Tallies are still unofficial in the Iraqi provincial elections, but from the perspective of Sunni participation in the political process — one of the biggest imbalances in Iraqi politics that the elections were supposed to redress — it’s looking increasingly grim.
Communicating with Iraqis is, as you might imagine, difficult. Beyond the language barrier, the unreliability of electricity and Internet access makes emailing Iraqis a dicey proposition when there’s a deadline to meet. So some Iraqi translators I reached out to for my piece yesterday about potential compromises of their More…
In the United States, it would be a mundane tax form, with standard provisions for cataloging an employee’s tax obligations. Full name. Citizen ID number. Address. Phone. Specifications about any children.
But Form D/4a from the Iraqi Ministry of Finance is sending waves of anxiety through the community of Iraqis More…
Here’s an idea so diabolically perfect in its simplicity only Noah Shachtman at Danger Room was able to report it. Sure, Blackwater might be kicked out of Iraq. But does that really mean its mercenaries will leave?
The State Department has a contract for “Worldwide Personal Protective
Marc Lynch flags — and argues with — an apparent position taken by Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, in favor of taking until the end of 2009 to figure out how to withdraw troops more thoroughly. To some degree, I’m not really sure, judging from More…
This had been coming ever since the 2007 Nisour Square massacre, but now it’s here. From The Washington Post:
The Iraqi government has informed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that it will not issue a new operating license to Blackwater Worldwide, the embassy’s primary security company, which has
Via Patrick Appel at Andrew Sullivan’s place, defense theorist Thomas P.M. Barnett, or perhaps his colleague Sean Meade (it’s unclear who wrote this, exactly) has some kind-but-critical things to say about the Bush administration’s “strategic patience”:
By sticking it out long enough, despite the high casualties, we simply
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) asked Michele Flournoy, undersecretary of defense for policy-designate, if she still supports a proposal she published for the Center for a New American Security in mid-2007 that would leave 60,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. More…
Now here’s Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), who’s already proven himself to be one of the Senate’s best questioners in his brief tenure. “Should there be a residual force in Iraq?” he asks. The Status of Forces Agreement is pretty clear that there shouldn’t be. “We don’t have a strategy unless More…
rss
