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By David Foster Wallace (Editor), Robert Atwan (Series Editor)
$11.20
By Howard Jacobson
$18
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The National Guard
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In the deadliest day for American troops since the war in Afghanistan began almost 10 years ago, 30 Americans and seven Afghan commandos died Saturday when the Chinook helicopter they were in was shot down by the Taliban.
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guardian.co.uk
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On Friday, a pair of suicide bombings killed more than 80 Frontier Corps trainees who were celebrating at a graduation party in Shabqadar in northwestern Pakistan. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks as a form of retaliation for the death of Osama bin Laden ... (more)
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AP / Rafiq Maqbool
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A firefight between foreign troops and insurgents in Afghanistan last week reportedly led to the deaths of more than 50 civilians. The confrontation came in Kunar province, close to Pakistan, a region that has become a flashpoint for violence because of insurgent activity on the border.
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Wikimedia Commons
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At the same time that Afghan President Hamid Karzai organizes a nationwide council to try to broker peace with Taliban insurgents, the U.K.‘s senior military commander forecasts that violence in Afghanistan will get worse before it gets better.
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Iraq Electoral Commission
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The Iraqi electoral commission has upheld the results of the country’s parliamentary election after a partial recount demanded by the incumbent prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, whose coalition finished second in the voting.
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AP / Alaa al-Marjani
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Three suicide car-bombings rocked Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 30 people and injuring more than 200. The attacks, coming a day after the murder of 25 people in suburban Baghdad on Saturday, apparently targeted foreign diplomatic missions in the capital.
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AP / Ahmad Masood, pool
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Eliciting a cry from international and domestic human rights organizations, the Afghanistan government has passed a controversial law giving immunity from prosecution to Taliban fighters—no matter their deeds—who lay down their weapons.
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Original: U.S. Air Force / Master Sgt. Scott Reed
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The $4.5 million Predator unmanned aerial vehicle and its at least $10 million successor are considered the future of America’s Air Force and a big part of the president’s escalation in Afghanistan. Insurgents in Iraq (and probably Afghanistan) were able to track the planes and intercept video feeds using $26 software available on the Internet. (continued)
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guim.co.uk
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As President Obama continues to push more U.S. troops into Afghanistan, the U.N. is reporting that civilian casualties in the war-torn country have spiked, increasing almost 25 percent above 2008 figures. In the first six months of this year, 1,013 civilians were killed.
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Responding to a recent assertion by Adm. Mike Mullen, current chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, that Pakistan is actively adding to its array of nuclear weapons, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira insisted on Monday that Mullen was in error.
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Up to 70 civilians were reportedly killed in the Farah province of Afghanistan in a battle between Taliban insurgents and coalition forces on Tuesday, adding friction to already tense relations between the U.S. and Afghan governments.
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mexicanpictures.com
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Because it worked out so well the last time, the U.S. plans to arm Afghan militias in an effort to police the country. The Pentagon is presenting this plan—and the media are reporting it—as a spinoff of a successful strategy in Iraq, not a revival of the secret war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
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One of JFK’s “best and brightest” died wondering how the Vietnam War could have gone so wrong. Now, in an important new book, we have some answers.
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By Eugene Robinson — The federal manslaughter indictment of five Blackwater Worldwide security guards for the horrific massacre of more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad may look like an exercise in accountability, but it’s probably the exact opposite.
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guardian.co.uk
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A secret executive order signed by President Bush grants U.S. military forces “carte blanche” to launch counterterrorist operations inside Pakistan. An attack last week under the auspices of the unprecedented July order is raising concerns: Pakistani officials declared the operation illegal, and international analysts fear an escalating conflict could start a regionwide war.
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By Patrick Cockburn — Mosul looks like a city of the dead. American and Iraqi troops have launched an attack aimed at crushing the last bastion of al-Qa’ida in Iraq and in doing so have turned the country’s northern capital into a ghost town.
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nytimes.com / Michael Kamber
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After a seven week surge in violent street clashes and an estimated 1,000 civilian deaths in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad alone, U.S. and Iraqi forces are now preparing an overwhelming military offensive they hope will completely annihilate active Shia resistance movements and pacify the area, making it safe for occupation.
