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Oh yeah. Iraq.

By Hidari, Section Iraq-Iran-Syria
Posted on Wed Jan 09, 2008 at 01:42:02 PM EST

Gosh it seems like only last year that Iraq was a disaster, a catastrophe, a maelstrom, a ....... quagmire. Oh wait a minute, it WAS last year. However, what a difference a fortnight makes! Now, we are told (or rather not told) 'we' have to put Iraq 'behind us'. It's all 'ancient history'. There's no point in wondering about the 'rights and wrongs'. 'We' are there now and that's all that matters. And what is there to be depressed about anyway? The Surge has worked! Peace is breaking out. Everywhere Iraqis are returning home, baking bread and going out to discos. The Shia shall lie down with the Sunni, and the Kurd watcheth over them all. Or something like that.

However, there is reason to be deeply skeptical about all this 'optimism'.

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Pakistan

By Hidari, Section News
Posted on Sun Dec 30, 2007 at 06:37:27 AM EST

Rushing off on holiday so don't have much time to comment on the news, but here's Juan Cole in Salon with apposite comments.

'The assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Thursday provoked rioting in Islamabad and Karachi, with her supporters blaming President Pervez Musharraf, while he pointed his finger at Muslim extremists. The renewed instability in Pakistan came as a grim reminder that the Bush administration has been pursuing a two-front war, neither of which has been going well. Bush's decision to put hundreds of billions of dollars into an Iraq imbroglio while slighting the effort to fight al-Qaida, rebuild Afghanistan, and move Pakistan toward democracy and a rule of law has been shown up as a desperate and unsuccessful gamble. The question is whether President Musharraf now most resembles the shah of Iran in 1978. That is, has his authority among the people collapsed irretrievably?'

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The threat of war recedes...for the moment.

By Hidari, Section Iraq-Iran-Syria
Posted on Sun Dec 16, 2007 at 05:05:19 AM EST

The reaction to the recent NIE report has been...interesting.

What is particularly interesting is the reaction of the 'usual suspects'. As they say in Northern Ireland: 'Even the dogs and cats in the street' know that the current attitude to Iran has nothing to do with Iran's 'nuclear ambitions' and everything to do with the drive to war. Only that explains this:

'U.S. hardliners on Iran are saying the intelligence document is too ridden with internal political squabbles to be credible.

"That such a flawed product could emerge after a drawn-out bureaucratic struggle is extremely troubling," John Bolton, one of the chief proponents of sanctions to stop the Iranian weapons program, wrote Thursday's Washington Post.

Republican presidential contender Fred Thompson drew his line in the sand, issuing a statement saying: "The accuracy of the latest NIE on Iran should be received with a good deal of skepticism. Our intelligence community has often underestimated the intentions of adversaries, including Saddam Hussein's Iraq and North Korea."

Saying the report is "awfully convenient for a lot of people," Thompson continued, "the administration gets to say its policies worked; the Democrats get to claim we should have eased up on Iran a long time ago: and Russia and China can claim sanctions on Iran are not necessary. Who benefits from all this? Iran."

The Wall Street Journal editorial page -- one of many conservative opinion-makers to question the report authors' credibility -- wrote Wednesday: "Our own 'confidence' is not heightened by the fact that the NIE's main authors include three former State Department officials with previous reputations as 'hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials.' "The Journal named former State Department officials Tom Fingar, Vann Van Diepin and Kenneth Brill.

Conservative talk radio, which is widely credited with helping destroy support for the immigration reform bill supported by the president last year, is also less than glowing toward the report. "I guarantee there's more sabotage coming out of that place regarding the Bush administration," Rush Limbaugh said of the State Department.'

The difficulties continue.

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Mission Accomplished!

By Hidari, Section Iraq-Iran-Syria
Posted on Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 10:04:55 AM EST

Well, Australia may well have backed out of our glorious mission, Iraq still burns (despite what you might have seen, or not seen, on your TV screens), the 'Government' is still paralysed, the behaviour of the Kurds demonstrate, yet again, that the Government's authority is non-existent, but still, not everyone is unhappy with the way things are going in Iraq.

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We back our boys

By Hidari, Section Propaganda and media manipulation
Posted on Fri Nov 23, 2007 at 03:02:00 AM EST

What is the mass media for? What do they do? Whose interests to they serve? This becomes an increasingly important question as we live in a world that is, more and more, 'mediatised': a world that increasingly reflects and is produced by the values of the media.

So what do they do? The 'liberal' response to this is as follows: 'we' live in a free market economy. Newspapers and movies and TV channels which fail to gain 'market share' go under. 'Popular' channels and movies and newspapers gain readers and, therefore, revenue. In the broadest sense of the words, therefore, the public gets the media it deserves. The media does (and, indeed, must) reflect public views and opinions.

However, there is another view.

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The Hidden War

By Hidari, Section Iraq-Iran-Syria
Posted on Wed Oct 31, 2007 at 07:01:50 AM EST

Isn't it great that the war in Iraq is now over? Or at least that's the impression one would get by casting a quick glance over the newspapers and TV news. Since the infamous 'surge', American casualties have declined, giving our wonderful free press yet another opportunity to knock Iraq and Afghanistan off the front pages and replace them with yet another story about Britney Spears.

What's going on here? In an interesting article, Fred Kaplan fills in the blanks.

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Where we are

By Hidari, Section Iraq-Iran-Syria
Posted on Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 09:00:41 AM EST

This piece from the LRB is so accurate, and really, sums everything up so well, there's little to add. So I won't add anything.

'Iraq is `unwinnable', a `quagmire', a `fiasco': so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be `stuck' precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no `exit strategy'.

Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world's oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world's oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today's prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.'

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