Iraq

"One of the biggest surprises for the Bush administration in postwar Iraq has been the rise of Shia religious power."



Oh really??!!



Wow, they must not have been reading blogs such as mine (there are many!) or listening to anything outside the big mainstream yes-nodders such as CNN or Fox. I fully expected this to happen: Robert Fisk and many respected journalists who know the region have been warning of nothing else before the US/UK invasion...



The Bush administration is trying to right this, they hired writer and scholar Noah Feldman (professor at the New York University School of Law) as an advisor. He wrote a book called "After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy", is a specialist in constitutional law and a student of Islam. I'll read the book and see what kind of thoughts he has on the region, the description and this review sounds interesting. One interesting point: Noah Feldman is an Orthodox Jew, I wonder how the Iraqi people will take to him being an important advisor to the Bush team.



Meanwhile, the new US leadership in Baghdad wants the population to disarm. Please give me a few minutes to stop laughing... of course the Arabs of Iraq will not volunteer their arms to the Americans! Like hell they will! Only from their cold dead fingers, to quote the NRA...



The women of Iraq, like the rest of the Arab world, are not spoken of in the news. That is such a shame! They are losing more of their freedoms every day. This was one of the few Arab countries where women had relative freedom. I fear those days are over now.