Tag Archives: Moqtada al-Sadr

Blood and Treasure

Less than a week later, Adrienne and I headed back out for the vigil. The half-dozen senior citizens and nuns who have been there every day for nearly seven years were happy to have us back, even if it meant one of our infrequent thresholds – in this case, the 4,000th American death in Iraq […]

Tet Again?

Happy New Year. Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Tet, short for Tet Nguyen Dan, is the Vietnamese new year. Based on a lunar calendar, Tet will begin on 7 February this year. I’ve been thinking about the Tet Offensive because 1968 was an election year. The […]

Fortunes of War

Conventional wisdom holds that today’s Republican primary in Florida will narrow the race to two candidates – John McCain and Mitt Romney. Further wisdom from the convention holds that next Tuesday’s multiple primaries will determine which of the two men will receive the nomination. I won’t disagree with that wisdom, whether or not it proves […]

Surged or Scourged?

Six to nine months after the surge in U.S. troop levels in Iraq, violence is down, or at least we’re told violence is down. How would we know, really? Pentagon press releases? The mainstream media? Last week’s issue of the New Yorker has a piece on the surge by Jon Lee Anderson, in which he […]