|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
$14
by Juan Cole
$20.00
$18
|
|
|
|
AP photo / Allauddin Khan
|
A nighttime raid on Kandahar’s Sarposa Prison, carried out by Taliban operatives Friday, led to the escape of 1,200 prisoners, including around 400 Taliban members. The attack represented a serious security challenge in the Afghan city that’s considered the traditional home of the country’s leaders and the Taliban’s spiritual center.
|
time.com
|
John McCain dug his heels even further into the proverbial Iraqi soil Wednesday morning when he rearticulated his commitment to the U.S. staying in Iraq, claiming that a time frame for withdrawal is “not too important.”
|
AP photo / Samir Mizban
|
As one U.S. soldier tells Truthdig foreign correspondent Anna Badkhen, it’s not entirely a bad sign that residents of Baghdad’s Saidiyah neighborhood are complaining about their meager daily power allotment: A year earlier they were concerned about just staying alive.
|
warnewsradio.org
|
In this first installment in her series of stories from Iraq for Truthdig, veteran foreign correspondent Anna Badkhen reports about the civilian costs of war, life under occupation and the precarious state of a Baghdad burger joint.
|
nytimes.com / Michael Kamber
|
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.
|
AP photo / Karim Kadim
|
April was the cruelest month in seven months in terms of the numbers of both civilians and U.S. troops who lost their lives in Iraq. A spate of deadly bombings on Wednesday killed four U.S. soldiers, bringing the monthlong total of American dead to 50, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s crackdown on Shiite followers of Moqtada al-Sadr made for more intense violence, particularly in Basra and Sadr City, which contributed to a reported 969 Iraqi civilian deaths.
|
AP photo / Chris Tomlinson
|
Truthdig foreign correspondent Sarah Stillman reports from Iraq, where she finds parallels between America’s fast food fortresses and the general engorgement of the war.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — No, it’s not your imagination: The “debate” about Iraq, and I use the word loosely, becomes ever more surreal as the occupation drags on.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The problem with the debate over our future course in Iraq is that the two sides are not even talking about the same things.
|
AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
|
By Bill Boyarsky — Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s congressional check-in about Iraq this week didn’t offer much hope for America’s overseas entanglements, and as coverage of the overseas wars wanes, the media isn’t holding politicians’ feet to the fire—or telling the real story about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
|
AP photo / Duane A. Laverty
|
Despite some congressional resistance, it seems Gen. David Petraeus’ recommended “pause” in U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq will take effect after July. On Thursday, President Bush (whose approval ratings have plummeted to a new low) essentially deferred the withdrawal issue to his successor.
|
AP photo / Charles Dharapak
|
By Robert Scheer — General Betray Us? Of course he has. MoveOn.org can hardly be expected to recycle its slogan from last September, when Gen. David Petraeus testified in support of escalating the U.S. war in Iraq, given the hysterical denunciations that worthy group received at the time. But it was right then—as it would be to repeat the charge now.
|
AP photo / Susan Walsh
|
Gen. David Petraeus dug in his heels during a Senate hearing Tuesday, refusing to give specifics about additional U.S. troop withdrawal plans after July, recommending a “pause” instead and taking heat from congressional opponents like Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton in the process. Meanwhile, John McCain spoke of “real hope and optimism” for Iraq’s future.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — Quite a “defining moment” in Iraq, wasn’t it? At this rate, John McCain is going to be proved right: The war will last a century.
|
|
Iraq’s civilian spokesman for Baghdad security was released from captivity Monday. Professor Tahseen al-Sheikhli, who was kidnapped a few days ago, was found unharmed, except for his ego.
|
Newsday
|
French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in London Wednesday to declare his readiness to send additional troops to Afghanistan. The move, seen by some as an effort to strengthen ties with his chums across the Channel, was well received by British lawmakers who believe an increase of NATO occupation forces in Afghanistan would best prevent a Taliban resurgence.
|
AP photo / Sgt. Armando Monroig, U.S. Army
|
Americans serving in Iraq will have to wait until the next president takes office before they can expect any substantial changes in troop numbers, if Bush follows the latest recommended plan from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
|
|
By Amy Goodman — Last weekend, in the lead-up to the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a remarkable gathering occurred just outside Washington, D.C., called Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations.
|
|
In one of the deadliest strikes in months, five U.S. soldiers were fatally injured by a suicide bomber Monday as they patrolled Baghdad’s Mansour district. Three other soldiers and an Iraqi translator were wounded in the blast but survived, according to the BBC.
|
AP photo / Gerald Herbert
|
By Aaron Glantz — More than any other candidate for president, John McCain should know that peace talks can be stronger and smarter than bombs, that withdrawing American soldiers can be the best way to achieve stability, and that the best way to protect American troops is to bring them home from the war zone.
|
|
On Tuesday, the Iraqi Cabinet expressed extreme displeasure over the incursion of Turkish troops into the Kurdish northern region of Iraq and called for a halt to Turkish interference, which Cabinet officials called a “violation of Iraqi sovereignty.” Also on Tuesday, an apparent suicide attack on a bus headed toward Syria from Mosul in northern Iraq killed nine people, according to The New York Times.
