Harry’s Place

Guest post by Bruno Mota
The thesis up front: I believe that the most important dynamic in Iraq today is not the fight between Americans and insurgents. It hasn’t been for a long time. For a while it was sectarian conflict, and it nearly destroyed the country. Although the latter dynamic remains significant, it is now […]

For many the Iraq war was about oil. Even back in 1991, I remember my anti-war friends bleating on about oil, and not really paying attention to the aggressive invasion of another state by a despot. Of course, such thoughts are simplistic, any Western actions in the Middle East can be viewed as being concerned […]

Go and read Arthur Herman [via Mick Hartley]. Here’s part of his perspective on Iraq.
There [in FBI interviews] Saddam admitted that he intended to rebuild his WMD programs once he rid himself of the international sanctions imposed after 1991. He knew that WMD’s were the key to his future power, just as they had been […]

Despite last year’s surge, things have gone terribly badly in Iraq. A change in tactics is required.
The Iraq Football Association have sacked coach Adnan Hamad following the team’s failure to progress to the final round of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup.
Iraq became continental champions 12 months ago by winning the Asian Cup but a […]

This seems a fair assessment from Oliver Kamm:
For all Bush’s verbal infelicity, diplomatic brusqueness, negligence in planning for post-Saddam Iraq, and insouciance regarding standards of due process when prosecuting the war on terror, the world is a safer place for the influence he has exercised.
When Bush ran for president in 2000 he was an isolationist […]

That’s the headline in The Times today as Barack Obama looks to calm any fears that the Jewish lobby might have over his presidential candidacy. Obama is to address American Israel Public Affairs Committee on the heels of John McCain who yesterday warned that his likely Democratic opponent threatened Israel’s security.
McCain in his speech to […]

Monday was observed as Memorial Day in the United States, so this week is probably as good a time as any to recall Ayman Taha, whose belief in Islam as he understood it did not prevent him from enlisting in the US Army special forces and going to Iraq, where he was killed in late […]

Some serve three or four tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. Some deal with the absence or– at worst– injury or death of children, parents or spouses.
And some give up golf.
President Bush said yesterday that he gave up golfing in 2003 “in solidarity” with the families of soldiers who were dying in Iraq, […]

Yes, I know there are many other things to say about it– I’ve said some of them myself.
But consider what would have happened to anyone who dared publicly to display a Communist flag in Baghdad during Saddam Hussein’s regime– when, as Harry Barnes noted, the Iraqi Communist party was forced into hiding and “[m]asses […]

Say what you want about Saddam Hussain, he did have an effective hold on state violence. Rather ironically, it was the loss of that stranglehold on the various factions and interlopers in the post-Baathist Iraq that led to many left-wing pro-Iraq war supporters revising their opinion on the war. The loss of life, regardless of […]