American control of the Iraqi intelligence services. Hardly a surprise, but worth remembering
American control of the Iraqi intelligence services. Hardly a surprise, but worth remembering
Iraqi militias control the power supplies, turning the electricity on and off to help their attacks.
Instapundit: are some Iraq decapitation stories fakes? If so, how many. And why?
The%20Secret%20Air%20War%20in%20Iraq. That which Sy Hersh hath predicted shall surely come to pass.
PSAs in Iraq: the case in favour. Worth reading in full.
Bush: "I'm the commander guy".. Oh, the eloquence.
Raed Jarrar on Iraq's oil law. Yes, it's boring, but also very, very important.
Rolling Stone has a portrait of Seymour Hersh
Abu Aardvark has some great posts this week on disputes between different insurgent factions in Iraq, and how the nationalists are turning against the jihadis.
Linkless thought: why do we hear nothing about China in Iraq? Did they have the good sense to sidestep the entire nightmare?
An attempt to create jobs in Iraq. Juan Cole, for reasons I can't fathom, seems to disapprove of doing anything about jobs before security is fixed.
This is just a case of me being a sucker for prose style, but mmm....Martin Kettle
WTF? Blair agrees that the British army should leave Iraq "sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems".
Too many cooks: Adel Abdul Mahdi responds to Condi Rice's criticism about the lack of decision-making by the Iraqi government, by pointing out that the US military forms yet another independent decision-making centre. There needs to be some chain of command between them and the civilian government.
Sadr is losing popularity for not being radical enough.
If I can't get away with 'Allo Allo remade in Kirkuk, how about Casablanca in Umm Qasr?
The downside to the Ramadi inkspottery, injuries and deaths that will keep grinding so long as the Americans are in the cities:
"My latrines took two 60 millimeter mortars, my shower trailer has been disabled by 80 millimeter mortars, and it's not uncommon for us to pick pieces of shrapnel from the side of building,"
The US thinks it is on-target with training Iraqi troops, yada yada yada. But reminded me of the sheer numbers: they want 325,000 people in the security forces, in a population of 25 million or so. That's significantly more than the size of the British army, even though our population is more than twice as great and we do the whole 'ageing empire' thing.
"A Sunday Herald investigation has discovered that coalition forces are holding more than 100 children in jails such as Abu Ghraib. Witnesses claim that the detainees – some as young as 10". [source]
For some reason the title Adviser Has President's Ear gave me entirely the wrong impression about this article
For some reason the title Adviser Has President's Ear gave me entirely the wrong impression about this article
Arms sales from Eastern Europe to Iraq? meh and wtf?
Hired guns in hot spots raise regulatory questions in Iraq: an overview of issues with private militias. Apparently in Iraq there are at least 20,000 private security personnel (including Iraqis); I'm amazed that the numbers are so low.
Too funny not to propagate: fisticuffs in the Iraqi parliament over a phone ringtone.
I don't believe the claim that we've now reached half a million IDPs in Iraq, displaced in the aftermath of the Samarra bombing. But the lower and better-sourced figure of 60,000 people is scary enough. I'm going to spend some time digging down to the facts on this - watch the IAG page on refugees for any useful documents I turn up.
I don't understand why Bush praises Arab governments when they do something he likes. Doesn't he realise how much more suspect that makes them in the eyes of their citizens?
Wikipedia's article on the Iraqi insurgency is outstandingly bad. I don't understand why it isn't 50 times better, given how many people are interested in the subject.
Another article on the likely use of air-power once ground troops leave Iraq