Will take off for southern Italy for a two-week vacation. There will be absolutely no blogging. To thwart invaders, comments will be off until Sept. 14.
Archive for August, 2008
Blogging Break
Posted in Misc on August 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Iraq: Heroic SoI Still a Feature in MNF-I Dispatches
Posted in Iraq on August 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Maliki government may find the Sons of Iraq disagreeable, but the heroic volunteers still feature prominently in MNF-I news releases, like this one, dramatically titled “Sons of Iraq find weapons cache in southwestern Baghdad, EOD diffuses IED”. If you really want to know when the U.S. withdraws its support — and that day will [...]
SOFA for Afghanistan?
Posted in Afghanistan on August 28, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I can just imagine the crapstorm this will whip up: For the past six years, military relations between the United States and Afghanistan have been governed by a two-page ‘diplomatic note’ giving U.S. forces virtual carte blanche to conduct operations as they see fit. Although President Bush pledged in a 2005 declaration signed with Afghan [...]
The Humane Face of Rendition
Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq on August 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Here’s another sign that the Bush Administration has come a long way since the heady days of secret renditions and “enhanced” interrogation techniques: The United States military has secretly handed over more than 200 militants to the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other countries, nearly all in the past two years, as part [...]
Iraq: SoI Blues
Posted in Iraq on August 26, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Shawn Brimley and Colin Kahl, analysing Maliki’s SoI crackdown in a Los Angeles Times op-ed, suggest a chilling analogy: It is obvious where this road might end. The last time tens of thousands of armed Sunni men were humiliated in Iraq — by disbanding the Baath Party and Iraqi army in May 2003 — an [...]
Iraq: Whose Rogue Unit Was It, Anyway?
Posted in Iraq on August 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Here’s a good one: the rogue unit that stormed the Diyala governor’s office last week was even more rogue than usual, according to an Interior Ministry official.
Biden and Soft-Partitioning Iraq: Why the Uproar?
Posted in Iraq on August 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I’m surprised at the fervour, particularly from the American left, with which the 2003 Biden-Gelb plan for Iraq’s “soft-partitioning” is being attacked. Reading recent blog posts you’d think Biden and Gelb concocted some mad-cap scheme that had no relation to reality. In fact, the plan — envisioning separate enclaves for the Kurds, the Sunnis and [...]
The 9/11 Test: How Would Obama and McCain Have Reacted?
Posted in Afghanistan, Election 08, Iraq on August 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Like everyone else, I’ve been trying to figure out what to think of the two U.S. presidential candidates and their running mates (I’m almost sure McCain will choose Romney). For me, it boils down to this: how would they have reacted to the deaths of more than 3,000 people in terrorist attacks on American soil? [...]
Why Obama-Biden Is Probably Bad for Iraq
Posted in Election 08, Iraq on August 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Reidar Visser has the last word on the impact of the Obama-Biden ticket on Iraq: On the one hand, there is McCain, who looks set to persevere with the Bush policy of handling Iraq primarily through military power instead of working for a more truly inclusive political system. With its systematic promotion to top positions [...]
America in Iraq: (Just) Three More Years?
Posted in Iraq, SOFA on August 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
If The Wall Street Journal has it right (and it may not), U.S. combat troops will leave Iraq in 2011. The way I see it, there are exactly two ways of looking at this: 1) 2011 is too late; or 2) it’s too early. But before we start a Missing Links style tit-for-that, let’s put [...]
