The Iraqi war has ended, a nine-year war that many believe has been one of the greatest military blunders in history. The war which was started by the Bush administration on March 2003 on arguments that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties with al Qaeda had just ended today, December 15, 2011 with a small ceremony in Iraq and a speech by President Obama saying the war had been brought to a successful, honorable conclusion. As he said to the troops in Fort Bragg the country they leave behind is “an extraordinary achievement”. Read the rest of this entry »

After reading several articles and blogs about the recent release of the classifieds Iraq war documents by WikiLeaks, I was ready to write about it when I came across a disturbing article in The Guardian: the candidacy in North Carolina of one ex US marine for congressman in the coming elections. Read the rest of this entry »

In a televised address from the Oval Office, President Obama declared last evening an end to the seven-year Iraq war in a rather gloomy speech befitting a grim and violent war. He said that the United states had met its responsibility towards Iraq and that now it was time to turn to problems at home. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems that the Iraqi government is finally taking decisions and that should be welcomed. A couple of days ago, Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman for the Office of the Prime Minister of Iraq and former member of the Iraqi Parliament, announced in Washington at the Institute of Peace, an independent, nonpartisan, national institution established and funded by the United States Congress, a proposal for the creation of a regional economic and security union for the Middle East explicitly modeled on the European Union. Read the rest of this entry »

With one week to go, I am probably going to give myself a break and short of something extraordinary happening avoid writing anything else about the U.S. elections until we know who is going to be the next president. By now anything I can write all of you would have probably read in the printed media or seen on TV. In the meantime I hope the Bush administration is not trying to go out with a bang. Read the rest of this entry »

Barack Obama’s trip abroad has caused several and quite different “situations”. The one which could be most serious was the widely reported interview that Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, gave to Germany’s “Der Spiegel” magazine. Read the rest of this entry »