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[At War] Why I Left Iraq: Scenes From a Year - At War Blog - NYTimes.com: The New York Times’s award-winning team of correspondents, photographers, videographers and local interpreters provide insight ”” and try to answer your questions ”” about the combatants shaping events along political, military and religious faultlines, and the civilians caught in the middle.

[Alfonso Merlos' Web] Afghanistan, A Harder War than Iraq : Alfonso Merlos' Web: Fifty-three percent (53%) of voters support Obama’s plan to send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, and nearly as many (47%) like his plan to begin withdrawing troops in 18 months. But put the two together, and 37% support the overall plan, while 38% oppose it.

[Fair Policy, Fair Discussion] NYT gives space to dangerous hawk Kuperman « Fair Policy, Fair ...: Kuperman’s tagline tells us, quite amazingly, that he’s “the director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin.”  But to my mind, this argument he’s making today poses a real and present danger to the American people’s real interests– in the Middle East region, and in the world.

[Antiwar.com Original] Christians United for War by Philip Giraldi -- Antiwar.com: letter was signed by many prominent evangelicals including Christians United For Israel founder John Hagee, Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Chuck Colson, Gary Bauer of American Values, and Richard Land.  Land, who appears to be the driving force behind the letter, is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.  There are also several Catholics among the thirty-seven signatories, which is surprising as the Vatican has repeatedly expressed its repugnance towards the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.  One signatory Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, has an interesting moral compass.  In defense of the Catholic priests who assaulted young boys he once explained "After all, most 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn’t allow themselves to be molested."  He has also stated that "Hollywood likes anal sex" and that the film industry is controlled by "secular Jews who hate Christianity."  Donohue’s signature might be a bizarre mea culpa for his nasty comments about Jews because it aligns him firmly with AIPAC on the issue of Iran, but it places him in strange company with Hagee, who hates Catholicism and has blamed the Catholic Church for the Holocaust.

[Military News Feed] MoD News - Iraq War Inquiry: "I think they [the Pentagon and neo-conservatives] had a touching faith that, once Iraq had been liberated from the terrible tyranny of Saddam Hussein, everyone would be grateful and dancing in the streets and there would really be no further difficulty and the Iraqis would somehow magically take over and restore their state to the democratic state that it should be in .some Americans were hearing some very happy talk from the likes of Mr [Ahmed] Chalabi [leader of an exile group] that, once Saddam Hussein had gone, they didn't need to worry, everything would be fine, the subtext being particularly if they handed over power to someone like Mr Chalabi .

[Armoks News] Iraq Unmerry Christmas: to hold Mass in the church only and not receive guests or show joyful appearances." Christmas is bumping into Shiite Islam's most mournful ceremony this year, forcing Iraqi Christians to keep their celebrations under tighter wraps than usual.(AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani)

[Gorilla's Guides] Gorilla's Guides » Blog Archive » Iraq: earning a living, a daily ...: In an effort to make progress on this issue, the annual meeting of the Tripartite Commission investigating the cases of persons missing in connection with the Gulf War was held in Kuwait under ICRC auspices in November. The meeting was attended by representatives from Iraq, Kuwait and the Coalition (the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Saudi Arabia).

[Breaking News from the Press-Register] Feds say Iraq vet with mental history bought Bass Pro guns despite ...: The day after Gluth bought the firearms, Fairhope police received numerous calls from people in the Rock Creek subdivision reporting a man walking in the neighborhood with a long gun. Contacted by a police officer, Gluth said he was thinking about going back to Iraq, according to the affidavit.

[Armoks News] Iraq Unmerry Christmas: IRAQ GATES In this Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009 photo released by the Iraqi Government, President Jalal Talabani, center right, meets with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, center left, in Baghdad.

[Independent Political Report] Socialist Action: 'U.S. Occupation of Iraq has Achieved Chaos and ...: Moreover, given the ruin and degradation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the U.S.-led wars and occupation, how could any government established under the aegis of the United States have any authority? In fact, the continuation of guerrilla attacks””although the most active guerrilla organization, al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, has become discredited by its ruthlessness and sectarianism””has revealed that the Iraqi army and police are far from faithful to their government.

[Immelman for Congress] Immelman for Congress » Blog Archive » Iraq-Afghanistan Casualties: 1st Class Patrick Henderson, an Iraq combat veteran who spent the final months of his life as an Army recruiter before hanging himself with a dog chain in his backyard shed. In all, 15 of the Army’s 8,400 recruiters committed suicide between 2003 when the Iraq war began, and 2008, with more than 540 of the Army’s half-million active-duty soldiers killing themselves during the same period.

[Change.org's War and Peace Blog] Panama + Over-Confidence = Iraq War, Suggests Pickering | War and ...: Thomas Pickering, US Ambassador to the United Nations under President "41" George HW Bush, thinks that when the US toppled Manual No... read more of this post, Panama + Over-Confidence = Iraq War, Suggests Pickering, at Change.org.

[PoliticalArticles.NET - Blog] Iraq War Crimes Indictment | PoliticalArticles.NET:   It was the object of the conspiracy to use war to replace the leader of Iraq, to do a regime change, because said leader was acting in a bellicose manner after previous American administrations had professed friendship, guaranteed the sovereignty of, equipped with military hardware, and encouraged said Iraq leader in military adventurism prompting him to believe he could invade Kuwait in 1990 without repercussion. Thus, the United States itself was a party to laying the groundwork for a miscalculation that led to war.

[The 'Critic Magazine' Blog] The 'Critic Magazine' Blog: USA Spends Trillion Dollars to Make ...: “There are problems in Afghanistan, of course, but the Americans have achieved the most important thing: there were no terrorist attacks conducted in the USA during the recent eight years. Unfortunately, the situation in Russia and many other countries is different, and we are not secured against terror attacks still,”

[kevin vann's blog] My Story from the war in Afghanistan - kevin vann's blog: In October 2009, the United States Special Operations Command ordered a team of US Army Special Forces and a team of Marine Force Recon Unit to assist a platoon of Army Rangers in a remote combat outpost in the Helmand region of southern Afghanistan. As President Obama ordered more than 30,000 additional troops, the Special Operation soldiers and marines must play a key role in combating the Taliban insurgency.

[Paul Krugman] Health care and Iraq - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com: And I don’t say that just because, as it happens, I stuck my neck way out in opposing Iraq, and was more or less the only columnist with a spot in a major newspaper to say outright that the Bush administration was misleading us into war.

[The Common Ills] Iraq snapshot « The Common Ills: Last January, United for Peace and Justice leader and top U.S. Communist Party official Judith LeBlanc actually called President Obama's appointment of Richard Holbrooke as a special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan last January "an exciting moment for the peace movement, because its possible diplomacy will be the first step...It's incredibly important that the antiwar movement reach out to this envoy," LeBlanc said, "and speak directly to the White House about our concerns." [19]  This was remarkable commentary given Holbrooke's rather unsavory history as a leading U.S. foreign policy operative and commentator over the years - a record that included critical support (in his role as Under-Secretary of State for Asian Affairs in the Carter administration) for Indonesia's U.S.-supported atrocities (bordering on genocide) against East Timor in 1975, promising (in his role as Bill Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans) immunity to Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic (according to Karadzic himself and to former Bosnian foreign minister Mohammad Sacirbey), helping lead (in his role as special envoy to Kosovo) the "diplomatic" charge to the U.S. bombing of Serbia in 1999, 

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