Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
The Iraqi government has indicated that it is ready to assume security over the country in the event that U.S. troops are withdrawn prior to the 2011 date agreed to by the Bush Administration. Obama promised during the campaign to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. The new [...]
I see that Elizabeth Bumiller, writing in the New York Times Even though the agreement with the Iraqi government calls for all American combat troops to be out of the cities by the end of June, military planners are now quietly acknowledging that many will stay behind as renamed “trainers” and “advisers” in what are [...]
Ezra Klein applies the headline “Doing Her Job” to this infamous photo of Lyndie England. It was not a few bad apples. It was not the chaos of war. It was official U.S. government policy. The release of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Report on Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody makes that perfectly clear. [...]
President Bush made a surprise farewell visit to Iraq and Afghanistan, suffering the indignity of having an Iraqi journalist hurl his shoes at him but being greeted warmly by American troops. Sudarsan Raghavan and Dan Eggen for WaPo: In Iraq, Bush said the conflict “has not been easy” but was necessary for U.S. security, Iraqi [...]
A forthcoming government history on Iraq War reconstruction depicts an inept process marred by politics and bureaucratic infighting, NYT reports. An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded [...]
One consistent meme that has popped up during the War in Iraq is the idea that the government of Iran is actually arming Shi’ite militias so that they can fight American soliders. As it turns out, though, there’s not a lot of evidence for this proposition. Last April, top George W. Bush administration officials, desperate [...]
Barack Obama has been President Elect for just two days and already we’re reducing the number of combat brigades in Iraq: Gen. David H. Petraeus has decided to reduce the number of U.S. combat brigades in Iraq from 15 to 14 about six weeks earlier than planned, as a result of dramatically lower violence there, [...]
We’ve known for some time that CPT Beau Biden, son of VP nominee Joe, is headed off to Iraq. Dad sent them off with a farewell address today: Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden told his son and other Delaware National Guard troops on Friday that his heart was “full of love and pride” as [...]
Juan Cole had an interesting post on yesterday’s seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in which he made a bold declaration: “The original al-Qaeda is defeated.” No, he’s not saying there aren’t Muslim terrorists calling themselves “al Qaeda” ready and able to kill us. I mean the original al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda as a historical, concrete movement [...]
Remembering the attacks on September 11, 2001 and taking note of the increasing tendency of the presidential campaign and campaign reporting to descend into meaningless trivia, Philip Bobbitt and John Danforth, IMO two of the most reasonable guys on the political scene today, address twelve questions to Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama in an [...]
There’s an obesity epidemic in Iraq that’s been fueled by the war, Tina Susman reports for the LAT. For most of the last five years, sectarian violence has drastically altered Iraqis’ lifestyles. Most retreated to the safety of their homes and became increasingly sedentary, rarely venturing out of their neighborhoods. To go out was to [...]
There’s been an interesting conversation going on, prompted by this guest post by Gregory Gause, professor of political science at University of Vermont and director of its Middle East Studies Program. In his post Dr. Gause notes that in recent months Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has taken a number of steps which, considered together, [...]
Yesterday formal responsibility for security in Iraq’s western Anbar province was turned over to Iraqi forces: Baghdad – The US military handed over control of Anbar Province Monday, marking a significant milestone in the Iraq war. Anbar was the deadliest Iraqi province for US troops, with nearly 1 in every 3 Americans killed there. It [...]
Writing for the L.A. Times, Shawn Brimley and Colin Kahl have a disturbing report about the ongoing crackdown of Iraq’s Sunni population by the Maliki government. Much of Iraq’s dramatic security progress can be traced to a series of decisions made by Sunni tribal leaders in late 2006 to turn against Al Qaeda in Iraq [...]
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Bush Administration and the Iraqi government have agreed on a timetable for troop withdrawal. U.S. and Iraqi negotiators reached agreement on a security deal that calls for American military forces to leave Iraq’s cities by next summer as a prelude to a full withdrawal from the country, according [...]
The Mahdi Army might soon be the Iraqi equivalent of the Salvation Army, Gina Chon reports for the Wall Street Journal. Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — long a thorn in the side of the U.S. military and Iraqi government — intends to disarm his once-dominant Mahdi Army militia and remake it as a social-services organization. [...]
