Archives for January 2004

Rieff on Iraqi Shiites David Rieff”s excellent firsthand report from Iraq on the Shiite movements there in the New York Times magazine is now available online (free registration required). This report seems to me among the more realistic and informed assessments of the situation yet to appear in the Western press. Rieff has done an […]

Dutch Embassy Destroyed by Rocket; 4 Policemen gunned down in Mosul According to wire services, Baghdad was shaken by several explosions late Friday night, including two rocket-propelled grenade attacks on the Dutch embassy in Baghdad that set it ablaze briefly before the fire was extinguished. No one was harmed, since the building was unoccupied. US […]

Debate Begins on Constitutional Provisions in Iraq Alissa Rubin of the Los Angeles Times has a fine piece today discussing debates in Iraq over the Fundamental Law that will govern the country until a constitution is crafted. She points out that several members of the Interim Governing Council reject the idea of a 3-man rotating […]

MI6 to be Called before Parliament on Weapons Estimates The London Times reports that “Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, will appear before the Intelligence and Security Committee, headed by Ms Ann Taylor, the former Labour Cabinet minister, to give further evidence on why he believed that the intelligence on Saddam’s weapons was reliable […]

The Islamic Party: Neither US nor IGC Suited to Organizing General Elections Az-Zaman reports that the Iraqi Islamic Party (the Iraqi branch of the Sunni fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood) has expressed support for the Nov. 15 agreement between the US and the Interim Governing Council, saying that elections based on provincial councils would produce a government […]

Demonstrations in Halbaniya Hundreds demonstrated peacefully in the Sunni Arab town of Halbaniya on Friday against US tactics, and against the curfew imposed on the city by the US authorities. (-Ash-Sharq al-Awsat).

Who is Hasan Ghul? The Kurdish peshmergas apprehended an Egyptian member of al-Qaeda trying to sneak into Iraq recently, and the US hailed the capture as significant. Ghul was said to have been working directly under Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, one of the planners of September 11. But the London-based moderate Saudi newspaper al-Hayat raised the […]

Is Kerry’s Inconsistency on Iraq a Liability? Mother Jones,, rather unaccountably relying on Max Boot, raises the question of whether Kerry’s changing Iraq position will hurt him in the campaign. Kerry voted for the congressional authorization of the war, but then voted against Bush’s request for $87 billion more after the war ($20 bn. for […]

Bahr al-Ulum: Federalism can work with 18 Provinces In a recent interview in al-Siyasah, a Kuwaiti newspaper, Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum implicitly opposed the Iraqi Kurds’ demands for a consolidated Kurdish state: “(Bilal) Do you think federalism is good for Iraq?” “(Bahr-al-Ulum) First of all we do not accept the division of Iraq or any situation […]