'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Afghanistan's election: Some reflections

Back in 2004-05, Pres. Bush and his people were trying to 're-brand' America's overseas military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq as being part of a campaign to bring the wonderful...

The Iraqi skeleton in America's closet

In popular English-language parlance, a "skeleton in the closet" is a dirty family secret that everyone likes to keep hidden. We here in the United States have many skeletons in...

Post-combat birth defects in Fallujah population

I didn't have time to blog this when the BBC first reported it last Wednesday. But the report that found that the rate of birth defects in Fallujah since the...

On war

I have been meaning for a while now to blog some of my thoughts on the nature of, and prospects for, our country's continuing military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.......

2m2ba #4: Killings and cover-ups

Jerome Starkey of the London Times published a great piece of reporting yesterday about an incident in Afghanistan's Paktia province on February 12 when U.S. Special forces gunned down two...

2m2ba #3: Iraq's governance conundrum

Reidar Visser has a superb post today that tries to skewer an idea apparently now making the rounds re Iraq's coalition-formation challenge: Namely, why not have a wall-to-wall coalition of...

Allawi's bloc comes first in Iraqi election

Reidar Visser has his usual, extremely helpful commentary on the news from Baghdad, here. Bottom line, there: To Maliki's surprise, his State of Law Alliance got only 89 seats to...

Bush's invasion of Iraq, seven years on

My thanks to AP for having compiled and published these (most likely conservative) figures today: U.S. TROOP LEVELS: March 31, 2003: 90,000. October 2007: 170,000 at peak of troop buildup....

Deborah Amos's 'Eclipse of the Sunnis'

Yesterday I went to a book talk that National Public Radio's Deborah Amos gave about her new book Eclipse of the Sunnis; Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East....

Iraq count delayed-- and indeterminate?

It is now more than eleven days since the polls closed in Iraq's March 7 election, and we still have no final answer. The latest information on the election commission's...

Iraq returning to post-election tensions?

Iraq's Independent Higher Election Commission (IHEC) has taken much longer than expected to publish the results of the general election conducted five days ago, on Sunday. Their English-language website is...

That 'democratic justification' for invading Iraq, Part LXIII

It's Tom Friedman, at it once again in today's NYT! Here we are now, almost exactly fourteen Friedman Units (F.U.'s) after George W. Bush's (heavily Friedman-supported) invasion of Iraq, and...

Tragic endgame for the U.S. in Iraq

Most Iraqi voters will go to the polls Sunday. As so often, Reidar Visser has been doing the best, most systematic, and well-informed reporting on the important political developments of...