Iraq’s Development Road aims to reduce dependence on oil by turning the country into a key trade corridor between Asia and Europe. The project involves Türkiye, Qatar, and the UAE, but faces resistance from Iran, Kuwait, and the U.S. The project faces internal challenges like corruption, security concerns, and Kurdistan’s limited participation. In May 2023,...
Read MoreIraq’s leaders have a lot on their minds, stuck between Israel and Iran as the two countries veer closer to open conflict. Washington generally has a permissive attitude to whatever Israel wants to do, so if the attackers cross Iraq the assumption will be that the Americans approved, or did not disapprove, of the attack...
Read MoreBAGHDAD and KARBALA – Arriving in Baghdad today comes as an electric shock to any visitor who remembers recent, somber Iraqi history. There are virtually no checkpoints, apart from sensitive government areas. None of those ghastly cement blocks from the time of the American occupation, forcing a slow slalom every few minutes. No sense of...
Read MorePrime Minister Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani is in Washington next week with both sides hoping to expand they’re economic...
Twenty-one years ago, the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq in the erroneous belief that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction and was allied with al-Qaida, the terror group responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. created an occupation authority, but failed to restore order and helped spawn the insurgency that bedeviled it by...
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Biden may see himself needing some ‘grand victory’, as much as does Netanyahu. The U.S. is edging closer to war with Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces, a state security agency composed of armed groups, some of which are close to Iran, but which for the main are Iraqi nationalists. The U.S. carried out a drone strike...
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The U.S. and Europe — the Brits in particular — are out of control and flouting international law as they carry out military strikes in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. The West claims it is an act of self-defense, but instead of killing or arresting specific individuals responsible for attacks, are engaged in collective punishment. I...
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“At the times and places of our choosing” is one of the gayest of all the US government slogans. Honestly, it’s really gay that the military engages in this constant sloganeering in the first place. It’s so obviously a result of focus-group testing. At some point, PR goes too far, and when you’re doing focus...
Read MoreNeocon heads like the Middle East Institute’s Charles Lister’s are exploding with the news today that the Biden Administration may be considering withdrawing from its illegal occupations in both Syria and Iraq. First on Syria. As Lister opines today in Foreign Policy: …four sources within the Defense and State departments said the White House is...
Read MoreOn Jan. 4, 2024, the U.S. assassinated Mushtaq Jawad Kazim al-Jawari, a commander in an Iran-linked Iraqi militia. The Pentagon press release called the militia a “terrorist group” and claimed the strike was in “self-defense.” But it neglected to mention the militia was also part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an Iraqi government body...
Read MoreNote: CARLITO'S WAY is the closest thing to a Passion Play in the Gangster genre. If ever a gangster movie was made for the Easter Season, this is it. No wonder it was voted by the French film journal Cahier du Cinema as the best film of the 1990s. Though France has long been secular,...
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Two years ago, the 2020s started with a murder. Baghdad airport, January 3, 00:52 AM. The assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, deputy commander of Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi forces, by laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire missiles launched from two American MQ-9...
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It would be tempting to picture the Iraqi parliamentary elections last Sunday as a geopolitical game-changer. Well, it’s complicated – in more ways than one. Let’s start with the abstention rate. Of the 22 million eligible voters able to choose 329 members of Parliament from 3,227 candidates and 167 parties, only 41% chose to cast...
Read MoreEddie Gallagher and the changing story of a death in Iraq
The core explanation, as usual, went missing. The soldiers broke their code of silence, but the media kept its secrets. On Sunday, Aug 29, 2021, the CBS network on its special Sunday edition aired a gripping and tragic segment, bearing images seldom seen on US tv screens. The clip was tersely summed up in this...
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Joe Biden is continuing down the path that began with George W. Bush, with military action used as a substitute for any real foreign policy. In less than six months in office President Joe Biden has already developed a national security policy that appears to lean strongly towards proactive use of military force in questionable...
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By any historical measure, it was a game-changer: the first meeting since the 7th century between a Roman Catholic Pope and a Shiite spiritual leader regarded as a “source of emulation.” It will take a long time to assess the full implications of the immensely intriguing 50-minute face-to-face conversation, with interpreters only, between Pope Francis...
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Sanctions can be more deadly than bullets
Supporters of Donald Trump often make the point that he has not started any new wars. One might observe that it has not been for lack of trying, as his cruise missile attacks on Syria based on fabricated evidence and his recent assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani have been indisputably acts of war. Trump...
Read MoreThe Trump administration is threatening to destroy Iraq's economy by withholding a critical source of money that is controlled by the Federal Reserve. The threat is a response to the Iraqi parliament's unanimous decision to end Washington's 17 year-long military occupation. The Iraqi people and their representatives in parliament are incensed by the recent assassination...