|
|
The year is 2008, and President George W. Bush has learned an important lesson in global affairs: “Outside forces” taking part in foreign clashes “tend to divide people up inside their country” and “are unbelievably counterproductive.”
|
|
The Mosaic Intelligence Report investigates France’s aggressive new push to involve itself in the Middle East. The French have signed a deal to set up a permanent military base in the Persian Gulf region, the first such facility controlled by a Western nation that isn’t led by George W. Bush.
|
|
A commission set up by Congress in 2005 to examine the readiness of National Guard and reserve units has found that they’re simply inadequate to the task of dealing with a major disaster in the United States. The commission blamed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the Pentagon’s assumption that training for those conflicts would somehow prepare troops for disaster relief at home.
|
|
The number of active-duty soldiers who kill themselves or attempt to is the highest it’s been since the Army began keeping records almost 30 years ago. Three hundred fifty soldiers attempted suicide or injured themselves in 2002, compared with 2,100 in 2007.
|
AP photo / Charlie Niebergall
|
When it comes to setting an exact timetable for withdrawing American forces from Iraq, some Democratic candidates are more forthcoming with the details than others. Take John Edwards, for example, who told The New York Times about his ambitious plan to bring nearly all U.S. troops home within 10 months if he is elected president.
|
defenseindustrydaily.com
|
Roughly 20,000 soldiers who aren’t on the military’s list of combat wounded have signs of brain injury, according to an analysis of Army, Navy and Veterans Affairs data conducted by USA Today. The Pentagon’s official tally of troops who’ve suffered brain trauma in combat is 4,471—one-fifth the total gleaned from military records.
|
|
The New York Times reports that in certain areas of Baghdad, such as the Dora neighborhood in the south of the city, residents are cautiously returning to their homes and attempting to resume some semblance of normal life by taking advantage of a recent lull in violence. How long it will last, however, remains to be seen.
|
|
Try not to mist up during this clip of two young boys being surprised at their Virginia elementary school by their father, Lt. Thomas Bourne. As Keith Olbermann opines, the best way to support our troops is to “make sure that that kind of homecoming is what each of them and their families have earned.”
|
AP photo / Nabil al-Jurani
|
Perhaps Basra can be seen as a test case for the rest of Iraq with regard to withdrawal and its effects: According to Maj. Gen. Graham Binns, the commander of British forces in Basra, there has been a “remarkable and dramatic drop in attacks” since the majority of his troops withdrew from the city.
|
|
849 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq this year, the deadliest for U.S. troops so far. While it’s true that the last couple of months have seen lower casualties than has been typical this year, those numbers cannot satisfactorily be explained by a more stable Iraq or some newfound love for Americans, and it would be grotesque to call the deaths of only 38 troops in October “good news.”
|
|
Perhaps this could be a diversionary tactic: On Tuesday, President Bush criticized the House and Senate for, it would seem, holding his administration accountable for its actions at home and overseas and looking for ways to bring our troops home.
|
|
Professing his remorse for his Oct. 18 suggestion that President Bush would be amused by American soldiers getting their heads “blown off,” Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., apologized on Tuesday to Bush, his family, the troops and his congressional colleagues, adding that he hoped he could now go back to being “as insignificant as I should be.”
|
aftonbladet.se
|
The White House’s latest request ($46 billion) for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was greeted with fighting words by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: “President Bush should not expect Congress to rubber-stamp his latest supplemental request. We’re not going to do that.” For those keeping track at home, Bush has now asked for $196.4 billion so far for the budget year that began in October.
|
AP photo / Hamza Hendawi
|
By Robert Scheer — When will we listen to the troops? I’m not talking about soldiers used as props for a George Bush photo op, telling reporters what Washington wants to hear. The Iraq war has produced brilliant messages of dissent from the ranks that should cause us to stop in our tracks and reconsider what we have wrought.
|
|
In an attempt to target suspected militants with ties to al-Qaida and the Taliban, the Pakistani army has bombarded a section of its shared border with Afghanistan for four days, causing chaos in the town of Mir Ali in north Waziristan, where some 45 troops and 150 rebels have reportedly been killed.
Posted on Oct 9, 2007
READ MORE 
|
|
Add another $50 billion to the tab the Bush administration is looking to run up in military costs for the ‘08 fiscal year, bringing the potential total to around $200 billion if this latest request goes through.
|
warnewsradio.org
|
Senate Republicans have successfully blocked a three-month expansion of troop leave, which the Democrats hoped would provide pressure to withdraw without cutting off funds. John McCain called the effort to give our fighting men and women 15 months off between combat deployments “dangerous.”
|
|
File this one under “Good Uses of Journalistic Resources”: The Associated Press marshaled its fact-checking talents and expertise to dissect President Bush’s speech on Thursday, issuing corrections to some of Bush’s claims in this handy point-by-point analysis.
|
Khalid Mohammed / AP
|
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.”
|
View older articles:
< 1 2 3
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Too Soon to Tell: The Case for Hope, Continued
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
