The prophetic anger of MLK
By Michael Eric Dyson, Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2008

On the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, few truths ring louder than this: Barack Obama and Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. express in part the fallen leader’s split mind on race, a division marked by chronology and color.

Before 1965, King was upbeat and bright, his belief in white America’s ability to change by moral suasion resilient and durable. That is the leader we have come to know during annual King commemorations. After 1965, King was darker and angrier; he grew more skeptical about the willingness of America to change without great social coercion.

King’s skepticism and anger were often muted when he spoke to white America, but they routinely resonated in black sanctuaries and meeting halls across the land. Nothing highlights that split — or white America’s ignorance of it and the prophetic black church King inspired — more than recalling King’s post-1965 odyssey, as he grappled bravely with poverty, war and entrenched racism. That is the King who emerges as we recall the meaning of his death. After the grand victories of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, King turned his attention to poverty, economic injustice and class inequality. King argued that those “legislative and judicial victories did very little to improve” Northern ghettos or to “penetrate the lower depths of Negro deprivation.” In a frank assessment of the civil rights movement, King said the changes that came about from 1955 to 1965 “were at best surface changes” that were “limited mainly to the Negro middle class.” In seeking to end black poverty, King told his staff in 1966 that blacks “are now making demands that will cost the nation something. … You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then.” [complete article]

Obama could actually win this thing (the Pa. primary)
By John Baer, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 4, 2008
The average of multiple new polls, including one putting him slightly ahead, shows he has trimmed a large Clinton lead – 20 points in January, 16 last month – down to single digits, at 5.4.

His campaign yesterday announced that it raised $40 million in March amid persistent chatter that Hillary’s running low and reports that she raised just half that.

More money means more TV, and Obama’s clearly clubbing Clinton.

Clinton camp feels spent, and outspent
By Matthew Mosk, Washington Post, April 4, 2008
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton spent a second straight day holding fundraisers in California yesterday as part of an all-out effort to keep pace with the record amounts of money raised by Sen. Barack Obama, whose campaign announced that it pulled in $40 million in March, double Clinton’s $20 million take.

While her Democratic presidential rival took the day off in Chicago, Clinton held two fundraisers in Los Angeles and planned to raise money in New Mexico this weekend. She will leave the campaign trail on Wednesday to attend an Elton John concert in New York organized with a goal to raise $2 million.

In an attempt to further tap the online donor market that has largely funded Obama’s effort, Clinton plans to launch a new Internet program today that lets supporters choose where their money will go, much as wedding guests select gifts from a registry. Instead of china and crystal, users can purchase campaign signs, van rentals, airtime on radio stations and doorknob advertisements.

More than 1,000 in Iraq’s forces quit Basra fight
By Stephen Farrell and James Glanz, New York Times, April 4, 2008
More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.

The desertions in the heat of a major battle cast fresh doubt on the effectiveness of the American-trained Iraqi security forces. The White House has conditioned further withdrawals of American troops on the readiness of the Iraqi military and police.

The crisis created by the desertions and other problems with the Basra operation was serious enough that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki hastily began funneling some 10,000 recruits from local Shiite tribes into his armed forces. That move has already generated anger among Sunni tribesmen whom Mr. Maliki has been much less eager to recruit despite their cooperation with the government in its fight against Sunni insurgents and criminal gangs.

Iraq: Dark shadows of things to come
By Wayne White, Middle East Institute, April 3, 2008
The Nuri al Maliki government’s failure to defeat Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra is yet another indication that beneath the widely acclaimed “success” of the surge is a country largely bereft of the legitimate governance required for genuine stability. Iran’s intermediary role between Maliki and Sadr suggests that what passes for an Iraqi central government is, in fact, little more than another actor on an Iraqi political scene still badly fragmented along factional lines.

At the conclusion of Prime Minister Maliki’s determined effort to wrest control of much of Basra from Sadr’s fighters, Sadr’s people reportedly controlled even more of the city than before. The government has lost face, Sadr’s standing has been considerably enhanced, and his defiance of the government, which he labeled a “Satan” in an interview with al-Jazeera, is unshaken. Past US and Iraqi government efforts to wear down Sadr’s forces with scattered attacks and arrests clearly have had little impact. Indeed, a Mahdi Army commander in Baghdad bragged last week: “We can take on anyone now.”

The popular appeal of the brash, anti-American and nationalistic young cleric among vast numbers of downtrodden Shi’a has been powerful. It may now exceed that of other more established movements such as that of leading rival Abdul Aziz al-Hakim’s Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI).

Basra assault exposed U.S., Iraqi limits
By Sudarsan Raghavan and Ernesto Londono, Washington Post, April 4, 2008
When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched an offensive in Basra last week, he consulted only his inner circle of advisers. There were no debates in parliament or among his political allies. Senior American officials were notified only a few days before the operation began.

He was determined to show, his advisers said, that Iraq’s central government could exert order over a lawless, strategic port city ruled by extremist militias. The advisers said Maliki wanted to demonstrate that he was a strong leader who could shed his reputation as a sectarian figure by going after fellow Shiites, and who could act decisively without U.S. pressure or assistance.

