Category: Iraqi War

In case you missed it… Bremer made a very quick exit. But I guess that’s to be expected.

Drum also points to two recent articles by Wesley Clark (Washington Monthly) and Anne Applebaum(TNR) respectively. I find myself in some agreement with Drum when he notes: This is precisely what war supporters have been so deeply wrong about for the past two years: not the odiousness of Saddam Hussein’s regime or the necessity of…

Laura Secor profiles Lakhdar Brahimi – an educational article.

Unfortunately Robert Kaplans excellent article on his time in Fallujah is not available on the Internet. But I will try and do something on it soon.

And we move on to Bruce Hoffman’s piece where he suggests that the insurgency currently in Iraq might come under a definition called “netwar”. This is a concept thought up by RAND analysts John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt in 1992. Defined as: Unconventional warfare involving flat, segmented networks instead of the pyramidal hierarchies and command-and-control…

Second on the list is Iraq, with a report from the Brookings Institution. It provides some telling contradictions of the official US line on post war reconstruction, and on the status of the Iraqi army. It also provides some details of the progress being made in education and health. For instance, whereas Defense and State…

Thamir Ghadhban said blasts on Monday and Tuesday had damaged a pipeline from the southern oilfields – severing the flow to the Basra oil terminal. It was the second attack on the Basra terminal – one of the few operational outlets – in just over a month. It comes two weeks before the US-led coalition…

Jon points to an interview in the Atlantic with Robert Kaplan, who joined US Marines as they stormed Fallujah. I still await the print edition to pop through my door. Patience is a virtue.

Hugh Hewitt and Matthew Yglesias had a bit of an argument over the sarin round used in Iraq last week. The story is covered by Kevin Drum. I came across a relevant piece at New Scientist. Debora MacKenzie writes about the long term effects of sarin, saying: Proof that some of Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons…

Michael Totten has the lowdown on the New Yorker’s report concerning Don Rumsfeld. His verdict: While I’m aware it could be absolute nonsense, not a single word seems implausible. For my part I was not as shocked as most by the photos from prisons in Iraq. I read an article about methods used in last…