Manal and Alaa's bit bucket

An amateur video, apparently made by US marines in Iraq, endorsing the killing of civilians, is being investigated by the US military. The video shows a US marine singing about gunning down members of an Iraqi woman’s family after they confront him with automatic weapons. You can watch the video here.

Interesting interview, courtesy of CNN’s PR department. Worth reading in full:Speaking this morning to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Iraq’s national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie discussed withdrawing multinational forces from Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and President Bush’s upcoming Camp David meetings. A highlighted excerpt is below, and a full transcript follows.Please credit all usage to CNN’s “Late [...]

OK, from serious to frivolous…Serious: Riverbend has an alarming post from a few days ago.There’s an ethnic cleansing in progress and it’s impossible to deny. People are being killed according to their ID card. Extremists on both sides are making life impossible. Some of them work for ‘Zarqawi’, and the others work for the Iraqi [...]

*This post is staying up for the rest of the day in celebration* Ding Dong the asshole is dead! Zarqa is dead (He got killed on 6/6/06 nonetheless, anyone else noticed that?). The bloodthirsty Jihady fuckhead is no more, and is hopefully rotting in hell as we speak! Good-bye douchebag, it couldn't have happend to a [...]

News are circulating, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Mus3ab al-Zarqawi was killed, together with seven of his aides, in a US air raid north of Ba3qouba.One of the US pre-war myths, used to support the illegal invasion of Iraq was that Jordanian-born Zarqawi, was the link between Al-Qaeda and Saddam regime. As we all know, this turned out to be another Bush [...]

The Jihadies in Iraq are banning Falafel . Yes, Falafel. Apparently Falafel is Haram. Egypt is so going to hell.In a bizarre example of Iraq's creeping "Talibanization," militantsvisited falafel vendors a couple of weeks ago, telling them to pack uptheir stalls by today or be killed.The ultimatum seemed so bizarre that, at first, most laughedit [...]

You ever get the feeling that things are not going according to plan ?

The Brookings Institution tracks various statistics about Iraq. They release a monthly detailed report about these numbers. Here's a digest of some of the stats.

All Statistics are from March 2003 to May 2006:

US Army Fatalities: 2,452
US Army Fatalities below 22 years of age: 707
US Army Fatalities between 22 and 35 years of Age: 1,397
US Troops Wounded: 18,088
Total Iraqi Military & Police Killed: 4,671
Avg. Iraqi Military & Police Killed by month: 160/month
Estimated Total Number of car bombs: 1324
Estimated avg. number of car bombs per month: 66/month

Estimated number of Iraqi Civilians killed by source:

When a few years ago, before I became a journalist, I worked as a researcher for NATO, I was very interested in the arms trade. At the time, new NATO members in Eastern Europe had to upgrade their military capabilities from Soviet-era equipment to the type of equipment that would work in joint actions with [...]

Ok, now this just pisses me off :Three years after a U.S.-led invasion toppledSaddam Hussein, only one major U.S. building project in Iraq is onschedule and within budget: the massive new American embassy compound.The $592 million facility is being built insidethe heavily fortified Green Zone by 900 non-Iraqi foreign workers whoare housed nearby and under [...]

Mubarak is trying to calm the Shia down after his incredibly stupid comment about their loyalties . So, he made a non-apology apology her e, cause you know, our great leader is never wrong, and should never apologize. He is like your Daddy figure, and Daddy figures should never apologize in middle-eastern cultures. It's almost [...]

It’s come after several protests in Iraq, the cancellation of flights between Cairo and Baghdad, and Iraqi boycott of an Arab League meeting:“My remarks about Shiites dealt with their religious loyalties and sympathies, without putting into question the patriotism of Shiites in Iraq or any other country,” Mubarak said in an interview Saturday in the [...]

The Military Officers at the Pentagon are speaking out more and more against Rumsfeld. Maybe they will join Sully's quest to get him fired !

Ten reasons the US would be better off if it hadn’t gone to war in Iraq — in American Conservative, whose latest cover urges Bush not to attack Iran.On a related note, Francis Fukuyama (whom I thought was a ridiculous man ever since his End of History came out) attacks his attackers for not letting [...]

