and other terrorist threats in Pakistan. The GAO found that “[t]errorists are still operating freely in Pakistan along the country’s Afghanistan border, despite the U.S. giving Pakistan more than $10.5 billion in military and […]
Withdrawal from Iraq is a foregone conclusion, given the state of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, and America’s worldwide security commitments. We just don’t have the 400,000 to 500,000 troops it would take to effectively occupy Iraq, and never did– even when the “Coalition of the Willing” was […]
If thousands of people weren’t being killed, this would be funny. Our politicians can’t keep track of America’s many, ever-changing enemies in Iraq. President Bush has never made it very clear who we’re fighting. It’s “a combination of terrorists, elements of former regime criminals and sectarian militias,” he said in October 2006, […]
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