Death from Above -- In These Times: "On June 22, the Operation Iraqi Freedom website issued a press release that hyped a devastating blow against 17 al-Qaeda terrorists, who were gunned down by coalition attack helicopters at Khalis, Iraq, a small town outside of Baqouba. But when the BBC visited the town days later, the villagers told a different story. The men attacked by coalition forces were not al-Qaeda members, but local village guards, who only minutes earlier had been helping Iraqi police raid a suspect’s house. (It turned out to be a false alarm.) Eleven of the men were killed when U.S. helicopters suddenly appeared, raining missiles and heavy machine gunfire upon them. “It was like a battlefront, but with the fire going only in one direction,” one local witness said. “There was no return fire.”"
Broken Spring? : Information Clearing House This is a sequel to my June 2011 article, ‘After the spring’, on the upheavals in the Arab world. It is an article that has been painful to write, because it brings bad tidings and offers a pessimistic analysis of the upheavals, at least in the short term, in a number of Arab countries. The outcomes and potential outcomes of these uprisings have also acquired new, very significant dimensions. These include a complex entanglement with the accelerated preparations for a possible attack on Iran, and a poisonous, sectarian aspect that could have the consequence of ripping Syria and the Middle East apart.
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