Category: Iraqi War

I guess I always feel particularly sad when employees of news organisations get killed in warfare. Unfortunately, today, two employees of CNN were ambushed in Iraq. It appears both were of Arab origin, while an American cameraman was injured. I wonder if the assailants knew that they worked for CNN, or was it a random…

Interesting report from the Carnegie Endowment, The Bush administration will today be accused of “systematically misrepresenting” the threat posed by “Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction” in a comprehensive report on post-war findings. The report, by four experts on weapons proliferation at the respected Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is likely to reignite calls for acommission…

People ask me where I stood politically you know. It’s not that I disagree with Bush’s economic policy or his foreign policy. But that I believe he was a child of Satan here to destroy the planet Earth. Yeah, I’m a little a little to the left there, I was. I was leaning that way.…

Tom Friedman believes that France has finally got on the right side of the war. I’m not sure I fully agree with Tom here. More on this soon. I believe the French president, Jacques Chirac, knows something in his heart: in the run-up to the Iraq war, President George W. Bush and Tony Blair, prime…

If you watch anything this week, watch Jeremy Paxman interview Gil Loescher, who lost both his legs in the attack on the UN Headquaters in Baghdad. The link to the interview itself has not appeared yet, but you can watch the programme here until 2230 GMT 18 December. It begins in about the 30th minute.

The executive director of Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth, argues in favour of holding an international court for the trial of Saddam Hussein. I fully agree with his views. One can only rejoice at the capture of Saddam Hussein. Few people are more deserving of trial and punishment. U.S. forces deserve credit for arresting the…

But is it the real Saddam? BAGHDAD, Iraq – American forces captured a bearded Saddam Hussein (news – web sites) as he hid in the cellar of a farmhouse near his hometown of Tikrit, ending one of the most intensive manhunts in history. The arrest, eight months after the fall of Baghdad, was carried out…

The philosopher Michel De Montaigne had some interesting thoughts on the use of assassins by Bedouin tribes in the Middle East. The Assassins, who are a people dependent on Phoenicia, are considered by the Mahometans to be sovereignly devout and pure in morals. They hold that the surest way to merit paradise is to kill…

The US army claimed to have killed 54 insurgents in a gun battle in Samarra this week, but, says Julian Manyon, it turns out that only eight died, and some of them were civilians. Manyon is convincing.

Tacitus has coincidentally decided to think about going to Iraq about the same time as me. Quite a debate going on in his comments section!