The leader of a US-allied Sunni group was killed yesterday, along with six of his men: Unknown gunmen attacked the convoy of Sheik Ibrahim al-Karbouli in Youssifiyah on Monday, said the group member who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fears for his own security. The sheik was a senior leader of the so-called [...]
Ezra Klein and his summer intern have compiled ten expert responses to the question “How Important Was the Surge?” Not surprisingly, those from Center for American Progress answered “Not all that important” whereas Michael O’Hanlon and others who supported the Surge to begin with though it was “undoubtedly very important.” Or, as Marc Danziger puts [...]
Via the BBC: Iraq suicide blasts cause carnage Suicide bombers have killed at least 53 people and wounded about 240 in attacks on crowds in the Iraqi capital Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk. Three blasts in Baghdad killed at least 28 Shia Muslim pilgrims heading for the city’s Kadhimiya shrine. [...] In Kirkuk, [...]
John McCain said today that the Middle East would be in far worse shape had we succumbed to Barack Obama’s “audacity of hopelessness.” Republican presidential candidate John McCain, ridiculing Barack Obama for “the audacity of hopelessness” in his policies on Iraq, said Friday that the entire Middle East could have plunged into war had U.S. [...]
The death July 17 of Tech Sergeant Jackie Larson, of natural causes, brought to one hundred the number of American female military personnel who have died in the Iraq War, CNN reports. The death of an Air Force technical sergeant in Iraq last week quietly brought a somber milestone: One hundred American female service members [...]
Commenting on a recentish NYT report on foreign fighters flooding into Pakistan to support al Qaeda and Taliban militants, Thomas Barnett observes, Spray one apartment and the bugs move over to the next. Wherever there’s the least resistance or the most opportunity, you find them clustered. The Anbar awakening ruins al Qaeda’s long-term chances in [...]
Here’s an interesting Q&A from Katie Couric’s interview with John McCain. Kate Couric: Senator McCain, Senator Obama says, while the increased number of US troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without [...]
We’ve done the “Have we won in Iraq?” thing a couple of times recently, without ever really answering the question. The problem is that there’s no clear definion of “victory” given the vagueness of our objectives. Weblog pioneer Dave Winer, though, thinks it blindingly obvious: “We won in Iraq, a long time ago.” Remember when [...]
In anticipation of Sen. Barack Obama’s visit to Afghanistan I thought it might be appropriate to consider the situation there. Both Sens. McCain and Obama have called for achieving victory in Afghanistan. Sen. Obama has characterized the conflict there as “the war we need to win” and has called for …taking the fight to the [...]
The Iraqi government is claiming Der Spiegel mistranslated earlier reports that they were supporting a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops. The magazine stands by its story. Ali al-Dabbagh, the chief spokesman for al-Maliki, said in a statement Sunday that the prime minister’s comments were “not conveyed accurately” by Der Spiegel. Al-Dabbagh said al-Maliki [...]
Michael J. Totten weighs in on the Iraq War is Over and We Won argument and decides that, while he’s “reluctant” to answer that question in the affirmative, “The war in Iraq is all but over right now, and it will be officially over if the current trends in violence continue their downward slide. ” [...]
Dean Barnett wins my Head Scratcher of the Day award for this: If we had a “Most Offensive Quote of the Day” every day, Joe Biden would probably come to own the prize. But even by the senator’s lofty standards of chronic obtuseness, he outdid himself this afternoon: “If John (McCain) wants to know where [...]
William Arkin contends that recent political maneuvering has put Barack Obama and President Bush in almost identical positions vis-Ã -vis Iraq: The Bush administration’s potential Iraq withdrawal plan, floated in The New York Times over the weekend, to draw down brigades further before September of this year and to accelerate withdrawals in 2009, has collided with [...]
Michael Yon says that we’ve won the war in Iraq and all that remains is clean-up. The war continues to abate in Iraq. Violence is still present, but, of course, Iraq was a relatively violent place long before Coalition forces moved in. I would go so far as to say that barring any major and [...]
Barack Obama takes to the op-ed pages of the NYT to present his new plan for Iraq which is conveniently his old plan for Iraq. He sees Nuri al-Maliki’s proposal for a a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq as “an enormous opportunity.” Only by redeploying our troops can we press the [...]