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army.mil
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Pouncing on the rhetorical success of the U.S. “surge” in Iraq, the U.S. military launched operations Tuesday in the south of Afghanistan as part of a “mini surge” against strongholds of Taliban fighters.
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nytimes.com / Joao Silva
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Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood turned refuge for Iraqi insurgents, is getting a infrastructural makeover this week as workers begin building a wall to isolate the area from the rest of the capital city. U.S. forces say the construction is a security measure to stem anti-U.S. and anti-coalition activity.
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By Robert Fisk — The Independent’s Robert Fisk looks back at five years of catastrophe in Iraq and is reminded of Winston Churchill’s depiction of Palestine as a “hell-disaster.”
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AP photo
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By Chris Hedges — There’s an ugly secret behind the “success” of the surge: The United States is paying off Iraqi militants with weapons and cash. It’s a recipe for disaster, one that reminds Chris Hedges of “Yugoslavia before the storm.”
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By Marie Cocco — While Pakistan steals headlines, neighboring Afghanistan offers a more realistic opportunity to crack down on the incubation of terrorists—if only the United States and other interested governments are willing to think outside the box.
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By Marie Cocco — Winter approaches, and as many as 400,000 Afghans face starvation. The trouble is not an insufficient supply of food. There is no way to get food to those who need it.
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Bilal Hussein, an AP photographer whom the U.S. military has accused of collaborating with insurgents, has been detained in Iraq for 19 months and may soon be tried by an Iraqi court. The Associated Press, apparently fed up with trying to reason with the military, has released the results of its own exhaustive investigation, which found the charges against Hussein to be “false” and “meaningless.”
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inthesetimes.com
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Fifteen Iraqi women and children found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time Thursday when the U.S. launched a series of airstrikes to back up ground operations targeting suspected insurgents.
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foreignpolicy.com
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The Washington Post has it on good authority that Pakistan is losing its war against Taliban and al-Qaida forces operating within its borders, due in no small part to Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s tenuous hold on power.
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By Eugene Robinson — The next six months in Iraq are crucial—and always will be. That noise you heard Monday on Capitol Hill was the can being kicked further down the road leading to January 2009, when George W. Bush gets to hand off his Iraq fiasco to somebody else.
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guardian.co.uk
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More than 93 percent of the world’s opiates are now grown in Afghanistan, with an opium crop that has doubled in the last two years. According to the executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, “No other country beside China in the 19th Century ever had such a large amount of land dedicated to illegal activities.”
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news.bbc.co.uk
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One of the holiest of Shiite Muslim shrines has been bombed in the Sunni-dominated Iraqi city of Samarra north of Baghdad. Explosions reportedly caused the collapse of the shrine’s two minarets. The 2006 bombing of the golden dome at the same shrine sparked the rampant sectarian strife in Iraq that continues today.
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Recent morgue figures show a rise in sectarian violence in Iraq, challenging the effectiveness of the U.S. troop surge and a three-month old security crackdown. The Bush administration had cited a drop in violence as evidence of success, but many attributed the relative lull in killings, now but a memory, to an order from Moqtada al-Sadr for his militia to temporarily stand down.
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U.S. and Iraqi forces are continuing their search for three missing American soldiers, despite threats from the Sunni insurgent coalition that claims to have taken them as hostages. Some 4,000 troops along with helicopters, jets and unmanned aerial vehicles are involved in the effort. The Pentagon said on Monday that it believed the soldiers had fallen into enemy hands.
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The Sunni insurgent coalition known as the Islamic State in Iraq has claimed responsibility for an attack that led to the deaths of four U.S. soldiers and the purported capture of three more. About 4,000 American troops were dispatched to search for their missing comrades on an especially brutal day in Iraq, with a civilian death toll of more than 124.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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An Iraqi police officer says six children were killed when a U.S. helicopter returned fire near an Iraqi school in Diyala province, near the Iranian border. The military was unable to confirm the report but said it was investigating.
