A story from the “reality vs rhetoric” file. So much for Obama’s pledge to withdraw American forces from Iraq: The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is planning to double its ranks as it takes over a host of missions for the military there, according to America’s No. 2 diplomat in Iraq. “If Congress gives us the…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
Is the US capable of not only sending missiles to help Yemen?
Patrick Cockburn in the Independent on Washington’s seeming desperation to fall into al-Qaeda’s trap again and again and escalate militaristic policies in a Muslim land: There is ominous use by American politicians and commentators of the phrase “failed state” in relation to Yemen, as if this some how legitimised foreign intervention. It is extraordinary that…
Reporters taking on the powerful are killed with impunity
Journalists simply doing their job are at risk. We stand in solidarity with anybody challenging the business or political elites: The number of journalists killed around the world in 2009 rose to a record 68 after a massacre in the Philippines, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Thursday. The press freedom group said…
How is your Iraqi liberation coming along, Obama?
The horror in Iraq continues. Last of Iraqis blog reports the carnage.
Australia snubs Tamil refugees
My following article is published in US magazine The Nation: Sri Lanka’s brutal war against the Tamils, a native ethnic group that has suffered legal, economic and political discrimination for more than half a century, has come at a huge domestic and global cost. Human rights in the Sinhalese-dominated nation are consistently violated, with journalists,…
Those ungrateful bloody Iraqis
Daniel Pipes is upset that America hasn’t simply left Iraq: What gets my goat is that Iraqis don’t even appreciate what they have been given.
WMDs didn’t really matter in Iraq after all, says Tony Blair
The Iraq war remains highly controversial and the country itself is mired in turmoil. Not to worry, now argues Tony Blair, Britain simply had to invade the country for purely human rights reasons: Tony Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction and would have found a…
Analysis must not be a war casualty
My following article appears on ABC’s Unleashed: The Iraq war has virtually dropped off the media radar. The country remains far more dangerous than Afghanistan and yet Barack Obama’s “surge” against the Taliban and al-Qaeda is the biggest international story of the day. Even leading neo-conservative William Kristol writes in The Washington Post that Obama…
The “surge” myth in Iraq and Afghanistan are folly
Veteran journalist Patrick Cockburn, a reporter unafraid to challenge accepted wisdom over Western-led wars, dooms Barack Obama’s plans for Afghanistan: American and British exponents of a military escalation or ”˜the surge’ in Afghanistan opportunistically expound two wholly contradictory views of Taliban strength. At one moment they are a movement of immense power on the verge…
The Afghan people at the mercy of bogus time-lines
This is how the US political website Politico, in its daily email, reported yesterday’s Obama administration media appearances to sell the Afghan “surge”. Who really runs the show, the generals or Obama himself? More importantly, do the Afghans themselves really matter to the so-called journalists asking the questions? SECRETARIES CLINTON AND GATES TAPED JOINT INTERVIEWS…