By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
This really works out well for China. Could there be a sweeter crude deal? Let others lay the groundwork, sacrificing that most treasured national treasure. Done? Great, it’s drillin’ time!
The method worked well in Sudan and it's effective in Iraq as well.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
A series of bombings Wednesday in Baghdad provided additional reminders that getting U.S. troops out of Iraq will be treacherous.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
There’s jubilation in the streets of Iraq this week as U.S. forces turn over control of the cities to Iraqi forces.
Iraqis see the move as a step toward full independence. American efforts that made this milestone possible should not be underestimated.
By Kit Bond, Special to The Kansas City Star
Before American forces liberated Iraq, murder and mass graves were a way of life under Saddam Hussein. Despite our initial success in defeating the brutal dictator’s forces, a poor and misdirected military strategy allowed the insurgency to gain momentum.
The Kansas City Star this week is running a series of editorial suggesting an exit plan that will lead to peace and prosperity in Iraq and the region. For a look at the entire package, go to this link. Let us know if you think our exit plan is on the right track.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
The Kansas City Star this week is running a series of editorial suggesting an exit plan that will lead to peace and prosperity in Iraq and the region. For a look at the entire package, go to this link. Let us know if you think our exit plan is on the right track.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
The Kansas City Star this week is running a series of editorial suggesting an exit plan that will lead to peace and prosperity in Iraq and the region. For a look at the entire package, go to this link. Let us know if you think our exit plan is on the right track.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
WASHINGTON -- Getting out of Iraq can’t mean a total exit.
Too much is left undone, particularly in one of the top priorities: Iraq’s military.
The Kansas City Star this week is running a series of editorial suggesting an exit plan that will lead to peace and prosperity in Iraq and the region. For a look at the entire package, go to this link. Let us know if you think our exit plan is on the right track.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
BERLIN -- How is Europe reacting to the U.S. exit from Iraq?
It doesn’t care. That’s America’s problem.
The Germans don’t care. The French don’t care. The Dutch don’t care.
The Kansas City Star this week is running a series of editorial suggesting an exit plan that will lead to peace and prosperity in Iraq and the region. For a look at the entire package, go to this link. Let us know if you think our exit plan is on the right track.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
BAGHDAD -- An unpleasant scenario: In about two years, Muqtada al-Sadr, the man known in the American press as the “anti-American firebrand cleric,” will return to Iraq from religious training in Iran.
The Kansas City Star this week is running a series of editorial suggesting an exit plan that will lead to peace and prosperity in Iraq and the region. For a look at the entire package, go to this link. Let us know if you think our exit plan is on the right track.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
ISTANBUL -- Turkey, in what is being called neo-Ottomanism, is attempting to reconnect with the Muslim world, something Istanbul has largely avoided since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century.
The Kansas City Star this week is running a series of editorial suggesting an exit plan that will lead to peace and prosperity in Iraq and the region. For a look at the entire package, go to this link. Let us know if you think our exit plan is on the right track.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
BAGHDAD |
By Matt Schofield, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Human rights advocates believe justice demands that the United States release a new collection of as many as 2,000 photos depicting detainee treatment — and allegedly mistreatment — by the military.
George Harris KC Star Reader Advisory Panel 2008
President George Bush in 2003 (before the invasion of Iraq) stated, “War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, “I was just following orders.””
At least 75 Iraqis died in a double suicide bombing Friday in Baghdad. This follows a day in which 83 died in similar attacks around Iraq. Bombings, even in these times of improved security, are hardly shocking news from this war-torn place.
But they offer insight beyond the routine: They also come just after the arrest of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the head of al-Qaida in Iraq.
George Harris KC Star Reader Advisory Panel 2008
The Senate Intelligence Committee today released a narrative time line of the Bush administration’s interaction with the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department lawyers regarding controversial interrogation techniques. (http://intelligence.senate.gov/)
George Harris KC Star Reader Advisory Panel 2008
Post Hoc News Service
In a frank and wide ranging interview today with Post Hoc News Service reporter Sam Hill and former vice-president Dick Cheney discussed the recently released torture memos and pirates.
By Matthew Schofield, Star correspondent
BAGHDAD _ It began as a quiet night here.
Not quiet in the sense that the constant thumping of the mini-van sized generators outside my window had ceased. They hadn't.
And not quiet in the sense that we weren't surrounded by gunfire. We were, but to be fair it was celebratory, a nearby wedding.
This Feb. 17, 2008, cartoon by Lee Judge is the first-place winner of the 2009 John Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition presented by Columbia College Chicago.
By Matt Schofield, Kansas City Star columnist
BAGHDAD | One set of men with guns checked our trunk for bombs or kidnap victims. None of us in the car blinked. A few minutes later, another set of men with guns rolled a mirror around the car, making sure we weren’t carrying a “sticky bomb,” a magnetic bomb attached to the carriage.
BAGHDAD | There will be no celebrations here this week for the sixth anniversary of the United States invasion of Iraq.
The positive might be that there don’t appear to be any large-scale protests about continued American presence either. In the capital, people are very involved in trying to rebuild their lives.
By Matt Schofield, Kansas City Star columnist
BAGHDAD | Iraqis call it “the dust.”
They say things such as “There will be dust tomorrow.” And “The dust is just now starting to get bad.” And even “When the light is just right, the dust can be quite beautiful.”
By Matt Schofield, Kansas City Star
BAGHDAD, Feb. 26 | The blast woke me. The gunfire kept me company as I got dressed.
Just another morning in Baghdad. Though these days it’s not, really.
But it gets at the question that everyone keeps asking — my friends, my wife, my editors, even the Iraqis I work with here: How is Baghdad these days?
At the Missouri RepGeorge Harris KC Star Reader Advisory Panel 2008
The play started well enough.
The set looked unfinished, covered with tarps. A bare light bulb hung down in center stage. Then drummers broke the silence, and men and women in flowing garb leaped onto the stage to pull the wraps off platforms and rugs that were next unrolled to create a colorful collage. Lanterns descended, and one was assembled around the bare light bulb to finish fixing the mood.
George Harris KC Star Reader Advisory Panel 2008
If Guantanamo detainees have no rights, why not just kill them?
President Obama today fulfilled a campaign promise to begin closing Guantanamo, and Senator Kit Bond called the decision irresponsible without a plan to relocate them.
George Harris, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel 2008
Kansas City Star columnist Tom McClanahan asserts (by quoting a blog from another source) that President-elect Barack Obama has adopted the Bush administration policy in Iraq because Vice-President-elect Joe Biden has provided assurances to Iraq that agreements with Iraq will be maintained.
George Harris KC Star Reader Advisory Panel 2008
The Pentagon has decided not to award the Purple Heart to veterans who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The New York Times reported that a Pentagon advisory group decided against giving the award for PTSD because the condition is not caused intentionally by the enemy and because it is difficult to diagnose and quantify.
While violence in Iraq has diminished to levels comparable to early 2004, violence in Afghanistan has intensified.
By E. Thomas McClanahan, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
The independent correspondent Michael Yon was in Baghdad late last week. He couldn’t believe the change.
“The war is over and we won,” he told Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who blogs at instapundit.com.
By E. Thomas McClanahan, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist
Bob Woodward’s latest book, The War Within, chronicles the dissension inside the Bush administration as the war in Iraq careens toward chaos.
The course of the war in Iraq has been a long series of missteps and miscalculations that, at its worst moments, pointed toward chaos.
But when things improve, it’s important to take note. The latest cause for hope is a report that anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr plans to disarm his militia — a force known as the Mahdi Army — and turn it into a social-service organization.
