You don't have to go back 40 years to
the Vietnam War to feel the sting of déjà vu. Returning to the Iraq War
just three years ago will suffice.
Last
week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates summed up the administration's
dilemma on Afghanistan in a single question: "How do we signal resolve
and at the same time signal to the Afghans and the American people that
this is not open-ended?"
Iraq's cabinet has approved a deal with BP to develop the huge Rumaila oil field in the country's first international energy deal since the American-led invasion in 2003.
The agreement, which was brokered in June during the first round of tendering for licences to exploit Iraq's enormous and largely untapped hydrocarbon resources, should also send "a strong signal" to other energy groups that the Iraqi administration is keen to secure deals.
I am free. But my country is still
a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and
about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act,
and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.
On Wednesday, President Obama will address a joint session of Congress
on health care. Later this year he will decide whether to deploy
additional troops to the war in Afghanistan, in addition to the 69,000
troops already deployed. The struggle for health care and the struggle
to end warfare are inextricably linked. The cost for substantive
(though imperfect) health care reform as envisioned in the House of
Representatives approach (with the public option) is projected to
average $100 billion per year for the next 10 years. The cost to
continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanist
The centre of Baghdad was rocked by seven near-simultaneous explosions this
morning, killing an estimated 100 people and wounding 250 more.
In the deadliest attack in Iraq this year, and the most audacious one in the
capital for a long time, mortar fire and car bombs were directed towards the
main centres of power. Among the targets were the ministries of finance,
foreign affairs, health and housing, as well as the Parliament building and
the Cabinet building.
"On my last
day in Iraq," veteran McClatchy News correspondent Leila Fadel wrote
August 9, "as on my first day in Iraq, I couldn't see what the United
States and its allies had accomplished. ... I couldn't understand what
thousands of American soldiers had died for and why hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis had been killed."
![The bomb in Baghdad's western Amil district exploded near a group of day-labourers. [AFP]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/imagecache/article_image_thumb/files/article_images/baghdad_bombing.jpg)
More
than 50 people have been killed and at least 286 others wounded in a
series of bombings near the northern city of Mosul and in the Iraqi
capital, Baghdad, officials have said.
In the deadliest attack, two lorries packed with explosives blew up
simultaneously on Monday in the predominantly Shia village of Khazna,
20km north of Mosul.
At least 35 people were killed and 200 others wounded in the attack, police and hospital officials said.
WASHINGTON - The agreement announced Monday between Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki
and a Shi’a resistance group called the "League of the Righteous" (Asa'ib al-Haq)
formally ended the group’s armed opposition to the regime in return for the
release of its leader and eight other Shi’a detainees. This deals a final blow to
the U.S. military’s narrative of an Iranian "proxy war" in Iraq.
Decades ago, while a callow young reporter, I noted favorably that "the
late, great Senator George Aiken" had once famously and wisely offered a
solution to America's Vietnam quagmire: "Declare victory and go home."