A week later, his ultimately unsuccessful gambit has exposed the shaky foundation upon which U.S. policy in Iraq rests after five years of war, according to politicians and analysts. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker are to report to Congress next week on Iraq’s progress.

Iraqi PM freezes raids targeting militia
By Hamid Ahmed, AP, April 4, 2008
Iraq’s prime minister on Friday ordered a nationwide freeze on raids against suspected Shiite militants after the leader of the biggest militia complained that arrests were continuing even after he ordered fighters off the streets.

The announcement was a major shift from comments Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made a day earlier. It came after Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia fought government troops last week, hinted at retaliation if arrests of his followers did not stop.

Al Qaeda #2: We’ll attack Iran
By Noah Shacktman, Wired, April 3, 2008
Recently, Senator John McCain has repeatedly indicated that Iran and al-Qaeda are in cahoots. The terror group’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, would beg to differ. In a long-promised online Q&A session, Zawahiri says it would be “in the interest” of Al-Qaeda to see Iran “sap[ped]” by a fight with the United States. Moreover, he seems to promise that the extremist collective will “battle” whoever wins that U.S.-Iran struggle.

Who is Iraq’s “firebrand cleric”?
Patrick Cockburn interviewed by Mother Jones, March 31, 2008
Mother Jones: In the beginning of your book, you write that Muqtada al-Sadr leads “the only mass movement in Iraqi politics.” Can you elaborate on that, especially given that in the American media we still hear more about the official Iraqi government than some of these other factions?

Patrick Cockburn: It’s always sort of amazing, sitting here in Baghdad, to watch visiting dignitaries—today we had Dick Cheney and John McCain—being received in the Green Zone by politicians who have usually very little support and seldom go outside the Green Zone. Muqtada leads the only real mass movement in Iraq. It’s a mass movement of the Shia, who are 60 percent of the population, and of poor Shia—and most Shia are poor. Otherwise the place is full of sort of self-declared leaders, many of whom spend most of their time outside Iraq. You know, if you want to meet a lot of Iraqi leaders, the best places are the hotels in Amman or in London. In general the government here is amazingly unpopular.

A teachable moment in Basra
By Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, April 2, 2008
It should come as no surprise that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s disastrous offensive against the Mahdi Army of Moqtada Sadr in Basra has had the exact opposite effect of that intended — strengthening rather than weakening Sadr, and making clear that he, and the Iranians, have far greater influence of Iraq’s future than does the Iraqi government or the U.S. That’s because Maliki’s shared the fate of pretty much every similar initiative by the Bush Administration and its allies and proxies since the onset of the “war on terror.”

The pattern is all too common: The U.S. or an ally or proxy launches a military offensive against a politically popular “enemy” group; Bush and his minions welcome the violence as “clarifying” matters, demonstrating “resolve”, or, in the most grotesque rhetorical flourish of all, the “birth pangs” of a brave new world. Each time, the “enemy” proves far more resilient than expected, largely because Bush and his allies have failed to recognize that each adversary’s power should be measured in political support rather than firepower; and the net effect of the offensive invariably leaves the enemy strengthened and the U.S. and its allies even weaker than before they launched the offensive.

Paltry result of Iraqi offensive quiets U.S. withdrawal talk
By Warren P. Strobel and Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy, April 1, 2008
The Bush administration was caught off-guard by the first Iraqi-led military offensive since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a weeklong thrust in southern Iraq whose paltry results have silenced talk at the Pentagon of further U.S. troop withdrawals any time soon.

President Bush last week declared the offensive, which ended Sunday, “a defining moment” in Iraq’s history.

That may prove to be true, but in recent days senior U.S. officials have backed away from the operation, which ended with Shiite militias still in place in Basra, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki possibly weakened and a de facto cease-fire brokered by an Iranian general.

The other Iraqi civil war
By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, April 3, 2008
The battle of Basra may be virtually over. But nobody’s talking about the invisible Battle of Mosul.

President George W Bush’s self-described “defining moment” in Iraq amounted to this: General Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) , brokered a deal in Qom, Iran, between Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s envoys and Hadi al-Amri, the head of the Badr Organization and number two to Adbul Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and a key player of the government in Baghdad. That sealed the end of the battle of Basra.

The IRGC was designated last year by Washington as a terrorist organization. Thus Iranian “terrorists” brokered a peace deal between the two largest Shi’ite parties in Iraq – ending a Baghdad government offensive that was fully authorized and supported by air power by Washington, according to Bush’s National Security Adviser Steven Hadley. Even under Bush logic, “the terrorists” won, and Iran won – once again.

Meanwhile, in northern Iraq, the Kurds are meticulously involved in de facto annexing strategically crucial, oil-rich Tameem province, whose capital is Kirkuk, with reserves of up to 15 billion barrels. Sunni Arabs and Shi’ite Turkmen fear the prospect – and are dead-set against the postponed Kirkuk referendum, which should have been held on December 2007. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government in Baghdad knew for sure they would lose this vote and thus see Kirkuk become a part of autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. So giving the excuse of “administrative problems”, they simply postponed the referendum.

Obama readies plan to reshape the electorate
By Ben Smith, Politico, April 2, 2008
Even as he fends off Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination contest, Senator Barack Obama is already turning his attention to the general election, and to an ambitious plan to reshape the American electorate in his favor.