Iraq’s national security advisor announced today that the Iraqi government will be demanding a hard timetable for American troop withdrawl: Iraq will not accept any security agreement with the United States unless it includes dates for the withdrawal of foreign forces, the government’s national security adviser said on Tuesday. The comments by Mowaffaq al-Rubaie underscore [...]
Joe Dwyer, made famous in a March 2003 Warren Zinn photo for his heroic service in Iraq, has died, apparently a casualty of that service. During the first week of the war in Iraq, a Military Times photographer captured the arresting image of Army Spc. Joseph Patrick Dwyer as he raced through a battle zone [...]
Saddam’s supply of yellowcake has been secretly sold to a Canadian energy firm and flown safely to Montreal. The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program – a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium – reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and [...]
Al Qaeda in Iraq [AQI] is all but defeated, Marie Colvin reports for The Sunday Times. A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10. Operation Lion’s Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the Americans’ 3rd Armoured [...]
Barack Obama gave a speech yesterday in which he said there was some flexibility in his plan, touted throughout the Democratic primary season, to withdraw combat troops from Iraq within 16 months followed by another speech in which he explained that he meant no such thing. Michael Cooper and Jeff Zeleny have a solid summary [...]
Fareed Zakaria contends that, President Bush’s attempts to brand himself as a “war president,” the United States isn’t really at war. America (and before it, Britain) has felt it was “at war” when the conflict threatened the country’s basic security—not merely its interests or its allies abroad. This is the common-sense way in which we [...]
Physicians for Human Rights has just published a report detailing the medical evidence of detainee torture at the hands of U.S. Personnel in Iraq, Afghanist, and Guantanamo Bay. Maj. General Antonio Taguba (Ret.) authored the preface to the report, in which he accuses the Administration of having committed war crimes: The profiles of these eleven [...]
Reporters covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are having an increasingly difficult time of getting stories onto the network news, Brian Stelter reports for the NYT. According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost [...]
Responding to Scott McClellan’s charge that “the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq,” NBC White House correspondent David Gregory defended his [...]
Kevin Drum comments on yesterday’s Sadr City operation: And it’s worth saying that the March operation in Basra looks better now than it did at the time too. The conduct of the Iraqi troops was spotty and the Iranian influence in bringing the fighting to an end was obviously problematic, but in the end government [...]
Some recently released Pentagon documents include an “hour-long talk [then-Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had with military officers in late 2006.” The Swamp‘s Aamer Madhani highlights this bizarre exchange: Q: Hey, also your favorite subject: looking back. What’s become conventional wisdom, simply [...]
The Iraqi government claims to have arrested Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. The leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was arrested in the northern city of Mosul, the Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman said Thursday. Mohammed al-Askari said the arrest of al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, was [...]
Fred Kagan Kaplan makes the argument that, as a matter of practicality, the only way for Robert Gates to move 7,000 more troops into Afghanistan is to take 7,000 troops out of Iraq. Let’s look at the numbers. After the last of the five “surge” brigades goes home this summer, the U.S. Army will have [...]
The Pentagon is backing a massive development project financed by Marriott and others to gentrify Baghdad. Forget the rocket attacks, concrete blast walls and lack of a sewer system. Now try to imagine luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad. That’s all part of a five-year development “dream list” [...]
With characteristic snark, Spencer Ackerman commemorates the fifth anniversary of President Bush’s infamous speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln commemorating the end of major combat operations. You know, the one where he had “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” behind him on a big banner. Of course, the banner referred to the crew of the Lincoln, which was on [...]
Dana Milbank wins with: “Iraq War Is Everyone Else’s Fault, Feith Explains.” I haven’t read Feith’s book but that’s pretty much the thesis I’ve gathered from the interviews he’s given about it. Given the superlatives that have been used to describe his lack of intelligence, it’s hardly unexpected that he would try to salvage his [...]
Presuming Senate confirmation, the top Iraq commanders are both moving up one slot, with David Petraeus taking over Central Command, and thus oversight of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, and Ray Odierno picking up a fourth star and the top job in Iraq. Bush will nominate Petraeus to replace Navy Adm. William J. Fallon as [...]