Antiwar.com Blog

Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi blogger, shares his personal views on the June 30th “liberation” of Iraq.

The American army is building six permanent bases in Iraq, three surrounding Baghdad, one in the south, on in the east and on in the north. The three surrounding Baghdad are Al-Habbanyya, which is an old Iraq military base and airport near the artificial lake of Habbania, the second is Ar-Rasheed base in the south-east of Baghdad, and the third is At-Taji base in the north of Baghdad, which is the larges base in Iraq, it looks like a small city. The other three bases are Ali base near Nasryya, Al-Walid base northern to Falluja, and another base in Al-Mosul. These six bases are the cancer in the body of the new Iraq.
…read more

Also, check out the links on his page to his family’s and his friend’s blogs.

Col. Lounsbury whacks the idiots in the CPA, ruthlessly criticizing their utter failure from the perspective of a businessman in Baghdad trying to work with them. After reading Lounsbury’s scathing commentary, you’ll really appreciate this delicious skewering of Ari Fleischer’s brother Michael by Andrew Zajac of the Chicago Tribune. (credit to digby for spotting it.)

As long as we’re discussing ignorant neocons, don’t miss Juan Cole’s devastating exposure of neocon idiocy:

Mr. Carney, Mr. Lehman, journalist Stephen Hayes, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and all the other persons who gave a moment’s thought to the idea that these two are the same person, based on these names, have wasted precious moments of their lives and have helped kill over 800 US servicemen, over an elementary error deriving from complete ignorance of Arabic and Arab culture.

Michael Froomkin and Billmon both have good posts up about yesterday’s White House and Pentagon document dump. Froomkin concentrates on the order signed by Bush on Feb. 7, 2002, which contains what Froomkin refers to as the ” Royalist theory of Presidential power,” in point 2b: “I accept the legal conclusion of the attorney general and the Department of Justice that I have the authority under the Constitution to suspend Geneva as between the United States and Afghanistan, but I decline to exercise that authority at this time.” Also see this post on the OLC’s repudiation of it’s torture justification memo.

Billmon points out that none of the released documents cover the critical period during which most of the Iraqi torture occurred:

It also appears that neither the White House’s nor the Pentagon’s document dump extend much beyond the spring of 2003. This leaves out the critical period in the fall and winter of last year, when the Iraqi insurgency exploded into a major problem and the administration’s demands for better, more actionable intelligence jumped off the chart. According to Sy Hersh, this is when the Pentagon extended “Copper Green” – the Pentagon’s existing secret program for capturing and interrogating high-ranking Al Qaeda operatives – to Iraq.

Great line from this Seattle Times article.

According to a Washington-based intelligence newsletter Defense and Foreign Affairs, Bosnia’s viceroy “Paddy” Ashdown’s eagerness to support his late friend Alija Izetbegovic resulted in a major blow to anti-terrorism intelligence efforts on the eve of the Athens Olympics. Says DFA:

“Significantly, it was understood to be SFOR leadership which caused the Bosnia-Herzegovina ‘High Representative,’ Paddy Ashdown, to attempt a face-saving move in June 2004 which effectively reversed his decision of April 20, 2004, to arbitrarily remove the Head of the [Serb Republic] Secretariat for Cooperation with the [ICTY], Dejan Miletic.
Mr Miletic had been removed for refusing to sign off on a statement which essentially — at Ashdown’s insistence — accepted responsibility for the so-called ‘Srebrenica Massacre’ of 1995. The Secretariat had provided substantial evidence contradicting Ashdown’s totally unsubstantiated claims about the incident.
SFOR officials subsequently told the Office of the High Representative that this move had dealt a major blow to counter-terrorism intelligence in Bosnia-Herzegovina at a critical time.” Continue reading “Viceroy’s vendetta hurt anti-terror efforts?”

Be sure to check out Gene Callahan’s blog. I’m a little hesitant to promote a blog so narrowly fixated on “philosophy, religion, theology, economics, sociology, history, physics, mathematics, politics, current events, computers, sports, art, culture, programming languages, nightlife, travel, artificial intelligence, ethics, food, and secret sex tips gleaned from my years spent with various Himalayan masters,” but I like Gene, so deal with it.