Bringing new voters to the polls “is going to be a very big part of how we win,” said Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, in an interview. “Barack’s appeal to independent voters is also going to be key.”

Hildebrand said the campaign is likely to turn its attention and the energy of its massive volunteer army this fall on registering African-American voters, and voters under 35 years old, in key states.

Hillary’s wrong numbers: Obama polls up, Clinton funds down
Daily Intel, New York Magazine, April 1, 2008
To anyone tracking delegates, it’s been clear for more than a month that Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is in mortal danger. But as long as she was battling Barack Obama at the polls every week, she could hope to control the narrative of the Democratic race, even if she was losing individual contests. And so her campaign kept sprouting new raisons d’être: the wisdom of superdelegates, the enfranchisement of Florida and Michigan, her supposed ability to carry big states.

No more. We’re now halfway through the six weeks between Mississippi and Pennsylvania, and this long interlude has washed away Clinton’s spin. Now her campaign is not only over. It’s obviously over.

Muslim true/false
By John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2008
Winning hearts and minds — the Bush administration, foreign policy wonks, even the U.S. military agree that this is the key to any victory over global terrorism. Yet our public diplomacy program has made little progress on improving America’s image. Few seem to recognize that American ignorance of Islam and Muslims has been the fatal flaw.

How much do Americans know about the views and beliefs of Muslims around the world? According to polls, not much. Perhaps not surprising, the majority of Americans (66%) admit to having at least some prejudice against Muslims; one in five say they have “a great deal” of prejudice. Almost half do not believe American Muslims are “loyal” to this country, and one in four do not want a Muslim as a neighbor.

Meshal: Hamas backs Palestinian state in ’67 borders
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz, April 2, 2008Hamas supports the united Palestinian position calling for the establishment of a fully sovereign Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, including Jerusalem, and the right of return for refugees, Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal told the Palestinian daily Al-Ayam.

In a special interview with Wednesday’s edition of the paper, Meshal said the Palestinian position had received a vote of consensus during the national accords of 2006 and that this position is considered acceptable to the Arab world at large.

Meshal was asked about the claims by Israel and the United States that Hamas is seeking to destroy Israel. He said Hamas has committed itself to a political plan, which it follows, and called on the Americans, the Europeans and other international entities to conduct themselves in accordance with this political truth, and to judge Hamas based on its political plan, not based on what people may imagine.

Memo: Laws didn’t apply to interrogators
By Dan Eggen and Josh White, Washington Post, April 2, 2008
The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president’s ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes.

Iranian who brokered Iraqi peace is on U.S. terrorist watch list
By Warren P. Strobel and Leila Fadel, McClatchy, March 31, 2008
The Iranian general who helped broker an end to nearly a week of fighting between Iraqi government forces and Shiite Muslim militiamen in southern Iraq is an unlikely peacemaker.

Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, who helped U.S.-backed Iraqi leaders negotiate a deal with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr to stop the fighting in Iraq’s largely Shiite south, is named on U.S. Treasury Department and U.N. Security Council watch lists for alleged involvement in terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear and missile technology.

His role as peacemaker, which McClatchy first reported Sunday, underscores Iran’s entrenched political power and its alliances in Iraq, according to analysts.

Basra battle strengthens Sadr
By Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2008
The Iraqi government’s inability to oust Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia from Basra has boosted the fortunes of the Shiite cleric while damaging the standing of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Mr. Sadr appears to be the one clear winner from the inconclusive fighting in the country’s second-biggest city, which began to taper off Monday after the cleric urged his followers to observe a truce.

The failure of the Iraqi strikes against Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi Army has implications for both U.S. policy in Iraq and the presidential campaign.

Disunity in Damascus
By Ian Black, The Guardian, March 31, 2008
Muammar Gadafy is usually good for a laugh, and he raised some thin – if strained – smiles at the weekend’s Arab summit in Damascus when he took his fellow leaders to task for wasting his time and theirs. Talk of unity, complained Libya’s irrepressibly candid “brother leader”, was nonsense when Arab states spent their time plotting against each other, achieving nothing and standing idly by when one of their number (Saddam Hussein) was toppled by foreign armies.

Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president and summit host, put a brave face on Gadafy’s jibes and the embarrassingly low turnout in his spanking new conference centre. But no-shows by 11 heads of state – exactly half the membership of the 22-strong Arab League – was hardly a ringing endorsement of an event described as expressing Arab solidarity or of his own country as “the beating heart of Arabism”.

Obama is the change that America has tried to hide
By Alice Walker, The Guardian, April 1, 2008
I have come home from a long stay in Mexico to find – because of the presidential campaign, and especially because of the Obama-Clinton race for the Democratic nomination – a new country existing alongside the old. On any given day we, collectively, become the goddess of the three directions and can look back into the past, look at ourselves just where we are, and take a glance, as well, into the future. It is a space with which I am familiar.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early 20s, it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they’d always known – the plantations – because they attempted to exercise their “democratic” right to vote. I wish I could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, that white women have copied all too often the behaviour of their fathers and their brothers. In the south, especially in Mississippi, and before that, when I worked to register voters in Georgia, the broken bottles thrown at my head were gender-free.