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The U.S. is adamant that its assassination of Qassem Soleimani and refusal to leave Iraq is about protecting Americans, but a little known Iraqi parliamentary session reveals how China increasingly strong ties to Baghdad may be shaping America’s new Mideast strategy. Since the U.S. killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi...
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Will the national security nightmare ever end?
If one seriously seeks to understand how delusional policymakers in Washington are it is only necessary to examine the responses by the president and Congress to the assassination of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani. The first response came in the form of a Donald Trump largely incoherent nine-minute self-applauding speech explaining what he had done...
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During more than a half-century of Washington watching we have seen stupidity rise from one height to yet another. But nothing—just plain nothing—compares to the the blithering stupidity of the Donald’s Iran “policy”, culminating in the mindless assassination of its top military leader and hero of the so-called Islamic Revolution, Major General Qassem Soleimani. To...
Read MoreThe bombshell facts were delivered by caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, during an extraordinary, historic parliamentary session in Baghdad on Sunday. Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani had flown into Baghdad on a normal carrier flight, carrying a diplomatic passport. He had been sent by Tehran to deliver, in person, a reply to a message from...
Read MoreThe blowback has begun First, let’s begin by a quick summary of what has taken place (note: this info is still coming in, so there might be corrections once the official sources make their official statements). Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdl Mahdi has now officially revealed that the US had asked him to mediate between...
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First, a quick recap of the situation We need to begin by quickly summarizing what just happened: General Soleimani was in Baghdad on an official visit to attend the funeral of the Iraqis murdered by the US on the 29th The US has now officially claimed responsibility for this murder The Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah...
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I just got home and saw the news that General Qasem Soleimani has been murdered along with another 5-8 people by what was initially reported as a MRL strike (Russian sources say it was a drone attack). This was bad enough. Then this: The Telegram channel of RIA News reports that the US has claimed...
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The outsized role of U.S. Israel lobby operatives in abetting the theft of Syrian and Iraqi oil reveals how this powerful lobby also facilitates more covert aspects of U.S.-Israeli cooperation and the implementation of policies that favor Israel. Kirkuk, Iraq — “We want to bring our soldiers home. But we did leave soldiers because we’re...
Read MoreIntelligence documents reveal how Tehran took advantage of US blundering
The American invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of that nation’s government in 2003 has rightly been described as the greatest foreign policy disaster in the history of the United States. Eight thousand one hundred and seventy five American soldiers, contractors and civilians have died in Iraq since 2003 as well as an estimated 300,000...
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No other country in the Middle East is as important in countering America’s rush to provide Israel with another war than Iraq. Fortunately for Iran, the winds of change in Iraq and the many other local countries under similar threat, thus, make up an unbroken chain of border to border support. This support is only...
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Who defeated the Islamic State In Syria? Before answering that question. What is the ISIS? Can the public overcome its chronic amnesia and think back to the sudden appearance of ISIS dressed in brand new black uniforms, gleaming white NIKE’s and driving Toyota trucks? They seemed to appear out of nowhere in 2014. ISIS looked...
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True civilian death toll feared at 40,000
More than 40,000 civilians were killed in the devastating battle to retake Mosul from Isis, according to intelligence reports revealed exclusively to The Independent – a death toll far higher than previous estimates. Residents of the besieged city were killed by Iraqi ground forces attempting to force out militants, as well as by air strikes...
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President Trump is adding further venom to the raging sectarian hatreds tearing apart Iraq and Syria by his latest ill-judged tweets. These have far greater explosive potential than his better known clashes with countries like Australia and Mexico, because in the Middle East he is dealing with matters of war and peace. In this complex...
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The Iraqi army, backed by US-led airstrikes, is trying to capture east Mosul at the same time as the Syrian army and its Shia paramilitary allies are fighting their way into east Aleppo. An estimated 300 civilians have been killed in Aleppo by government artillery and bombing in the last fortnight, and in Mosul there...
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‘Make America Great Again’ was the slogan of Donald Trump’s election, but the immediate impact of his victory is to make the US less of a power in the world for two reasons: American prestige and influence will be damaged by a general belief internationally that the US has just elected a dangerous buffoon as...
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Iraq and Turkey are threatening to go to war with each other over who should hold power in Mosul and the surrounding region after the defeat of Isis. Turkish tanks and artillery have deployed along the border and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said that while Iraq “did not want war with Turkey” it...
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The candidate is demonised as an exotic celebrity but he knows more about Iraq and Syria than his critics
In 1989 I met Donald Trump several times in Palm Beach in Florida where he was trying to stop jets from a newly expanded Palm Beach International Airport from roaring over his enormous mansion. This was Mar-a-Lago, a magnificent house with 58 bedrooms and 33 bathrooms which Trump had bought four years earlier without realising...
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Why Washington Can’t “Stand Up” Foreign Militaries
First came Fallujah, then Mosul, and later Ramadi in Iraq. Now, there isKunduz, a provincial capital in northern Afghanistan. In all four places, the same story has played out: in cities that newspaper reporters like to call “strategically important,” security forces trained and equipped by the U.S. military at great expense simply folded, abandoning their...