Mubarak's incredibly dumb statement regarding the Shiites still draws fire from Shia leaders and clerics all over the middle-east:One of Shiite Islam's top clerics accused Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday of fueling sectarian tensions in the Middle East by saying Arab Shiites in Iraq and elsewhere are more loyal to Iran than [...]

 The original winner received death threats and gave up her title. The second and Third runner-ups have withdrew their names from the infidelicious contest, and now the title holder is the winner of Mrs. Teen Iraq . And she is neither sunni, Shia or kurd (christian. Yeah, do they exist there. I am surprised myself [...]

Here’s what President Hosni Mubarak said on Al-Arabiya the other night:Definitely Iran has influence on Shia. [They] are 65 percent of the Iraqis … Most of the Shia are loyal to Iran, and not to the countries they are living in. [Full Text]Not his best moment as a statesman. It was pretty clear those comments [...]

And my co-worker H. , yes, that H. , couldn't be happier that this finally happend .  This is the same dude who called wahhabists the greatest people on earth and called the Shia infidels, and yet he is so very excited that Iran is "200 working houres away"- his information, not mine- from [...]

For the past few months news that Neil MacFarquhar, a former Cairo and roving Middle East correspondent for the New York Times, had written a pulpy novel about journalists in Baghdad. Early rumors spoke of a tome called “Shifting Sands,” but the publisher has now announced the book, “Sand Café,” and gives this synopsis:Dhahran Palace [...]

With his statement on the Iraqi shiite . We are talking Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iran and probably even Lebanon. Freedom has the round-up .

What more can anyone say about this than that it’s awful?Al-Hayat’s Jihad Al-Khazen warns that “if the Iraqi political situation does not clear up during the next 48 or 72 hours, then it will most definitely explode.” But he’s optimistic because the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and The Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila) [...]

After all, the numbers tell the story (H/T Gatewaypundit ):81, 76, 50, 49, 43, 25What are these numbers? This week’sPowerball winners? A safe deposit combo? New numbers to torment thosepoor b*stards stranded on the island in Lost?No, they’re the number of troops that have died in hostile actions in Iraqfor each of the past [...]

The ninth in a series of dispatches from a journalist living in Baghdad.He was described to me once as the office’s very own little Saddam Hussein. Salah Jali doesn’t really have a proper title, but he’s one of the mainstays of the AFP Baghdad bureau.After the all important tech guy, Salah is the only one [...]

They are realizing that what's in Iran's best interest is not necessarily in their own .Top intelligence officers from several Arab countries and Turkey havebeen meeting secretly to coordinate their governments' strategies incase civil war erupts in Iraq and in an attempt to block Iran's interference in the war-torn nation, Arab diplomats said Tuesday.The meetings [...]

As the Al Qaeda Politcal leader, as this report seems to imply :Iraq's resistance has replaced Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawias political head of the rebels, confining him to a military role, theson of Osama bin Laden's mentor told AFP Sunday in Jordan."The Iraqi resistance's high command asked Zarqawi to give up hispolitical role and replaced [...]

Paul Schemm and I have been friends for many years, and colleagues in two Cairo-based publications. Since last November, Cairo lost Paul to Baghdad, where he is working for AFP. But a group of his friends have been getting, via email, his impressions of a country we tend to hear about from massacre to massacre. [...]

Strategy page has a very interesting read on the trends that the sunni arabs need to acknoweldge in the Iraq war: After three years, the Sunni Arabs, wholong dominated Iraq, most recently under the leadership of SaddamHussein, are giving up. It took so long because of a quirk in Arabculture, one that encourages the support [...]

This is a very interesting read!

OK, so Jill- On the way to the states and Hijab free- just released a statement disavowing everything she said on the video of the Iraqi Islamic party and on the propaganda video released by the Mujahedeen. If anything, she attacked them both for using her for their political and propaganda purposes.During my [...]

Just wanted to send my warmest regards to all the loud-mouths who piled on Jill just after she was released from three months in captivity with a gun pointed at her head. I hope one day to see how you, particularly the guy who wrote in to Little Green Footballs to say that he’d be [...]