I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.

Clinton slipping on trust
By Amy Chozick, Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2008
In the weeks before the Pennsylvania primary, Sen. Hillary Clinton not only lags Sen. Barack Obama in the race for delegates, she also is losing ground in her effort to convince voters that she is trustworthy.

The debate over her record has left Sen. Clinton confronting her lowest approval rating since April 2006, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released last week.

According to the survey, 29% of the approximately 1,000 respondents said they had a very negative opinion of Sen. Clinton compared with 15% for Sen. Barack Obama and 12% for Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican nominee.

The Coalition of the Unwilling
By Dana Milbank, Washington Post, April 1, 2008
Last September, President Bush flew down to Sydney and urged Australian voters not to reject the leader he dubbed his “man of steel,” Prime Minister John Howard.

“I wouldn’t count the man out,” Bush said. “He’s kind of like me: We both have run from behind, and won.”

Australians weighed that advice and, two months later, emphatically dumped the conservative prime minister in favor of Labor leader Kevin Rudd — who had promised to sign the Kyoto accord on global warming and pull troops out of Iraq.

Now it’s time for Rudd’s revenge: a chance to meddle in domestic American politics the way Bush meddled in Australian affairs last year. “Consistent with my commitment to the Australian people, we are changing the configuration of our involvement in Iraq,” he told an audience yesterday morning at the Brookings Institution. “Our ground combat troops will be withdrawn.”

Forever Guantanamo
By Raymond Bonner, New York Review of Books, April 17, 2008
On February 11, 2008, the Pentagon announced that charges were being filed against six men in connection with the September 11 attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the attacks and one of al-Qaeda’s most senior members, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a leader of the Hamburg cell that included several of the September 11 pilots. It has taken nearly seven years for these men to be indicted—while more than 240 other prisoners continue to remain at Guantánamo in a state of indefinite detention without charge. In contrast, Britain, after one of the longest and most expensive trials in its history, has already convicted and sentenced four men for the failed attacks on the London subway on July 21, 2005.

Last year, British officials also arrested three other men for involvement in the deadly attacks on three London subway lines and a bus on July 7, 2005, two weeks earlier; they are scheduled to go on trial at the end of March. Spain has convicted twenty-one of twenty-eight men charged in connection with the terrorist attacks on commuter trains in Madrid in March 2004; and Indonesia has held lengthy trials and convicted four men who were accused of the terrorist attacks in Bali in October 2002, two of whom have been sentenced to death, and two to life imprisonment.

“Justice delayed is justice denied” is a guiding principle of the American criminal justice system. The Bush administration has ignored this principle with impunity, and America’s image abroad has suffered greatly as a result.

Iranian general played key role in Iraq cease-fire
By Leila Fadel, McClatchy Newspapers, March 30, 2008
Iraqi lawmakers traveled to the Iranian holy city of Qom over the weekend to win the support of the commander of Iran’s Qods brigades in persuading Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr to order his followers to stop military operations, members of the Iraqi parliament said.

Sadr ordered the halt on Sunday, and his Mahdi Army militia heeded the order in Baghdad, where the Iraqi government announced it would lift a 24-hour curfew starting early Monday in most parts of the capital.

Ground is shifting beneath diplomacy with Pakistan
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times, March 31, 2008
Not so long ago, the Bush administration could take a one-stop approach to its dealings with Pakistan. Whether Washington wanted to carry out airstrikes against Al Qaeda, trade sensitive intelligence or orchestrate the arrest of a terrorism suspect, it essentially came down to dialing the number of one man: President Pervez Musharraf.

Now all that has changed. Newly inaugurated Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gillani has pledged to take a hard new look at counter-terrorism, the centerpiece of Musharraf’s nearly nine-year rule. He will be backed by a Cabinet made up of former opposition figures who probably will be sworn in this week.

An assertive new parliament is vowing to wield authority that lawmakers here lacked for years, demanding oversight on matters that were previously the president’s sole purview. And the general who succeeded Musharraf as army chief four months ago has methodically removed the powerful military from politics and promised accountability to elected officials.

The longest war
By Richard Holbrooke, Washington Post, March 31, 2008
This former Taliban stronghold, where Osama bin Laden spent time planning the Sept. 11 attacks, has become an American success story. The Taliban is being pushed out, and a government presence is extending into previously hostile territory. At NATO headquarters in Kabul, most of Khost has been moved out of the “red” column — at least for now.

Khost shows that, with the right combination of resources and leadership, it can be done. But Khost is not simply a good-news story. It also underscores a larger, troubling truth: The conflict in Afghanistan will be far more costly and much, much longer than Americans realize. This war, already in its seventh year, will eventually become the longest in American history, surpassing even Vietnam.

Some Republicans emerge to endorse Obama
By Eli Lake, New York Sun, March 31, 2008
Call them the Obamacans: They are against continuing the Iraq war and reject what they see as Mr. Bush’s unconstitutional buildup of executive power. While the conservative Republican base rejected Senator McCain in the early primaries for his push for bipartisan campaign finance regulation and amnesty for illegal immigrants, the Arizona senator’s hawkish support for the Iraq war has alienated what was once his national constituency, anti-Bush Republicans.

