Wednesday: 13 GIs Reported Killed; 94 Iraqis Killed; 114 Iraqis Wounded
5 Dec 2006
Excerpt: At least 11 U.S. servicemembers died in three separate incidents in Iraq on Wednesday. A 12th soldier died on Thursday from wounds received on Wednesday. Meanwhile, at least 93 Iraqis were killed or found dead, 114 more were wounded, and 10 were kidnapped in several violent events. Also, military authorities reported that another soldier was killed on Dec. 3 in Baghdad. And, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group today released its recommendations on how the United States should proceed in Iraq. Five American troops were killed in Anbar Province and another five were killed in a Kirkuk. Both incidents occurred today and were the result of separate roadside bomb attacks. Another U.S. soldier was shot dead while manning a machine gun nest in Ramadi and a 12th; three other people were wounded and 14 militiamen killed during ensuing clashes. The U.S. military also announced the death of a soldier who was killed in Baghdad on Dec.3.

Two Pair of Twos
5 Dec 2006
Excerpt: Almost every war sees the emergence of a weapon that is considered decisive or revolutionary. The English longbow—with its ability to kill in great numbers at long range—gave England’s armies the edge in medieval wars on the continent for nearly three centuries, but advances in protective armor plating and the development of gunpowder eventually ended the longbow’s effectiveness on the battlefield. The capital ships of the Royal Navy were crucial to maintaining the British Empire during the 19th century. During World War One, the tank restored maneuver to a battlefield brought to a stalemate by trench warfare. The Second World War saw the emergence of the importance of air power with the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Britain, and the D-Day invasion. The Gulf War introduced precision guided weapons that could destroy hardened and buried targets with minimal collateral damage.

It’s Happening Again
5 Dec 2006
Excerpt: The lead-up to the invasion of Iraq has become notorious in the annals of American journalism. Even many reporters, editors, and commentators who fueled the drive to war in 2002 and early 2003 now acknowledge that major media routinely tossed real journalism out the window in favor of boosting war.

In Iraq, It’s Hard Being a Woman
5 Dec 2006
Excerpt: BAGHDAD —Once one of the best countries for women’s rights in the Middle East, Iraq has now become a place where women fear for their lives in an increasingly fundamentalist environment.

US Unlikely to Sentence Soldiers to Death in Wartime
5 Dec 2006
Excerpt: The final month of 2006 will be one to remember because of the first two—of perhaps many—U.S. Army servicemen will face charges that can carry the death penalty for crimes committed in Iraq.

Neocons Move to Preempt Baker Report
5 Dec 2006
Excerpt: To have read the neoconservative press here over the past month, one would think that former Secretary of State James Baker poses the biggest threat to the United States and Israel since Saddam Hussein.

Boris Berezovsky and the Bizarro Effect
5 Dec 2006
Excerpt: When I first put forward my thesis that we are suffering from what I call the Bizarro Effect—the inversion of moral laws as well as the rules of logic—it was just a hypothetical, a tentative assessment of the consequences of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I wasn’t absolutely sure that the sheer force of those planes hitting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had torn a hole in the space-time continuum and plunged us into a Bizarro World alternate universe, where up is down, right is wrong, and Satan sits on the throne of heaven. But the evidence kept piling up, as the Bizarro Effect spread outward from its starting points in lower Manhattan and Washington, D.C. It is now a worldwide phenomenon and spreading fast. Let’s take a tour, then, of the world’s hot spots, where the Effect is accelerating beyond anything yet seen…

Tuesday: 191 Iraqis, 3 GIs Killed; 91 Iraqis Wounded
4 Dec 2006
Excerpt: Attacks in Baghdad and an intense battle in Ramadi easily brought today’s tally to 191 Iraqis killed or found dead and 91 injured. Also, one U.S. soldier was killed and five more wounded when militiamen attacked their patrol in Baghdad. In Diyala province, another U.S soldier was killed and another GI injured when a roadside bomb blasted their vehicle. And a third American soldier died after his vehicle rolled over during an accident near Talil.

Confirming Gates: Why the Rush?
4 Dec 2006
Excerpt: The lame-duck Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee seems determined to force through confirmation of Robert Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense. The hurry is synthetic—and totally unnecessary.

The Iraq Study Group Rides to the Rescue—of the Empire
4 Dec 2006
Excerpt: Finally, the president and the New York Times agree. In a news conference with the Iraqi prime minister last week, George W. Bush insisted that there would be no “graceful exit” or withdrawal from Iraq; that this was not “realism.” The next day the Times, in a front-page piece (as well as “analysis” inside the paper) pointed out that, “despite a Democratic election victory this month that was strongly based on antiwar sentiment, the idea of a major and rapid withdrawal seems to be fading as a viable option.”

The Stability Problem, Solved
4 Dec 2006
Excerpt: During last summer’s Israeli-Hezbollah war, Condi Rice assured us that we were witnessing the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.”

