Word: iraq
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...insane rituals like the Senate--with its handleless gavel, seersucker-suit day every June and Republican candy desk. It's like Pee-wee's Playhouse with more sex scandals. But nothing is crazier than the fact that every two years, the Senate must break from trillion-dollar bailouts and Iraq-war allocations so that everyone who wants to can switch offices. Each office is allotted by seniority, which is calculated according to a formula that involves number of years in the Senate, previous federal jobs, the size of your state and eight other factors. Obviously, Robert Byrd has the best...
...Authority wanted). Bush also played domestic tough-guy politics disgracefully: his opponents were inevitably "soft on terrorism." And he played the darker avenues of domestic politics as well, allowing ethnic pressure groups like the Israel and India lobbies too much sway. Finally, his feckless battle plans in Afghanistan and Iraq were the result of his reflexive belief in American omnipotence and an underestimation of our enemies' intransigence...
...Iraqi army expressed deep concerns. "Tomorrow," Col. Hazar, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi Army 5th Battalion told me, "if [Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki transferred an Arab battalion up here, then we could not trust these people because they would use violence against us." (See a video on Iraq, six years after the U.S. invasion...
...days after the meeting in Wana, I attended the transfer of control over the Sons of Iraq - which was definitely a militia - from the U.S. to the Government of Iraq. Many of the Sons of Iraq (SOI) were former Sunni fighters, drawn and brought into the fold after their alienation from the more radical elements of the insurgency. Their attending Major, Ibrahim Mohammed Abdullah, told me that "we are very happy that our good friends the Americans are leaving...
...these men, Peshmerga and the Sons of Iraq, the Kurds and Arabs alike, are technically members of the same national security force, with which the American military is trying to work closely. Back in the hallway with Ricky and the shaving medic, I thought about this as I interviewed an Arab soldier watching the proceedings. Pvt. Faisal told me that there would be no problems with the Kurds - "as long as they stayed in Kurdistan" - and that he was happy to see the U.S. leave...