Category: War
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Beyond Baghdad, Beyond ‘the Surge,’ War Still Simmers
NYT: The letter from Al Qaeda in Iraq to the members of the local police was clear. Come to the mosque and swear allegiance on the Koran to Al Qaeda, the letter warned, or you will die and your family will be slaughtered. Also, bring $1,200. It had the desired effect on American efforts to…
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Prewar Intelligence Unit at Pentagon Is Criticized
NYT: The long-awaited report by the Pentagon’s acting inspector general, Thomas F. Gimble, was sent to Congress on Thursday. It is the first major review to rebuke senior officials working for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for the way intelligence was used before the invasion of Iraq early in 2003. Working under Douglas J. Feith,…
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Cranberg wants a serious probe of why the press failed in its pre-war reporting
Nieman Watchdog: The shortcomings of Iraq coverage were not an aberration. Similar failure is a recurrent problem in times of national stress. The press was shamefully silent, for instance, when American citizens were removed from their homes and incarcerated solely because of their ancestry during World War II. Many in the press were cowed during…
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The Importance Of “Seeing” The War
CJR: The most shocking, and simultaneously compelling, aspect of the Baghdad dispatch in the New York Times this past Monday was its intimate close-up of one soldier’s death. It was impossible not to feel frustrated by the story of Hector Leija, an Army staff sergeant who was struck down by a sniper while on a…
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In a New Joint U.S.-Iraqi Patrol, the Americans Go First
NYT: When the Iraqi units finally did show up, it was with the air of a class outing, cheering and laughing as the Americans blew locks off doors with shotguns. As the morning wore on and the troops came under fire from all directions, another apparent flaw in this strategy became clear as empty apartments…
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Darfur, War Without End
VII Photo, Photos by Gary Knight: Since 2003 a war has been raging in Darfur under the watchful eye of the world’s political elite. Well-meaning politicians and celebrities have beaten a path to the refugee camps, been photographed with raped women and orphaned children, wrung their hands and called for something – anything – to…
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The Making, and Unmaking, of a Child Soldier
By ISHMAEL BEAH, NYT Magazine: After that first week of going out on raids to kill people we deemed our rebel enemies or sympathizers of the rebels, our initiation was complete. We stayed put at the base, and we boys took turns guarding posts around the village. We smoked marijuana and sniffed “brown brown,” cocaine…
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1,373 miles into the heart of Afghanistan
LA Times: GUL slowed for a speed bump, and instead of accelerating when a militiaman jumped up with an AK-47, he stopped. Gul opened the driver’s window, apparently weighing the comparative risks of getting shot and getting kidnapped. The gunman stuck his head in, saw me in the back seat and smiled like a dog…
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Somalia’s Islamists and Ethiopia Gird for a War
NYT: The stadium was packed, the guns were cocked and even the drenching rain could not douse the jihadist fire. Thousands of Somalis, from fully veiled, machine-gun-toting women to little boys in baggy fatigues, gathered Friday to rally against what they called foreign aggression. As a squall blew in, they punched wet fists into the…
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Iraq’s Biggest Failing: There Is No Iraq
NYT: “I am facing the most difficult times of my life here in Baghdad. Since I am a Sunni, I became a target to be killed. You know that our army and police are Shia, so every checkpoint represents a serious threat to Sunnis. During the last three weeks, two of my friends were killed…
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Rumsfeld Memo Proposed ‘Major Adjustment’ in Iraq
NYT: “In my view it is time for a major adjustment,” wrote Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been a symbol of a dogged stay-the-course policy. “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.” Nor did Mr. Rumsfeld seem confident that the administration would readily develop an effective…
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Anbar Picture Grows Clearer, and Bleaker
Washington Post: But the contents have not previously been made public. Read as a complete assessment, it paints a stark portrait of a failed province and of the country’s Sunnis — once dominant under Saddam Hussein — now desperate, fearful and impoverished. They have been increasingly abandoned by religious and political leaders who have fled…
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The Wars of Perception
NYT: What does this mean for Iraq? At the least, Tet and Somalia suggest we should be very careful before concluding that Iraq is a defeat. There is real evidence of failure, especially the escalating sectarian violence. But our perceptions are nevertheless easily manipulated. Iraq looks like a defeat in part because the Bush administration…
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Perfect Killing Method, but Clear Targets Are Few
NYT: In theory, Western snipers are a nearly perfect method of killing Iraq’s insurgents and thwarting their attacks, all with little risk of damaging property or endangering passers-by. But in practice, the snipers say, they are seeing fewer clear targets than previously, and are shooting fewer insurgents than expected. In 2003, one Marine sniper killed…
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END OF THE AFFAIR
New Yorker: When Adelman went to see Rumsfeld in his office, he knew that Rumsfeld wanted him out. “He said, ‘Ken, you’ve been my friend for most of my adult life,’ and he said that I was going to be his friend for the rest of his life,” Adelman recalled. “Then he said, ‘It might…
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Rumsfeld: 'My Half-Assed Job Here Is Done'
The Onion: WASHINGTON, DC—After nearly six years of much-publicized service as Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld announced his resignation Wednesday afternoon, saying that he had “proudly accomplished everything [he’d] set out to bungle.” “Years ago, I decided to bog this great nation down in an extended, grueling foreign occupation, and I’m happy to say that’s…
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Medic Tends a Fallen Marine, With Skill, Prayer and Fury
NYT: Once the helicopter lifted away, he ran back to his vehicle, ready to treat anyone else. He was thinking about the marine he had already treated. “If I had gone with him,” he said, and glanced to where the helicopter had flown away, over the line of date palms at the end of a…
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Military Charts Movement of Conflict in Iraq Toward Chaos
NYT: The slide includes a color-coded bar chart that is used to illustrate an “Index of Civil Conflict.” It shows a sharp escalation in sectarian violence since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and tracks a further worsening this month despite a concerted American push to tamp down the violence in…
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Anti-U.S. Attack Videos Spread on the Internet
NYT: Among the scenes being viewed daily by thousands of users of the sites are sniper attacks in which Americans are felled by snipers as a camera records the action and of armored Humvees or other military vehicles being hit by roadside bombs. In some videos, the troops do not appear to have been seriously…
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His Corps Value Was Bravery
LA Times: As they rushed the house, Navy corpsman Alonso Rogero was hit in the stomach and Lance Cpl. Ryan Sunnerville in the leg. Grainy, shaky film of the incident shows Sunnerville hopping on one leg, still firing his M-16. Marines and insurgents exchanged gunfire from no more than 20 feet. From inside the building,…