Globe and Mail Update December 30, 2007

I started the year in January ducking mortar attacks from Sunni insurgents in Baghdad. I ended it in December, awakening to the explosion of Taliban rockets in Kabul. (Keep reading…)

Georgia Straight November 8, 2007

Fifteen months ago, the armed wing of Lebanon’s Hezbollah party, listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and most other western countries, attacked Israel’s northern border, capturing two Israeli soldiers and killing eight more. Israel replied with a month of massive air attacks all across Lebanon that destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, levelled a good deal of south Beirut, and killed about a thousand Lebanese civilians. (Keep reading…)

Canadian Dimension Magazine, November/December 2007

To paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, art can be a mirror to reflect reality or a hammer with which to shape it. The same could be said of sport. For a brief moment in July, Iraq was one: no Sunnis or Shiites, Arabs or Kurds, Christians or Muslims. United in their hopes of soccer glory, it was a moment that encapsulated the potential of sport to be a force for good — the Brechtian hammer. Huddled around their television sets, millions of Iraqis excitedly watched their national team defeat Saudi Arabia in the championship game of the Asian Cup of soccer. Together, Iraqis rejoiced. The dangerous and chaotic streets of Baghdad shed their danger, but none of their chaos. Cars clogged the roads, horns beeped in celebration and thousands of fans took to the streets waving the Iraqi flag, their troubled lives temporarily eased by a burst of national pride. As the team’s coach exclaimed, “When the football team is playing, there is no bombing in Iraq.” (Keep reading…)

Special to Canadian Dimension October9, 2007

The words “Support Our Troops” stain the rear bumpers of thousands of cars. The slogan, however, conceals a more pernicious demand: “Support Our Mercenaries.” Yes, in Iraq, the mercenaries – euphemistically called “paid contractors” – outnumber US troops, 180,000 to 160,000. These contractors do more than provide armed security for US personnel. They do chores that previously belonged to regular army staff. (Keep reading…)

Truthdig Sep 18, 2007

Please, please, I tell myself, leave Orwell out of it. Find some other, fresher way to explain why “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is dependent upon killer mercenaries. Or why the “democratically elected government” of “liberated” Iraq does not explicitly have the legal power to expel Blackwater USA from its land or hold any of the 50,000 private contractor troops that the U.S. government has brought to Iraq accountable for their deadly actions. (Keep reading…)

New York Times September 14, 2007

By Paul Krugman

To understand what‚s really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed. (Keep reading…)

Globe and Mail August 10, 2007

For a moment last Sunday, as I opened Michael Ignatieff’s alleged mea culpa—Getting Iraq Wrong—in The New York Times Magazine (heralded in advance by The Globe and Mail and lauded by the Times’s resident war critic, Frank Rich), I thought he might have learned something. Then I read his piece. (Keep reading…)

www.truthdig.com August 7, 2007

The war in Iraq is about to get worse—much worse. The Democrats’ decision to let the war run its course, while they frantically wash their hands of responsibility, means that it will sputter and stagger forward until the mission collapses. This will be sudden. The security of the Green Zone, our imperial city, will be increasingly breached. Command and control will disintegrate. And we will back out of Iraq humiliated and defeated. But this will not be the end of the conflict. It will, in fact, signal a phase of the war far deadlier and more dangerous to American interests. (Keep reading…)

Progresso Weekly July 26 – August 1, 2007

Washington DC made its reputation around the world as the city where nothing succeeds like failure — take Bush and Wolfowitz as examples. Few “realists” tell the truth, especially in matters of public policy. But President Bush has discovered a new way around truth: faith. He has faith that the U.S. military will win in Iraq despite the impressive array of facts that would cause less fervent believers to waver. His style of operating — classify everything and don’t talk to anyone but absolutely loyal reporters and God – contrasts sharply with the Nixon-Kissinger era. (Keep reading…)

Special to Canadian Dimension July 30, 2007

Hillary Clinton blamed the Iraqi government for failure to make progress. “The American military has succeeded,” she declared to a stunned public. “They got rid of Saddam Hussein, they gave the Iraqis a chance for free and fair elections. It is the Iraqi government which has failed to make the tough decisions that are important for their own people,” she said, unable to finish her sentence because of a chorus of boos. (”Take Back America” conference, June 13, Washington, DC) The other leading candidates (Obama and Edwards) blamed Bush and stood strongly for rapid withdrawal of US troops. (Keep reading…)