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Iraq’s Tragic Future Rather than offering a word-for-word renouncement of the president’s rosy assertions concerning Iraq, I will instead initiate a process of debunking the myth of American success by doing that which no politician, current or aspiring, would dare do: predict the failure of American policy in Iraq. With the ink on the newspapers parroting the president’s words barely dry, evidence of his misrepresentation of reality begins to build with the announcement by the Pentagon that troop levels in Iraq will not be dropping, as had been projected in view of the “success” of the “surge,” but rather holding at current levels with the possibility of increasing in the future. This reversal of course concerning troop deployments into Iraq highlights the reality that the statistical justification of “surge success,” namely the reduction in the level of violence, was illusory, a temporary lull brought about more by smoke and mirrors than any genuine change of fortune on the ground. E...

Nas: Whose Word Is This? -- In These Times : "The rapper Nas has thrust the word “nigger” back into the limelight by making it the title of his new album. Such a move seems improbably provocative given the increased public scrutiny hip hop has received recently in the wake of the Michael Richards and Don Imus incidents. Richards, who played Kramer on TV’s “Seinfeld,” spewed a nigger-laden diatribe at a Los Angeles comedy club in 2006. And in 2007, shock jock Imus infamously called the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos.”"

Al Jazeera English - News - Gaza Teacher Killed In Israel Raid sraeli raids on Gaza have killed a teacher and seven Palestinian fighters in an assault on the Hamas-controlled territory following a suicide bombing and rocket fire into Israel this week. Hani Shaban Naim, 43, a father of five, was killed early on Thursday by an Israeli missile in his classroom in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. The Israeli army said the missile, which also wounded three students in the agricultural college, was aimed at a rocket-firing crew nearby.

U.S. forces kill Sunni civilians, tensions rise BAGHDAD – The U.S. military faced complaints Tuesday from its Sunni allies over claims that more civilians had been killed by American forces – amplifying tensions as the Pentagon tries to calm anger over an airstrike last week that claimed innocent lives. The disputes have further strained ties with anti-al-Qaida fighters considered crucial in turning the tide against extremist violence. The latest deaths occurred when U.S. soldiers – acting on tips – stormed a squat, mud-brick house in the village of Adwar, 10 miles south of Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit. The predominantly Sunni area is home to many former members of Saddam’s regime, and has been the frequent site of American raids.

Market bombings: Baghdad locals want security, not Iraqi police : "'We are an independent state; no police or army is allowed to come in,' proclaims Khalid Jamal al-Qaisi, deputy leader of the US military-backed and predominantly Sunni Arab militia in charge of security in the old Baghdad neighborhood of Al-Fadhil. The Monitor accompanied Mr. Qaisi, a mid-level member of the former Baath Party, on a walk down the area's main thoroughfare, Kifah Street, on Saturday, one day after a female suicide bomber struck the Ghazil pet market about a mile away on Jumhouriya Street, killing 62 people, according to Iraqi security officials. Another female bomber killed 37 people in a market in Baghdad Jadida. The combined toll is the worst since July 26, when a truck bomb devastated a full block in the Karrada district, killing almost 100. Qaisi says his men could have prevented Friday's bombings. He says the attacks only bolster his conviction that Iraq's security forces, b...

AEI - Short Publications The Bush Doctrine makes an alliance with Iraqi Kurdistan seem natural. Transformative diplomacy and democratization have been at the forefront, at least rhetorically, of White House policy. Here, Iraqi Kurdistan might seem a model. Two years before Saddam's fall, Carole O'Leary, a scholar in residence at the American University Center for Global Peace, described Iraqi Kurdistan as a "crucible for democracy and a model for post-Saddam Iraq."[9] Sverker Oredsson and Olle Schmidt, respectively a Lund University historian and a Swedish politician, called the Iraqi Kurdistan region "a Democratic beacon in the Middle East."[10] In 2006, the KRG-run Kurdistan Development Corporation aired television advertisements in the United States describing Iraqi Kurdistan as a "practicing democracy for over a decade."[11] While an exaggeration--neither the KDP nor the PUK allow any serious electoral challenge--relative to Saddam's rule i...

The Associated Press: Wartime Use of Contractors : "CONTRACTORS OUTNUMBER TROOPS: There are 196,000 contract employees working for the Defense Department in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are 182,000 U.S. forces in both countries. Most of those are Army troops. ___ CONTRACT FRAUD INVESTIGATIONS GROW: Federal agents are handling more than 100 criminal investigations related to war contract fraud, bribery, false billing, kickbacks and theft. ___ ACTIONS BY THE ARMY: Service officials are creating a command to be led by a two-star general that will oversee defense contracting. The Army also is hiring 1,400 additional acquisition personnel. PAY FOR PERFORMANCE: Military officials say they are shifting to contracts that pay companies for how well they perform and away from arrangements that give contractors little incentive to control costs."