Apparently, Sistani's "red line" is right around his house. U.S. tanks thrust into Iraq holy city U.S. forces have intensified their war against Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, sending tanks into Najaf's vast cemetery to blast guerrilla positions on sacred ground in the...
Here's Tucker Carlson, a conservative TV pundit who recently began questioning the whole Empire thing: "I was thinking this morning: ‘Diversity is the strength of our country.’ Oh yeah? How’s that? Why don’t you explain that to me? I don’t see that. I mean, is...
UPI reports: U.S. and coalition forces will leave Iraq if asked to do so by an interim Iraqi government, a State Department official told the House Thursday.while a coalition sponsored poll reports:Four out of five Iraqis report holding a negative view of the U.S....
I'm trying to work up an appropriate expression of...um. Gloating. Schadenfreude. Sympathy? For this news: Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper [has] suspended the weekly column of Barbara Amiel-Black after its parent, Hollinger International, filed a lawsuit accusing...
Guantanamo prisoner: "After a while, we stopped asking for human rights - we wanted animal rights."Senator: “Almost everybody was naked all the time.” I remember when these accounts first came out I thought they might be exaggerated. Tarek Dergoul, 26, from London,...
We're all appalled by what happened to Nick Berg. But while some of us look at this crime and think my God, what have we gotten ourselves into?, others use it to stir up more hatred and violence. The belligerati have issued a giant sigh--or shriek--of relief as this...
Rumsfeld says White House lawyers are claiming that it is "illegal" to release additional photos of torture at Abu Ghraib prison.U.S. administration lawyers are advising the Pentagon not to publicly release any more photographs of Iraqi prisoners being abused by U.S....
Photos of Nick Berg's beheading weren't shown to the general public, but a colleague of mine nonetheless remembered something similar she saw during the Bosnian War. Apparently, decapitation of captured Serb soldiers and civilians was rather common for the mujahedin...
Juan Cole is sounding the alarm here. He points to an AP report about heavy fighting in Karbala.The US used heavy firepower in the sacred Shiite city, destroying half of the historic al-Mukhayyam Mosque not so far from the shrine of the Prophet's martyred grandson,...
On the Nick Berg Beheading Col. Lounsbury writes what I think may be the definitive post here. Lounsbury quotes the Washington Post: The persistent violence contrasts sharply with U.S. officials' optimistic calls for private companies to invest in Iraq. Over the past...
