Policy and the End of the Bush Administration

Spencer Ackerman has a spectacular article up about the State Department’s new policy document “Counterinsurgency: A Guide for Policy-Makers,” which is going to be published in November. The policy handbook has a lot of interesting things to say.
The handbook seeks to provide a framework for considering whether Washington should intervene in foreign countries’ counterinsurgency operations, [...]

An Under-Remarked Element of the Iraq Debate

From Harper’s, via Andrew Sullivan
“Number of Iraqis who receive regular payments from the U.S. government in exchange for not fighting:  91,600″
In all the recent discussion about the surge and the Anbar Awakening is the fact that we are literally paying many Iraqis not to fight against us. To put 91,600 in perspective, there are currently [...]

McCain on the Awakening

As I briefly noted yesterday, John McCain is having some trouble with his Iraq messaging. All he wants to say is that everything good in Iraq is a result of his surgerific good judgement and anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Yesterday, when asked about Obama’s views on recent progress on [...]

McCain, Obama and the Surge

Perhaps John McCain’s biggest strength this election has been his advocacy of the surge in Iraq. McCain’s story is now that the surge had never happened we would have “lost in Iraq.” Furthermore, McCain claims that Obama has been denying the success of the surge.
“Our troops will come home with honor. And we won’t be [...]

Is McCain Becoming John Kerry?

One thing that has struck me recently is the degree to which John McCain’s campaign seems to be falling into some of the same traps that ensnared John Kerry in 2004.
On the surface, it seems remarkable that McCain could become Kerry. For one, he’s a Republican. Democrats are unwilling to attack his military service like [...]

Turns Out, Maliki Said It Afterall

So, after the Maliki government, through the occupation authority, tried to claim “mistranslation” on his Obama/timeline comments, it turns out they were full of shit. Not only was the translator for the interview Maliki’s, but the New York Times has gotten the audio and confirmed Maliki’s comments.
“Unfortunately, Der Spiegel was not accurate,” Mr. Dabbagh said [...]

We Asked Him To

Not only is Nouri al-Maliki’s walkback unconvincing and pretty hollow, now comes word that he only issued it after the US Embassy in Iraq asked him to.
But after the Spiegel interview was published and began generating headlines Saturday, officials at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad contacted Maliki’s office to express concern and seek clarification on [...]

Maliki Backs Off?

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office is backing off his endorsement of Barack Obama’s Iraq timeline yesterday.
Dr. Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, issued a statement saying Mr. Maliki’s statement had been “as not conveyed accurately regarding the vision of Senator Barack Obama, U.S. presidential candidate, on the timeframe for U.S. forces withdrawal [...]

McCain Chooses Empire

Just last week, John McCain’s advisers were saying:
“John McCain has always been clear that American forces operate in Iraq only with the consent of that country’s democratically elected government,” Michael Goldfarb, a McCain spokesman, told the Huffington Post.
Now, after Maliki’s bombshell that he agrees with Barack Obama, McCain has this to say:
“His domestic politics require [...]

Maliki Embraces Obama

“U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.
- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki

John McCain is suddenly is a very tough position. In the campaign thus far he has taken two positions on Iraq. One, that a timeline [...]