Archive for the 'Middle East' Category

Invasions in 2006 vs. 2008

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

Remember back in 2006 when Israel invaded Lebanon because of a border skirmish? Back then, the international community condemned Israel for their disproportionate military response.
This was what George Bush had to say back then:
The recent crisis in the region was triggered by the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by the terrorist group Hezbollah and the launch [...]

Decoding Iraq euphemisms

Friday, August 8th, 2008

The Bush administration has been shameless when it comes to naming their programs and policies. The PATRIOT Act destroys civil liberties, the Clear Skies Initiative reduces air pollution controls, Operation Iraqi Freedom put Iraqis under US military control, etc.
We’ve long needed a guide to these insults to language and logic, and Spencer Ackerman’s Iraq Euphemism [...]

What to do with Iraqi oil money

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

From the New York Times:
“The Iraqi government now has tens of billions of dollars at its disposal to fund large scale reconstruction projects,” said Mr. Levin, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in the statement. “It is inexcusable for U.S. taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are [...]

Obama ends the Iraq War

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

I’m going to be bold here and say we’re going to look back at this week as a milestone. It’ll be the week - drumroll please - Obama ended the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Pretty amazing for someone who isn’t even the president yet. But how did Obama do it? Let me explain…
This weekend Iraqi Prime [...]

Quote of the week

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

(Updated Below)
I thought it’d be nice to start off today with a great quote:
“Maybe a race of alien lizards will land in Mosul and commence their program of world conquest, in which case it would be odd to stick with the 16 month withdrawal timeline…” - Matthew Yglesias
_______________
Update
Obama has been busy this week reinforcing his [...]

Iran’s military capability by the numbers

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

(Updated below)
The Joe Liebermans of the world want you to be very afraid of Iran. They want you to think that every day brings with it the possibility of our destruction at the hands of the Iranians.
That’s simply an exaggeration, similar to the ones made about Saddam’s Iraq prior to our invasion. Remember the Bush [...]

CBS: Iraq isn’t important

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

This news from the NY Times just blew my mind when I read it:
CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.
Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television “with enough frequency [...]

Reality in Iraq

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Juan Cole compiles the numbers for us:
By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million. This conclusion can be reached more than one way. There is not much controversy about it in the scientific community. Some 310,000 of those were [...]

The quote explains the graph

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan:
If anything, 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.
The collapse of the administration’s rationales for [...]

Promoting disaster: America’s feud with Iran

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

JFK (middle) hanging out with the Shah of Iran (left).
If you read the NYTimes.com, you woke up to some lovely news yesterday:
The International Atomic Energy Agency, in an unusually blunt and detailed report, said Monday that Iran’s suspected research into the development of nuclear weapons remained “a matter of serious concern” and that Iran continued [...]