The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in Iraq’s New Cabinet
It remains to be seen whether the Iraqi honeymoon continues.
Iraqis
Iraqi Parliament Approves New National Unity Cabinet
The Iraqi parliament on Thursday approved the “national unity” cabinet of Prime Minister Mohamed al-Sudani. While Sudani presented his 23-minister cabinet as a harmonious team of technocrats, the appointment of holdovers and new figures suggests that his government is not a coherent bloc but a gathering of competing powers. The development comes a year after Iraqis voted out incumbents and their power-sharing arrangements.
Flash Briefs
A Job Americans Don’t Want To Do?
Barack Obama has been taking a lot of heat for acknowledging he doesn’t “have a strategy yet” for dealing with the jihadis butchering Iraqis, Syrians, Christians, Kurds and Yazi...
Op-eds
Not So Strictly Legal
International lawyers must introspect about how their partisan allegiance clouded their determination of the lawfulness of the 2003 Iraq war. As some celebrate and others decry...
Op-eds
Iraq Then and Now: May 2004 Better than February 2003
As the aircraft landed on the carrier last year, I was personally amused by the idea that a U.S. president would perform such a feat. Regardless of the ensuing brouhaha, an American president in...
Op-eds
Operation Phantom Strike
How the U.S. military is demolishing al Qaeda in Iraq.
Op-eds
Graduate School of Hard Knocks
How to create experts in counterinsurgency.
Op-eds
Advice for a Presidential Candidate: What Would Winston Churchill Do?
I suspect few readers will disagree when I say that not one of the presidential candidates, Republican or Democratic, has yet articulated a compelling campaign theme. All favor security. Not one...
Op-eds
At the Scene of Reconciliation
The Iraqis come to Denmark
Op-eds
Welcome back, Sadr
Muqtada al Sadr, the Iranian-backed, pseudo-cleric derisively known as Mullah Atari and hailed in US media circles as "the most powerful man in Iraq," has returned from his self-imposed three-yea...
Op-eds
News from the Awakening (Part 6)
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Op-eds
Susan Rice, Obama’s Foreign Policy Adviser, Strikes Again
She’ll be a source of non-stop amusement if Obama wins. Here, from Eli Lake at the New York Sun, is what McCain’s spokesman said regarding the ongoing negotiations with the I...
Op-eds
Iraq: Gee, Thanks for Everything — Now Turn Over Your Soldiers So We Can Prosecute Them
If this story in the NYTimes is true, it is a disaster in the making. ...
Op-eds
Light at the End of the Tunnel
If what goes up must come down, every surge must eventually recede. According to recent reports, the current one in Iraq may give way to large-scale withdrawals of U.S. forces as early as spring...
Op-eds
A Failure to Communicate
In Iraq, we have been losing not clashes of arms but clashes of perceptions. Our enemies understood early on that they could not defeat American troops in combat. But they were clever enough to r...
Op-eds
Minority Rule
In 1917, most Russians were not Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks were a minority, but they were fanatical and ruthless. So they prevailed — and for most of the 20th century Russians lived and die...
Op-eds
A Different Kind of War
Generals prefer to fight the last war for a good reason: The last war can be studied and understood. In the current conflict, by contrast, we seem to be wrestling a ghost in a fog. We ca...
Op-eds
Zarqawi Could Run, But Couldn’t Hide
Authored by Jay Ambrose One of the most important things about the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is that the dropping of the bombs that shattered his lungs was made possible b...
Op-eds
Purple Fingers of Freedom
I was having dinner with some people I didn't know well, and I happened to mention that a good deal of my time in recent years has been spent working with Arabs and Muslims on questions rela...
Op-eds
The Pledge for Iraq
Washington, D.C. (Dec. 7, 2005) – On Friday, December 9, representatives from a coalition of Iraqi organizations and individuals will hold a press conference at the Nationa...