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AP Photo / Hadi Mizban
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The Iraqi Interior Ministry says the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was killed in an internal fight among Sunni insurgents. However, the U.S. and at least one Iraqi official have expressed only cautious optimism, as a body has not yet been recovered. Update: al-Masri’s umbrella organization has denied reports of his death.
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By Andy Borowitz — The satirist writes that, as part of a bold new strategy to confuse the enemy, the Pentagon announced today that it was sending comedian/impressionist Rich Little to Iraq to entertain the insurgents.
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A coalition of eight Sunni insurgent groups has announced the formation of a cabinet, naming the head of al-Qaida in Iraq the minister of war. The announcement from the “Islamic State of Iraq” was made hours after the group released a video showing the executions of 20 people who were Iraqi civilians, soldiers or policemen.
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By Christian Parenti — With the resurgence of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan are once again rated by the United Nations as being “among the worst-off in the world.” Learn more about their plight in the companion piece to Christian Parenti’s larger article, “Afghan Autopsy.”
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Michael Ware, who has been reporting from Iraq for three years now, describes the situation to Wolf Blitzer: “If this is not a civil war, Wolf, I don’t want to see one when it comes.”
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Is the Iraq conflict a “civil war” or “a minor linguistic flareup between two parties of different terminological points of view”? “The Daily Show” has the lowdown.
Posted on Nov 28, 2006
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AP / Assad Muhsin
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Suicide bombers dressed in women’s clothes caused the single deadliest blast this year—at a religious bastion of a powerful Shiite party. This, combined with Thursday’s shrine bombing, could escalate the already horrific violence…. (more)
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Shiite officials say that American-led forces killed many civilians in a raid on a mosque complex on Sunday. The U.S. has promised a full investigation.
Posted on Mar 27, 2006
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The pretense has been shattered. The U.S. is explicitly accusing Iran of supplying money and training to anti-U.S. fighters in Iraq.
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Powell
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The paper throws cold water on Bush’s much-touted claim that the Tall Afar region of Iraq is a case study in the U.S.’ ability to help restore stability to a war-torn area. (Check out the transcript of Bush’s speech—particularly the unscripted Q & A session at the end.)
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From healingiraq.blogspot.com
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The Washington Post ran a week’s worth of postings by a young, UK-raised Iraqi dentist who describes the unnerving experience of living “between the hammer of terrorists and the anvil of American, British and Iraqi security forces.”
(Also, check out his blog, Healing Iraq, with his bio.)
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The U.S. military announced Thursday that it had launched the “largest air assault since the U.S.-led invasion” in 2003. As it turns out, however, it was little more than a photo op. According to Time magazine, “there were no airstrikes… no leading insurgents were nabbed… there were no shots fired at all,” and U.S. forces met no resistance.
Can anyone say Potemkin assault?
UPDATE: The L.A. Times is now reporting that the operation has yielded 48 arrests, including at least one major insurgent ringleader, along with seizures of weapons and training manuals.
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Jacob Silberberg / AP
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In his first formal testimony in his trial, the deposed Iraqi leader called on Iraqis to cease the sectarian violence and join forces against the Americans—while insisting that he is still the rightful leader of Iraq.
The judge trying the case, quarreling with Hussein several times during his 40-minute speech, ended by closing the session to the public.
Posted on Mar 15, 2006
READ MORE
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From Helene C. Stikkel / U.S. DoD
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Remember how Bush claimed on Monday that Iran was providing many of the roadside bombs killing U.S. troops in Iraq? Well, the U.S.’ top military commander just told the Pentagon that there is no proof for such a claim.
Usually it’s someone opposed to Bush’s policies who makes him look so foolish—not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Truthdig’s Juan Cole was all over this apparently bogus claim yesterday.
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Khalid Mohammed / AP
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By Robert Scheer — “If such constant mayhem is taken as a sign of progress, three years after the U.S. invasion, then Bush will surely be thrilled by what the future holds.”
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The president, who has until now refused to set concrete withdrawal timelines, now vows to cede control of most of the country to Iraqi forces by the end of 2006.
Check out a full-text version of his speech.
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Benghazi: Dissecting Congressional Follies, Media Coverage and ‘Cover-Up’ Charges
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