The Obamacans include a former senator of Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee; a former senior Justice Department official under President Reagan and senior legal adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, Douglas Kmiec, and a granddaughter of President Eisenhower, Susan Eisenhower.

The Clinton firewall
By David Sirota, In These Times, March 31, 2008
Google the phrase “Clinton firewall” and you will come up with an ever-lengthening list of scenarios that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has said will stop Barack Obama’s candidacy. The New Hampshire primary, said her campaign, would be the firewall to end Obamamania. Then Super Tuesday was supposed to be the firewall. Then Texas. Now Pennsylvania and Indiana.

For four months, the political world has been hypnotized by this string-along game, not bothering to ask what this Clinton tactic really is. The “just wait until the next states” mantra has diverted our attention from the firewall’s grounding in race and democracy. But now, with only a few months until the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the firewall’s true composition is coming into focus. Whether Obama can overcome this barrier will likely decide who becomes the Democrats’ presidential nominee.

Clinton didn’t pay health insurance bills
By Kenneth P Vogel, Politico, March 31, 2008
Among the debts reported this month by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s struggling presidential campaign, the $292,000 in unpaid health insurance premiums for her campaign staff stands out.

Clinton, who is being pressured to end her campaign against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, has made her plan for universal health care a centerpiece of her agenda.

Iranians help reach Iraq cease-fire
By Charles Levinson, USA Today, March 30, 2008
Iranian officials helped broker a cease-fire agreement Sunday between Iraq’s government and radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, according to Iraqi lawmakers.

The deal could help defuse a wave of violence that had threatened recent security progress in Iraq. It also may signal the growing regional influence of Iran, a country the Bush administration accuses of providing support to terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere.

Cleric suspends Shiite militia’s fight in Basra
By Erica Goode and James Glanz, New York Times, March 31, 2008
The negotiations with Mr. Sadr were seen as a serious blow for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who had vowed that he would see the Basra campaign through to a military victory and who has been harshly criticized even within his own coalition for the stalled assault.

Last week, Iraq’s defense minister, Abdul Kadir al-Obeidi, conceded that the government’s military efforts in Basra have met with far more resistance than was expected. Many Iraqi politicians say that Mr. Maliki’s political capital has been severely depleted by the Basra campaign and that he is in the curious position of having to turn to Mr. Sadr, a longtime rival, for a way out.

A civil war Iraq can’t win
By Anthony Cordesman, New York Times, March 30, 2008
Even if American and Iraqi forces are able to eliminate Al Qaeda in Iraq, there are still three worrisome possibilities of new forms of fighting that could divide Iraq and deny the United States any form of “victory.”

One is that the Sunni tribes and militias that have been cooperating with the Americans could turn against the central government. The second is that the struggle among Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and other ethnic groups to control territory in the north could lead to fighting in Kirkuk, Mosul or other areas.

The third risk — and one that is now all too real — is that the political struggle between the dominant Shiite parties could become an armed conflict.

Mideast openings
By David Ignatius, Washington Post, March 30, 2008
The Bush administration is coming to a crunch point soon in the two biggest conflicts in the Middle East — the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate and the struggle to create a stable Iraq. In each case, we can see the limits of military power in combating the “bad guys” who the administration believes are obstructing the path to peace.

The conundrum in Palestine is how to deal with Hamas, the militant Islamist group that controls Gaza. By firing rockets into Israel and provoking a punishing Israeli response, Hamas has nearly torpedoed the Annapolis peace process. It is a ruthless and unyielding organization but has strong support in Gaza, and, as Israel has discovered, it has been impossible to destroy militarily.

So what to do? Last week, Vice President Cheney and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert repeated the conventional line that Hamas is a threat to peace and that Israel should not negotiate with its representatives. But Egypt is holding talks with Hamas with the aim of negotiating a cease-fire — and I haven’t noticed either Israel or the United States demanding that the Egyptians stop their mediation.

The smart way out of a foolish war
By Zbigniew Brzezinski, Washington Post, March 30, 2008
Both Democratic presidential candidates agree that the United States should end its combat mission in Iraq within 12 to 16 months of their possible inauguration. The Republican candidate has spoken of continuing the war, even for a hundred years, until “victory.” The core issue of this campaign is thus a basic disagreement over the merits of the war and the benefits and costs of continuing it.

The case for U.S. disengagement from combat is compelling in its own right. But it must be matched by a comprehensive political and diplomatic effort to mitigate the destabilizing regional consequences of a war that the outgoing Bush administration started deliberately, justified demagogically and waged badly. (I write, of course, as a Democrat; while I prefer Sen. Barack Obama, I speak here for myself.)

The contrast between the Democratic argument for ending the war and the Republican argument for continuing is sharp and dramatic. The case for terminating the war is based on its prohibitive and tangible costs, while the case for “staying the course” draws heavily on shadowy fears of the unknown and relies on worst-case scenarios. President Bush’s and Sen. John McCain’s forecasts of regional catastrophe are quite reminiscent of the predictions of “falling dominoes” that were used to justify continued U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Neither has provided any real evidence that ending the war would mean disaster, but their fear-mongering makes prolonging it easier.

