One Utah

Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri, Saddam’s successor, now claims the title, “leader of Resistance and Liberation, general secretary of the Socialist Baath Party.”
Al-Douri’s latest statement reiterates what the Iraqi resistance is fighting for: national self-determination. Despite a one-time alliance of convenience, he now regards the al-Qaeda agenda as a disastrous diversion. Bear in [...]

Anybody who is over a hundred years old, and as bewildered as I am about why a cover for “The New Yorker” has caused a controversy among Barack Obama supporters and even evades a decent comment from Obama himself, might get a kick out of this post. This cover, which portrays Obama dressed in Muslim [...]

The more than 200 insurgents who made a predawn attack on an outpost near the Pakistan border outnumbered defenders three to one, according to the New York Times. Sunday’s assault occurred just three days after 45 US soldiers, likely from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and 25 Afghan troops established a new combat outpost in [...]

Here’s another one of those stories that ought to be big news here in America, but can only be found by going to the foreign press. From the Sunday Times: Nouri al-Maliki ready to oust US from Iraq green zone.
Ali Dabbagh, the Green Zone government spokesman, says:
“We think that by the end of 2008 [...]

The United Nations mandate for the Multinational Force, which currently provides a shred of legality to cover the U.S. occupation of Iraq, expires on December 31, 2008 at the request of Iraq’s Green Zone Government. Then what? Then we withdraw, right?
In the quotes below, emphasis added just to highlight the deep respect our [...]

Greg Mitchell reminds us that it appeared in The New York Times five years ago today. One of the most irresponsible remarks ever by a U.S. President:
“Anybody who wants to harm American troops will be found and brought to justice,” Bush said. “There are some that feel like if they attack us that we [...]

Do you remember the feeling of coming home with a bad report card? The Bush administration has failed Iraq policy again and again, and if any more proof is needed we got it this week.
1. A new 700-page study from the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command’s Contemporary Operations Study Team at Fort Leavenworth, [...]

I’m not in the habit of quoting at length from other blogs, but I haven’t got the ability to say this any better. The following is straight from CTuttle on the excellent site Main and Central.
“I’d like to indulge in a little exercise, let’s take a gander at several news reports on the same [...]

Thursday, channel 501 showed the 1984 film The Killing Fields. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s based on the experiences of NY Times reporter Sydney Schanberg and Cambodian reporter Dith Pran in Cambodia in the 1970s; Pran was captured by the Khmer Rouge and spent years living and laboring in their camps before [...]

The northern city of Mosul is the second-largest in Iraq (Basra is a close third). Despite the scarcity of news from Iraq lately, you may have heard about the launching of a long-delayed offensive last month to regain control of the ruined city of nearly 2 million people for Nouri al-Maliki’s Green Zone government. [...]

From the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen:
“In the last six or seven months, we have a put a tremendous amount of focus on Afghanistan, and I think rightfully so,” he said. “It is an economy-of-force campaign, and by definition, that means we don’t have enough forces [...]

This is a first for me, a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel post about Iraq. Whether or not the light is an oncoming freight train depends on whether or not you view withdrawal of combat forces as an admission of defeat, as Senator John McCain does.
There are two significant, and perhaps converging, developments to report. First, Senator [...]