Category: The Middle East

War games

 Fisk on the death of journalism: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-we-are-now-in-the-firing-line-sadly-446522.html or http://bit.ly/bnqdXg or http://tinyurl.com/38h6k57 And here’s one on how surgingly swell things are for the British in Basra: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/serving-british-soldier-exposes-horror-of-war-in-crazy-basra-446395.html or http://bit.ly/bA4W72 or http://tinyurl.com/32duxzw  And, if you can find it, the farewell telegram from Sir Ivor Roberts as he left his job as Rome ambassador is quite interesting.  Sir Ivor got in trouble …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/04/28/war-games/

The real meaning of “surge”

 I have noted from several recent newspaper and TV accounts covering the “surge” in Iraq that a significant percentage of the “Iraqi Army” soldiers engaged in joint operations with the US Army are actually members of Kurdish units — presumably peshmerga militia forces assigned temporarily to Baghdad and the surrounding area as part of the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/04/26/the-real-meaning-of-surge/

Lebanon (1890-1900)

Thanks Fadwa.  What a beautiful country!  Whenever I see pictures like these and read accounts from the same time period, I wish I could have walked the countryside paths and ridden on four-legged beasts instead of whizzing around in noisy cars and airplanes.  Imagine the time they had back then, to think, to see and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/04/18/lebanon-1890-1900/

15 sailors

 …and whaddaya get?  Another day older and deeper in debt…  Bush and Blair have got to be the most inept diplomats in the world: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2412764.ece The whole thing is rather silly — the general area where the incident occurred has been disputed for a long time and isn’t exactly well-delineated…  In better times, both sides would …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/04/03/15-sailors/

Ides of March

 We’re about to finish out our 5th March in Iraq and according to http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm, this is the deadliest one yet for our boys and girls in the military.  Thank goodness our wise commander-in-chief has outsourced the “ugliest” operations to Blackwater mercenaries (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Blackwater_USA)… It hardly matters really, since they aren’t good Christian Americans (isn’t that a triple tautology?), but who knows …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/03/28/ides-of-march/

Secular Islam

 Randi Rhodes keeps harping on the idea that there’s a warped misogynistic, sado-masochistic, repressed-homosexuality theme running through a lot of what’s going on today in the Republican party and in our military fiasco in Iraq — phone sex with congressional pages, torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and black prisons, and of course, the wild popularity of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/03/27/secular-islam/

Inky wretch

    —–Original Message—– From: [Jacques d’Nalgar] Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 12:34 PM To: ‘[email protected]’ Subject: Word games   Dear Apologist for Evil, I can’t say it was wholly a pleasure to read your calculated mischaracterization of recent remarks related to unpleasant observations of the happily departed German bishops during their late great visit to …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/03/15/inky-wretch/