Shiite militias cling to swaths of Basra and stage raids
By James Glanz and Michael Kamber, New York Times, March 30, 2008
Shiite militiamen in Basra openly controlled wide swaths of the city on Saturday and staged increasingly bold raids on Iraqi government forces sent five days ago to wrest control from the gunmen, witnesses said, as Iraqi political leaders grew increasingly critical of the stalled assault.

Witnesses in Basra said members of the most powerful militia in the city, the Mahdi Army, were setting up checkpoints and controlling traffic in many places ringing the central district controlled by some of the 30,000 Iraqi Army and police forces involved in the assault. Fighters were regularly attacking the government forces, then quickly retreating.

Senior members of several political parties said the operation, ordered by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, had been poorly planned. The growing discontent adds a new level of complication to the American-led effort to demonstrate that the Iraqi government had made strides toward being able to operate a functioning country and keep the peace without thousands of American troops.

Iraqi offensive revives debate for campaigns
By Michael Cooper and Larry Rohter, New York Times, March 30, 2008
The heavy fighting that broke out last week as Iraqi security forces tried to oust Shiite militias from Basra is reverberating on the presidential campaign trail and posing new challenges and opportunities to the candidates, particularly Senator John McCain.

The fierce fighting — and the threat that it could undo a long-term truce that has greatly helped to reduce the level of violence in Iraq — thrust the war back into the headlines and the public consciousness just as it had been receding behind a tide of economic concerns. And it raised anew a host of politically charged questions about whether the current strategy is succeeding, how capable the Iraqis are of defending themselves and what the potential impact would be of any American troop withdrawals.

Where are the Iraqis in the Iraq war?
By Ramzy Baroud, TomPaine, March 29, 2008
Five years after the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, mainstream media is once more making the topic an object of intense scrutiny. The costs and implications of the war are endlessly covered from all possible angles, with one notable exception — the cost to the Iraqi people themselves.

Through all the special coverage and exclusive reports, very little is said about Iraqi casualties, who are either completely overlooked or hastily mentioned and whose numbers can only be guesstimated. Also conveniently ignored are the millions injured, internally and externally displaced, the victims of rape and kidnappings who will carry physical and psychological scars for the rest of their lives.

We find ourselves stuck in a hopeless paradigm, where it feels necessary to empathise with the sensibilities of the aggressor so as not to sound “unpatriotic”, while remaining blind to the untold anguish of the victims. Some actually feel the need to go so far as to blame the Iraqis for their own misfortune. Both Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have expressed their wish for Iraqis to take responsibility for the situation in their country, with the former saying, “we cannot win their civil war. There is no military solution.”

A new diplomatic order in Pakistan
By Jane Perlez, New York Times, March 28, 2008
If it was not yet clear to Washington that a new political order prevailed here, the three-day visit this week by America’s chief diplomat dealing with Pakistan should put any doubt to rest.

The visit by Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte turned out to be series of indignities and chilly, almost hostile, receptions as he bore the brunt of the full range of complaints that Pakistanis now feel freer to air with the end of military rule by Washington’s favored ally, President Pervez Musharraf.

Faced with a new democratic lineup that is demanding talks, not force, in the fight against terrorism, Mr. Negroponte publicly swallowed a bitter pill at his final news conference on Thursday, acknowledging that there would now be some real differences in strategy between the United States and Pakistan.

Somalia’s government teeters on collapse
By Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times, March 29, 2008
The trouble started when government soldiers went to the market and, at gunpoint, began to help themselves to sacks of grain last week.

Islamist insurgents poured into the streets to defend the merchants. The government troops took heavy casualties and retreated all the way back to the presidential palace, supposedly the most secure place in the city. It, too, came under fire.

Mohamed Abdirizak, a top government official, crouched on a balcony at the palace, with bullets whizzing over his head. He had just given up a comfortable life as a development consultant in Springfield, Va. His wife thought he was crazy. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

High rice cost creating fears of Asia unrest
By Keith Bradsher, New York Times, March 29, 2008
Rising prices and a growing fear of scarcity have prompted some of the world’s largest rice producers to announce drastic limits on the amount of rice they export.

The price of rice, a staple in the diets of nearly half the world’s population, has almost doubled on international markets in the last three months. That has pinched the budgets of millions of poor Asians and raised fears of civil unrest.

Shortages and high prices for all kinds of food have caused tensions and even violence around the world in recent months. Since January, thousands of troops have been deployed in Pakistan to guard trucks carrying wheat and flour. Protests have erupted in Indonesia over soybean shortages, and China has put price controls on cooking oil, grain, meat, milk and eggs.

Food riots have erupted in recent months in Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. But the moves by rice-exporting nations over the last two days — meant to ensure scarce supplies will meet domestic needs — drove prices on the world market even higher this week.

Hillary’s St. Patrick’s Day massacre
By Frank Rich, New York Times, March 30, 2008
Most politicians lie. Most people over 50, as I know all too well, misremember things. So here is the one compelling mystery still unresolved about Hillary Clinton’s Bosnia fairy tale: Why did she keep repeating this whopper for nearly three months, well after it had been publicly debunked by journalists and eyewitnesses?

