Alternate Seat of TYR

Remember when we nixed the January 2007 Iranian weapons scare? We explained how pretty much any competent terrorists could build an EFP, and followed up with the revelation that the steel balls came from an Indian bike parts factory. Well, this made me smile.
Iraqi officials also have accused Iran of meddling in violence and had [...]

After not much happened for a while, charges have been filed against Viktor Bout in a US court.
The indictment charges Viktor Bout with four terrorism offenses, including conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to kill U.S. officers or employees, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile.
Prosecutors said [...]

If you can read you should read this if you read nothing else this decade. It’s all about how the Americans started torturing people, whose idea it was, how men like John Yoo came to provide the legal justifications, who was keen (the ideological core of the administration), who didn’t want to know (the [...]

King’s College London’s terribly smart and not at all sinister Insurgency Research Group have some relevant facts about a controversy between Daniel Davies and I. Recap: Dan apparently believes that it’s better to let jihadis advertise on the Internet, on the principle that they will attract lots of idiots, self-dramatising teens, and committee fetishists, who [...]

Az-zaman, via Cole reports that the Iraqi government “honoured” SCIRI…sorry…ISIC militiamen for their role in the Basra fighting, and that some 10,000 of them were officially signed up to the Government’s own forces (I thought they already were). The reason for this step is apparently that large numbers - thousands - of men in the [...]

The Times has been doing the best reporting from Iraq by far at the moment. Here’s some evidence.
Now, to substance. Note this:
“We have received a shipment of Strela antiaircraft rockets,” Abu Sajad boasted to a Sunday Times reporter.
“We intend to use them to prove to the world that the Mahdi Army will not allow Basra [...]

Well, it’s not as if we weren’t warned; the Iraqi government had been threatening to move against Fadhila in Umm Qasr, and there had been increasing tension between the Iraqi government and the Sadr movement going back to Christmas. Not so long ago, there were demonstrations in Sadr City against Sadr; they thought the movement [...]

Despite all the promises, the Government is still achieving nothing with regard to its Iraqi employees. Leave aside, for the moment, the considerable numbers who are being rejected. Even the accepted - in so far as this category means anything yet - are still in Iraq, still on the streets, and still in danger. “I [...]

I’m very glad to see that Abu Muqawama, Phil Carter, and Lt-Col. Bob Bateman have been quick to leap on the inevitable attempt to swiftboatise this story.
Especially as Abu, I thought, was showing worrying signs of going into the “good news the MSM is suppressing” mental death spiral and turning progressively into Blackfive With Books [...]

That’s what happens when an Antonov-12 runs right off the runway, engines churning, and hits a parked Boeing 727. But that isn’t the interesting bit.
The 727 was 9L-LEF; and what it was doing in Pointe Noire, Congo-Brazzaville, when it’s meant to be with Iraqi Airways is a very good question indeed. Like all the Iraqi [...]