Bush Is No Conservative
4 Dec 2006
Excerpt: The conservative movement in the United States has been stamped out, not by liberals but by neoconservatives. Conservative philanthropic foundations, conservative print media, and conservative think tanks have been taken over by neoconservatives, who have exiled real conservatives to voicelessness and joblessness.

US Seeks Near-Total Isolation for Gitmo
4 Dec 2006
Excerpt: As the new Democratic majority in the U.S. Congress considers whether to revisit the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA), the administration of President George W. Bush is proposing still more restrictions on detainees in U.S. custody.

The Coming Clash Over Iraq Policy
4 Dec 2006
Excerpt: The Baker Commission report calls for a phased withdrawal of combat forces in Iraq and for the United States to talk to adversarial neighboring countries—that is, Iran and Syria—about playing a more constructive role in that country’s civil war. If his rhetoric before the release of the report is any indication, President Bush will pretend to adjust his Iraq policy but spurn the commission’s main recommendations. From this inflexible man, that course is not surprising.

Bolton Resigns in New Defeat for Hawks
4 Dec 2006
Excerpt: In a new blow to the dwindling number of hawks in top administration positions, President George W. Bush Monday accepted the resignation of his ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.

Rice’s Iran Strategy Fizzles, Cheney Waits in Wings
4 Dec 2006
Excerpt: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s months-long diplomatic effort to get five other powers to agree to a tough United Nations Security Council resolution on sanctions against Iran now seems certain to fail, because of Russian and Chinese resistance.

Alexander Litvinenko: Blackmailer, Smuggler, Gangster Extraordinaire
3 Dec 2006
Excerpt: If a would-be novelist—desperate for money and some kind of recognition—put the events surrounding the death of ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko into a fictional narrative, one can only imagine the kind of reviews it would generate. An improbable plot—caricatures instead of characters—and, in the end, just plain unbelievable. After all, why in the name of all that’s holy would Vladimir Putin launch what amounts to the first act of nuclear terrorism—and on British soil, to boot?

Monday: 89 Iraqis Killed, 10 Iraqis Wounded
3 Dec 2006
Excerpt: At least 89 Iraqis were killed or found dead today and another 10 were wounded in violent attacks. Also, the weekend death toll for U.S. servicemembers grew by at least four when a U.S. helicopter made an emergency water landing in Anbar province. Those deaths are included in Sunday’s tally.

Sunday: 13 GIs, 108 Iraqis Killed; Pilot Listed As KIA
2 Dec 2006
Excerpt: On Sunday, U.S. military sources reported on the deaths of nine U.S. servicemembers in separate incidents across Iraq over the weekend; two soldiers were also wounded. Monday morning, authorities added four dead servicemembers to that list as a result of a helicopter crash in Anbar on Sunday. Also, an American pilot who crashed near Baghdad earlier this week was as of today formally listed as “killed in action.” Meanwhile, 108 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 41 injured in various incidents. Fourteen U.S. servicemembers have so far died during December. The new deaths bring Sunday’s tally up to seven dead. On Saturday six other servicemembers died, and one soldier died on Friday. Military authorities reported that an American soldier was killed today “during combat operations” in Baghdad. On Saturday, two soldiers and a Marine died from “wounds sustained during enemy action.” Also, two U.S. soldiers were killed in a bomb blast in Anbar province and another American soldier was killed near Taji when a roadside bomb blasted his convoy. The military also officially listed a downed U.S. pilot as “killed in action” after his determining that remains near the crash site belonged to him. Eight U.S. servicemembers have so far died during December.

Is President Bush Sane?
1 Dec 2006
Excerpt: Tens of millions of Americans want President George W. Bush to be impeached for the lies and deceit he used to launch an illegal war and for violating his oath of office to uphold the US Constitution. Millions of other Americans want Bush turned over to the war crimes tribunal at the Hague. The true fate that awaits Bush is psychiatric incarceration.

Polonium-210, Fiction and Fact
1 Dec 2006
Excerpt: According to Seymour Hersh, in early 2004, John Bolton, who was then the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control, privately conveyed to International Atomic Energy Agency officials his suspicions that Iran was conducting research—at Parchin, the center of Iran’s Defense Industries Organization—into “the intricately timed detonation of conventional explosives” needed for implosion-type nuclear weapons.

Sense and Stubbornness
1 Dec 2006
Excerpt: The meeting in Jordan between President Bush and Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki—unless the private discussions were a whole lot more frank and productive than it is reasonable to believe they probably were, based on public statements and background briefings—may stand one day as a symbol of the eternal fecklessness of the Bush administration. What was deemed to be an important get-together to reassess honestly what’s working and what isn’t in Iraq, and what has to be done turned into a comic-opera farce.

Saturday: 187 Iraqis, 1 GI Killed; 83 Iraqis Wounded
1 Dec 2006
Excerpt: The U.S military reported the first American servicemember death for December, and at least 187 Iraqis were also killed, another 83 were wounded, in various events. The most notable incident was a triple bombing of a Shiand#8217;te commercial neighborhood in central Baghdad, which killed almost 100 people.