In January, after Senator Clinton first inserted the threat of “sniper fire” into her stump speech, Elizabeth Sullivan of The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote that the story couldn’t be true because by the time of the first lady’s visit in March 1996, “the war was over.” Meredith Vieira asked Mrs. Clinton on the “Today” show why, if she was on the front lines, she took along a U.S.O. performer like Sinbad. Earlier this month, a week before Mrs. Clinton fatefully rearmed those snipers one time too many, Sinbad himself spoke up to The Washington Post: “I think the only ‘red phone’ moment was: Do we eat here or at the next place?”

Yet Mrs. Clinton was undeterred. She dismissed Sinbad as a “comedian” and recycled her fiction once more on St. Patrick’s Day. When Michael Dobbs fact-checked it for The Post last weekend and proclaimed it worthy of “four Pinocchios,” her campaign pushed back. The Clinton camp enforcer Howard Wolfson phoned in to “Morning Joe” on MSNBC Monday and truculently quoted a sheaf of news stories that he said supported her account. Only later that day, a full week after her speech, did he start to retreat, suggesting it was “possible” she “misspoke” in the “most recent instance” of her retelling of her excellent Bosnia adventure.

Vendors resent Clinton’s unpaid bills
By Kenneth P Vogel, Politico, March 30, 2008
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s cash-strapped presidential campaign has been putting off paying hundreds of bills for months — freeing up cash for critical media buys, but also earning the campaign a reputation as something of a deadbeat in some small business circles.

A pair of Ohio companies owed more than $25,000 by Clinton for staging events for her campaign are warning others in the tight-knit event production community — and anyone else who will listen — to get their cash upfront when doing business with her. Her campaign, say representatives of the two companies, has stopped returning phone calls and e-mails seeking payment of outstanding invoices. One even got no response from a certified letter.

Their cautionary tales, combined with published reports about similar difficulties faced by a New Hampshire landlord, an Iowa office cleaner and a New York caterer highlight a less-obvious impact of Clinton’s inability to keep up with the staggering fundraising pace set by her opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

“normalcy is returning back to Iraq,”, George Bush, March 27, 2008

U.S. armor forces join offensive in Baghdad against Sadr militia
By Sudarsan Raghavan and Sholnn Freeman, Washington Post, March 28, 2008
U.S. forces in armored vehicles battled Mahdi Army fighters Thursday in Sadr City, the vast Shiite stronghold in eastern Baghdad, as an offensive to quell party-backed militias entered its third day. Iraqi army and police units appeared to be largely holding to the outskirts of the area as American troops took the lead in the fighting.

Four U.S. Stryker armored vehicles were seen in Sadr City by a Washington Post correspondent, one of them engaging Mahdi Army militiamen with heavy fire. The din of American weapons, along with the Mahdi Army’s AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, was heard through much of the day. U.S. helicopters and drones buzzed overhead.

The clashes suggested that American forces were being drawn more deeply into a broad offensive that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, launched in the southern city of Basra on Tuesday, saying death squads, criminal gangs and rogue militias were the targets. The Mahdi Army of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite rival of Maliki, appeared to have taken the brunt of the attacks; fighting spread to many southern cities and parts of Baghdad.

Iraqi police in Basra shed their uniforms, kept their rifles and switched sides
By James Hider, The Times, March 28, 2008
Abu Iman barely flinched when the Iraqi Government ordered his unit of special police to move against al-Mahdi Army fighters in Basra.

His response, while swift, was not what British and US military trainers who have spent the past five years schooling the Iraqi security forces would have hoped for. He and 15 of his comrades took off their uniforms, kept their government-issued rifles and went over to the other side without a second thought.

Such turncoats are the thread that could unravel the British Army’s policy in southern Iraq. The military hoped that local forces would be able to combat extremists and allow the Army to withdraw gradually from the battle-scarred and untamed oil city that has fallen under the sway of Islamic fundamentalists, oil smugglers and petty tribal warlords. But if the British taught the police to shoot straight, they failed to instil a sense of unwavering loyalty to the State.

Iraqi leader extends date for militias to disarm
By Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2008
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki today extended a deadline for militiamen battling government troops to disarm as fighters show no signs of ending their standoff with Iraqi forces.

Four days after Maliki deployed Iraqi troops in the southern city of Basra to quell violence by Shiite Muslim militiamen, clashes continued. His decision to extend what had been a three-day disarmament deadline, set to expire Saturday, until April 8 was a sign of the resistance he faces from militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr.

Warlord vs. warlord
By Fred Kaplan, Slate, March 27, 2008
The fighting in Basra, which has spread to parts of Baghdad, is not a clash between good and evil or between a legitimate government and an outlaw insurgency. Rather, as Anthony Cordesman, military analyst for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, writes, it is “a power struggle” between rival “Shiite party mafias” for control of the oil-rich south and other Shiite sections of the country.

Both sides in this struggle are essentially militias. Both sides have ties to Iran. And as for protecting “the Iraqi people,” the side backed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (and by U.S. air power) has, ironically, less support—at least in many Shiite areas, including Basra—than the side that he (and we) are attacking.

