July 01, 2007

Bush the strategist, annotated

On Thursday, President Bush gave an address at the Naval War College that was seen by some as his response to the speech in which Sen.Richard Lugar last Monday publicly...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:43 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

June 27, 2007

"Charlottesville Goes to War"...

Over the past two months, our Charlottesville TV and print media have given extensive coverage to the pending deployments of locally based Army Guard units to Iraq. As I (Scott)...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 07:13 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

June 18, 2007

Iraq open thread #12

I've been busy for three days with Bill, getting our new part-time digs in Washington DC set up. Saturday I drove sundry items of furniture etc up here in what...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:08 AM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

June 16, 2007

Kimberly Dozier: A Year Later

It has been just over a year since Kimberly Dozier, CBS News correspondent, was critically wounded in Iraq. JWN regulars may recall a tribute here, reflecting on her University of...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 06:25 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

June 13, 2007

How about the pacemakers?

The AP newswire yesterday carried an intriguing report about the US Navy using carrier-launched electronic warfare planes called 'Prowlers' to prowl around Iraq "trying to stop the scourge of roadside...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:12 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

June 05, 2007

Airpower and the surge

Good for AP's Charles Hanley, who has a piece on the wire today noting that US warplanes have been dropping bombs on Iraq at twice the rate of a year...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:13 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

June 03, 2007

More on the Iraq- South Korea analogy

Ever since Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said on Wednesday that the administration is now aiming for a US troop presence in Iraq similar to the one in South Korea, there...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:59 AM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

May 29, 2007

Iraq: 5 British 'hired guns' abducted

Five British 'security contractors' were abducted by persons unknown in Baghdad today. This comes after the May 12 incident in Mahmoudiyah in which three US soldiers were abducted. (The body...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:04 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

Read Faiza's latest post-- read it NOW

Faiza al-Arji is a compassionate, very smart and percipient Iraqi engineer (and the mother of three talented, hard-working young adults.) Faiza has been in Amman for around a year now,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:57 AM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

May 28, 2007

Bacevich: "I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose"

I know I (Scott) should say something about Andrew J. Bacevich's heartbreaking WaPo essay, "I Lost My son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty." A...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 02:47 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

US-Iran Talks -- and a partnership?

US-Iran watchers are holding their collective breath in hopes that the talks between America and Iran bear fruit. I'm guardedly impressed that the talks are happening. President Bush has belatedly...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 01:08 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

May 27, 2007

Bushites and Iraq: Plan B and more realism?

Saturday's NYT had an important article by David Sanger and David Cloud, who wrote: The Bush administration is developing what are described as concepts for reducing American combat forces in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:12 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

May 23, 2007

Congress lets Bush run his own war

Yesterday, the Congressional Democrats gave up their previous insistence on writing troop-withdrawal deadlines into the legislation funding the Bush administration's continued administration of the war in Iraq. Basically, the President...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:47 PM | Fulltext link (28 comments)

"New" US strategies for Iraq proliferating

The WaPo's Ann Scott Tyson was the chosen leakee for this story, out of the Pentagon and the State Department that assures the increasingly skeptical US public that "Yes! Indeed...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:06 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

May 22, 2007

Judith Miller sighting - @ the Guardian?

There ought to be a dictionary entry for Judith Miller -- as in 1.) "journalist" of dubious reputation, 2.) front-page fiction writer; 3.) war fodder. Related google "search terms" could...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 08:13 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

May 18, 2007

Iraq open thread #11

I've been really busy. No time recently, alas, to blog. I'll resume as soon as I can. Meantime, this thread is for discussing Iraq....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:30 AM | Fulltext link (22 comments)

May 14, 2007

Overstretch directly imperils US troops in Iraq

Even with the 'surge', the present number of US troops in Iraq is quite insufficient to ensure the physical security of either the Iraqi people or the US soldiers and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:08 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

May 12, 2007

SCIRI's political changes; Iraqi nationalism surging; etc

Juan Cole, IraqSlogger, and various other quick-off-the-mark interpreters of Iraqi political developments have made quite a big deal out of the political transformations that the group formerly known as SCIRI...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:07 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

May 08, 2007

Surge getting bogged down in fortifications

Just over two weeks ago, insurgents in Iraq's Diyala province rammed an explosives-packed truck into the tall concrete blast walls that 'surging' US soldiers had put up to protect their...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:09 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

April 25, 2007

'Surge' brings surge in combat deaths

As I and others predicted back when Bush first proposed his plan to "surge" more troops into Iraq and to do so with a plan that would distribute them more...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:22 AM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

April 24, 2007

Iraqis opposing US army's movement control plan

This particular technique of movement control used by occupation armies is often called "quadrillage"-- from when the French used it in Vietnam or in portions of Algeria. Strategic hamlets play...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:35 AM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

April 18, 2007

When all else fails, blame Iran (Part II)

Matters must be really deteriorating in Afghanistan. Why else would the Pentagon brass now be darkly suggesting that Iranian arms have been "captured," supposedly on their way to the Taliban?...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 11:47 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

April 17, 2007

Visser on the recent gathering of Southern Iraqis

A couple of days ago, Al-Hayat carried this report about a conference held by a coalition of southern Iraqi political figures called the the Federal Democratic Iraq Gathering (Southern region...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:35 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

April 15, 2007

US national command authority in disarray?

Okay, I know I'm a little late writing about the news that came out last week (here and here) that (1) the Bush administration had decided to hire a new...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:02 PM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

Incarcerations in Iraq, in context

The WaPo's Walter Pincus has a very disturbing piece in today's paper in which he writes that the US forces in Iraq are currently holding about 18,000 detainees, the vast...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:35 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

April 12, 2007

When all else fails in Iraq,...

blame Iran. It's a tried, tired, and (not) true neocon formula, dating to the very first signs of trouble in Iraq after Saddam, four years ago. It's the same ole'Allan...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 10:57 PM | Fulltext link (22 comments)

April 09, 2007

So this is Progress? (Najaf march)

I see we have new competition for Tony Snow's job. Today, "tens of thousands" of Iraqis marched in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, on the occasion of the 4th...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 11:18 AM | Fulltext link (12 comments)