May 2006
February 2006
Iraq's death squads: On the brink of civil war
by mikepower
Most of the corpses in Baghdad's mortuary show signs of torture and execution. And the Interior Ministry is being blamed.
The New Yorker: The Memo by Jane Mayer
by mikepower
How an internal effort to ban the abuse and torture of detainees was thwarted.
US troops taught Iraqi gestures
by mikepower
The US military has funded a computer game to teach its troops how to use and decipher Iraqi body language.
Jasem al-Aqrab: The Basra video should lay to rest a scurrilous lie
by mikepower
Since April 2003, the people of Basra have consistently been bemused by reports that they and their city enjoy a state of calm and stability under the command of the British forces, in contrast to the north of Iraq and the so-called Sunni triangle.
TomPaine.com - Washington's Iraq Blindness
by mikepower
The Iraq that exists in President Bush’s imagination and the real Iraq, the one in which 160,000 U.S. troops occupy a nation sliding into civil war, have never seemed further apart.
January 2006
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Israel's shooting of young girl highlights international hypocrisy, say Palestinians
by mikepower
Israeli soldiers killed twice as many Palestinians last week alone - both of them children - as the number of Israelis killed by Hamas all last year.
Bush has backward view of dissent
by mikepower
Did Bush deliberately deceive the American people to justify the war in Iraq? I don't know...and neither do you. But here's what we do know: The president doesn't think we should be asking in the first place. And that might be the biggest scandal of all.
Guardian: Official US agency paints dire picture of 'out-of-control' Iraq
by mikepower
An official assessment drawn up by the US foreign aid agency depicts the security situation in Iraq as dire, amounting to a "social breakdown" in which criminals have "almost free rein".
D-squared Digest
by mikepower
Literally people have been asking me: "How is it that you were so amazingly prescient about Iraq? Why is it that you were right about everything at precisely the same moment when we were wrong?"
December 2005
August 2005
How to Win in Iraq - Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr.
by mikepower
U.S. forces in Iraq have failed to defeat the insurgency or improve security. Winning will require a new approach to counterinsurgency, one that focuses on providing security to Iraqis
Prospect - A muslim Journey
by mikepower
British Islam is dominated by culturally and theologically conservative south Asians. But the London bombs may help to make it more open to those who want to engage with the modern world
Sickening story in The Washington Post
by mikepower
Documents Tell of Brutal Improvisation by GIs: Interrogated General's Sleeping-Bag Death, CIA's Use of Secret Iraqi Squad Are Among Details
The Neo-Conservative Ascendancy in the Bush Administration
by mikepower
Jim Lobe: the man who has, in my opinion, done better reportorial work on the neoconservatives and the Bush administration than any other reporter around: TomDispach
July 2005
Iraqi Casualties: Unnamed and Unnoticed
by mikepower
An in-depth look at how we have treated Iraqi civilian deaths by veteran war reporter Judith Coburn
Roy Greenslade: The lies behind the lies: Secrets and Lies: The True Story of the Iraq War by Dilip Hiro
by mikepower
A depressing but magisterial assessment of the reasoning that led to the invasion of Iraq.
June 2005
Three Things About Iraq - NYT
by mikepower
If the war is going according to plan, someone needs to rethink the plan.
Joe Conason at Salon.com: Karl Rove is a liar and a scoundrel. He is not a patriot but a pure partisan, as his own record proved long before now.
by mikepower
In attacking liberals' reaction to Sept. 11, Bush's senior advisor once again resorts to McCarthy-style tactics.
March 2005
As war stretches on, recruiters scramble
by mikepower
Last month, the US Army missed its monthly recruiting target for the first time since 2000. The Army National Guard and Reserve haven't reached their monthly targets since October.
A military tribunal determined last fall that Murat Kurnaz, a German national seized in Pakistan in 2001, was a member of al Qaeda and an enemy combatant whom the government could detain indefinitely at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
by mikepower
The three military officers on the panel, whose identities are kept secret, said in papers filed in federal court that they reached their conclusion based largely on classified evidence that was too sensitive to release to the public.