The surge is not sustainable: Augustus Richard Norton explains why
By Ken Silverstein, Harper’s, March 27, 2008
Augustus Richard Norton, a combat veteran and retired Army colonel, taught at West Point for more than 12 years and is now a professor of anthropology and international relations at Boston University. I spoke with Norton–who was an expert adviser to the Iraq Study Group–earlier today about the situation in Iraq. Here’s his take on the situation…

Bob Casey to endorse Obama, join bus tour
By Thomas Fitzgerald, Philadelphia Inquirer, March 28, 2008
Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey plans to endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president today in Pittsburgh, sending a message both to the state’s primary voters and to undecided superdelegates who might decide the close race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Dan Pfeiffer, deputy communications director for the Obama campaign, confirmed that Casey would announce his support during a rally at the Soldiers and Sailors Military Museum and Memorial and that he would then set out with the Illinois senator on part of a six-day bus trip across the state.

The endorsement comes as something of a surprise. Casey, a deliberative and cautious politician, had been adamant about remaining neutral until after the April 22 primary. He had said he wanted to help unify the party after the intensifying fight between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Flashback: Wright’s letter to NYT about Obama
By Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Huffington Post, March 27, 2008
Thank you for engaging in one of the biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen in sixty-five years. You sat and shared with me for two hours. You told me you were doing a “Spiritual Biography” of Senator Barack Obama. For two hours, I shared with you how I thought he was the most principled individual in public service that I have ever met.

For two hours, I talked with you about how idealistic he was. For two hours I shared with you what a genuine human being he was. I told you how incredible he was as a man who was an African American in public service, and as a man who refused to announce his candidacy for President until Carol Moseley Braun indicated one way or the other whether or not she was going to run.

I told you what a dreamer he was. I told you how idealistic he was. We talked about how refreshing it would be for someone who knew about Islam to be in the Oval Office. Your own question to me was, Didn’t I think it would be incredible to have somebody in the Oval Office who not only knew about Muslims, but had living and breathing Muslims in his own family? I told you how important it would be to have a man who not only knew the difference between Shiites and Sunnis prior to 9/11/01 in the Oval Office, but also how important it would be to have a man who knew what Sufism was; a man who understood that there were different branches of Judaism; a man who knew the difference between Hasidic Jews, Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews and Reformed Jews; and a man who was a devout Christian, but who did not prejudge others because they believed something other than what he believed.

Spinning the bloodshed in Basra
By Dan Froomkin, Washington Post, March 27, 2008
As fighting rages in Basra, the White House is unleashing a forceful spin campaign to frame the Iraqi government’s offensive there as a positive outcome of the U.S. troop surge and a symbol of better days to come.

Speaking to an invitation-only audience at an Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio, this morning, President Bush argued that the Basra incursion “shows the progress the Iraqi security forces have made during the surge” and “demonstrates to the Iraqi people that their government is committed to protecting them. . . .

Iraqi Army’s assault on militias in Basra stalls
By James Glanz, New York Times, March 27, 2008
An assault by thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police officers to regain control of the southern port city of Basra stalled Wednesday as Shiite militiamen in the Mahdi Army fought daylong hit-and-run battles and refused to withdraw from the neighborhoods that form their base of power there.

American officials have presented the Iraqi Army’s attempts to secure the port city as an example of its ability to carry out a major operation against the insurgency on its own. A failure there would be a serious embarrassment for the Iraqi government and for the army, as well as for American forces eager to demonstrate that the Iraqi units they have trained can fight effectively on their own.

Iraqi government spokesman abducted amid Baghdad violence
By Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times, March 27, 2008
Rockets and mortars rained down on Baghdad today, and a high-ranking Iraqi government spokesman was abducted from his home, as violence continued in the wake of a crackdown on Shiite Muslim militiamen.

Scores of people have died since the fighting erupted early Tuesday, including at least 51 in the southern oil port city of Basra, where the Iraqi offensive began. At least 15 people, most of them civilians, were reported killed in attacks today in Baghdad and nearby Babil province to the south. Skirmishes also continued in Basra, where a pipeline carrying oil to the city’s port was hit by a major blast that sent flames soaring into the sky.

Thousands in Baghdad protest Basra assault
By James Glanz and Graham Bowley, New York Times, March 28, 2008
In direct confrontation with the American-backed government in Iraq, thousands of supporters of the powerful Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia took to the streets of Baghdad on Thursday to protest the Iraqi Army’s assault on the southern port city of Basra, as intense fighting continued there for a third day.

In Basra, there seemed to be no breakthrough in the fighting by either side. As much as half of the city remained under militia control, hospitals in some parts of the city were reported full, and the violence continued to spread. Clashes were reported all over the city and in locations 12 miles south of Basra.

Shiite militia won’t back down in government crackdown
By Mark Mooney, ABC News, March 27, 2008
Defiant Shiites flexed their muscle today by sending tens of thousands of supporters into the streets of Baghdad, raining shells into the Green Zone and holding the Iraqi army at bay in the key oil city of Basra.

Amid all the turmoil, a bomb blasted a crucial oil pipeline in Basra, triggering a massive fire and threatening the country’s ability to export oil.

It was the second oil pipeline attacked in southern Iraq this week. Basra’s oil accounts for 80 percent of Iraq’s production.

The pipeline blast sent the world’s price of oil to $107 a barrel.