Thursday, October 16, 2003

Iraq War: Recent Articles

Here are references to a few recent articles related to the Iraq War. It's kind of lazy bloggging to do this, I know. One or two of these I'll probably have more to say about them later.

Truth from These Podia: A .pdf files of an important 56-page study on the "infomration war" portion of the Iraq War by retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner. People may remember him as one of the "three colonels" who appeared on the PBS Newshour as military analysts several times during the conventional phase of the Iraq War.

Bush & Co. Use the Orwell Sales Stragegy by James Pinkerton in Newsday: Looks at the current White House/Pentagon drive for good PR on what's happening in Iraq. In which we hear that it's really good news that our troops are being attacked. "Bring 'em on," as Bush said.

The Iraqi Shiites: On the history of America's would-be allies by Juan Cole, a specialist in Shi'a Islam. Long, informative article on the topic.

Iraq War has swollen ranks of al-Qaida: One of several news reports on the just-released annual Military Balance report of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. A reminder that part of the trade-off in the Iraq War was that to combat the allegedly immediate threat from Iraq, we had to incur the short-term risk of increasing anti-American terrorism.

The rise and fall of Ansar al-Islam: This small group was used as one piece of evidence that Saddam Hussein was supporting al-Qaeda. A fairly long descriptive piece from the Christian Science Monitor, which remains one of the best US press sources for international news.

Ground Truth: Conditions, Contrasts and Morale: Index page to a series in the (government-funded) armed forces paper Stars and Stripes about troops in Iraq. While I don't view Stars and Stripes as an independent paper, it is by no means just a propaganda outlet, either.

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