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This email from my driver in Baghdad proves it
I used to have a driver called Omar in Baghdad at the height of the Sunni-Shia slaughter between 2004 and 2010. He was a Sunni Arab and, at the peak of the sectarian bloodshed, he fled with his family to Damascus where they stayed for a year. On his return, he found that his house,...
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Gov. Jeb Bush repeated one of the biggest falsehoods of our time during the recent presidential candidate debate: “we were misled (into the Iraq War) by faulty intelligence.” US intelligence was not “misled.” It was ordered by the real, de facto president, Dick Cheney, to provide excuses for a war of aggression against Saddam Hussein’s...
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Have US tactics played into Islamist hands?
The “Islamic State” is stronger than it was when it was first proclaimed on 29 June last year, shortly after Isis fighters captured much of northern and western Iraq. Its ability to go on winning victories was confirmed on 17 May this year in Iraq, when it seized Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, and...
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It’s quite a surprise that John McCain did not rise on his hind legs when he got wind of what U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter had said on the Memorial Day week-end. It was just the thing to make the War Party irate–even more so than the Iraqi prime minister was. (Who is he these...
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What If It Weren’t Us?
Let’s play a game, the kind that makes no sense on this single-superpower planet of ours. For a moment, do your best to suspend disbelief and imagine that there’s another superpower, great power, or even regional power somewhere that, between 2001 and 2003, launched two major wars in the Greater Middle East. We’re talking about...
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Five Bedrock Washington Assumptions That Are Hot Air
“Iraq no longer exists.” My young friend M, sipping a cappuccino, is deadly serious. We are sitting in a scruffy restaurant across the street from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. It’s been years since we’ve last seen each another. It may be years before our paths cross again....
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Back in the 1990’s, journalists used to joke, “Of course we know Iraq has chemical weapons. We have the delivery receipts to prove it!” The joke turned out to be the exact truth. While covering Iraq in 1990 – just before the first massive US bombing campaign – I discovered the US and Britain had...
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Why American Efforts to Create Foreign Armies Fail
In June, tens of thousands of Iraqi Security Forces in Nineveh province north of Baghdad collapsed in the face of attacks from the militants of the Islamic State (IS or ISIS), abandoning four major cities to that extremist movement. The collapse drew much notice in our media, but not much in the way of sustained...
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American-led air attacks are failing. Jihadis are close to taking Kobani, in Syria – and in Iraq western Baghdad is...
America's plans to fight Islamic State are in ruins as the militant group's fighters come close to capturing Kobani and have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Iraqi army west of Baghdad. The US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have...
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Fighting in Iraq Until Hell Freezes Over
I wanted to offer a wry chuckle before we headed into the heavy stuff about Iraq, so I tried to start this article with a suitably ironic formulation. You know, a déjà-vu-all-over-again kinda thing. I even thought about telling you how, in 2011, I contacted a noted author to blurb my book, We Meant Well:...
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How America's Policies Sealed Iraq's Fate
For Americans, it was like the news from nowhere. Years had passed since reporters bothered to head for the country we invaded and blew a hole through back in 2003, the country once known as Iraq that our occupation drove into a never-ending sectarian nightmare. In 2011, the last U.S. combat troops slipped out of...
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The Petraeus Legacy Comes Home
Colin Kahl probably didn’t realize he was playing oracle when he looked at the Sunni fighters once on the American’s payroll and how they were being left out to dry in Iraq at the end of the so-called Surge in 2008 and mused, “it doesn’t take 100,000 of these guys to revert to insurgents to...
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A speech by an ex-MI6 boss hints at a plan going back over a decade.
How far is Saudi Arabia complicit in the Isis takeover of much of northern Iraq, and is it stoking an escalating Sunni-Shia conflict across the Islamic world? Some time before 9/11, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington and head of Saudi intelligence until a few months ago, had a revealing...
Read More![Credit: MSgt. James Bowman [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Ahmed_Chalabi_in_discussion_with_Paul_Bremer_and_Donald_Rumsfeld-100x68.jpg)
He is being touted as country's next prime minister. But could his controversial record rule him out?
The enemy is at the gates of Baghdad. A small insurgent force has humiliatingly defeated an enormous Iraqi army. The government has no authority in that half of Iraq lying north and west of the capital. The Syrian civil war has spread and capsized the Iraqi state. In his eight years in power Iraqi Prime...
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Mendacious Media Appearances Attract Ire and Condemnation
“That anyone pays [attention] to neocons after their serial disasters is eloquent testimony to [the] irresponsibility of US foreign policy institutions” --- Stephen Walt, on Twitter, June 17. If Walt is correct, then these foreign policy institutions, as well as the mainstream media, were pretty irresponsible in the days following the domino-like overrun of Iraqi...
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