Time. It seems funny to think that the time the surge was supposed to provide Iraqi politicians to make inroads with regards to healing national political divisions is mostly likely now going to allow them more room to politically exploit the time given them rather than focus on efforts of political reconciliation. As Robert Reid of the Associated Press recently pointed out… “Washington threw more personnel and firepower into Iraq to give the Iraqi leadership more room to settle disputes and adopt U.S.-backed reforms. But the signals ...More »

It’s nice to see someone actually use the word ‘bribe’ for a change… “American forces are paying Sunni insurgents hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to switch sides and help them to defeat Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The tactic has boosted the efforts of American forces to restore some order to war-torn provinces around Baghdad in the run-up to a report by General David Petraeus, the US commander, to Congress tomorrow. Petraeus will tell Congress that there has been great progress at a local level in Iraq following ...More »

Today the President of the United States defended, once again, the war that he, and others, engineered. He spouted the usual nonsense, that to not defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is to say Salafi Jihadis, would result in “surrendering Iraq’s future to al-Qaeda”. Of course, as has been noted by a variety of scholars and regional experts, were the United States to abandon Iraq tomorrow, Salafi Jihadi forces would be the first to be dealt with, and with severe measures. What Mr. Bush doesn’t mention ...More »

It wasn’t too long ago that unnamed US officials in Iraq were claiming that the Iranians were “forging ties’ with Sunni insurgents in Iraq, some linked with Salafi Jihadi guerrillas. On May 22nd, the Guardian ran a piece entitled Iran’s Secret Plan For Summer Offensive To Force US Out Of Iraq, which claimed… “…US commanders were bracing for a nationwide, Iranian-orchestrated summer offensive, linking al-Qaida and Sunni insurgents to Tehran's Shia militia allies, that Iran hoped would trigger a political mutiny in Washington and a US ...More »