34 Squadron, RAF Regiment patrols around Basra on Dec. 17, 2007.
Creative Commons licensed photo courtesy of David Axe.
After climbing onto the coach to Aberdeen during one of the more fateful twists of my RAG jailbreak adventure, I found myself sitting next to an Egyptian journalist on his way to Glasgow to divorce his wife. Fortunately [...]
Filed under: iraq on February 16th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
…this guy would be dead by now. Of course, if Bush were Saddam, he’d never have tried his luck. But he knew his action would be interpreted as an act of political dissent — in a country where dissent is now allowed. He may serve a jail term, but it seems far more likely that [...]
Filed under: afghanistan, al qaeda, clarepoliticsnews, democracy, humanrights, ideas, iraq, jonathanbirch, society, uspolitics on December 15th, 2008 | No Comments »
Photograph courtesy of Army.mil
The 44th President of the United States will be a crisis president. But he won’t just have an economic disaster to deal with. He’ll also inherit twin military deployments in the region between Israel and India — an area we should perhaps think of as one massive region, one massive problem, but [...]
Filed under: afghanistan, barackobama, election2008, iraq, jonathanbirch, uspolitics on October 2nd, 2008 | No Comments »
Photograph courtesy of Flickr user *Hiro
Does the West cause Islamic extremism? Is it the war in Iraq what done it, or decades of support for Israel, or centuries of imperialism? In a trivial sense, yes. If we’d done things differently, the consequences would have played out differently. It’s easy to construct stories of how this [...]
Filed under: foreignpolicy, iraq, jonathanbirch, middleeast, ukpolitics on January 24th, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Photograph courtesy of the Soldier’s Media Center
Clare Politics is proud to announce that the second speaker for Lent Term 2008 will be Dr. Rosemary Hollis.
Dr. Hollis is Director of Research at Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) in London. She is a leading expert on foreign policy and security issues in the Middle [...]
Filed under: afghanistan, clarepoliticsnews, iran, iraq, middleeast on January 11th, 2008 | No Comments »
So, here’s the question of the day – should the Ministry of Defence allow Prince Harry to be deployed to Iraq? The key word here is ‘allow’ - he wants to go, and that’s admirable. But surely Harry isn’t naive enough to think that just because he wants to go to Iraq like an ordinary [...]
Filed under: defence, foreignpolicy, iraq on April 27th, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Picture the following. During a time of heightened tension in the Gulf, a U.S warship, USS Vincennes, falls into a skirmish with Iranian patrol boats over its incursion into Iranian waters. Shortly after the skirmish it sees an incoming jet on its radar and fires two missiles. It’s too late when it transpires that [...]
Filed under: foreignpolicy, history, iraq on April 8th, 2007 | No Comments »
Yesterday’s ‘Gonzo-meter’ was pointing squarely at a 82.5435% chance of departure, up 2.5% from Tuesday, and yet Gonzales is still hanging on. The ultra-conservative National Review says “Alberto Gonzales should resign”, and yet he plods on resolutely, head stuck firmly in the sand, convinced that one day he’ll wake up and discover the country’s finally [...]
Filed under: iraq, uspolitics on March 29th, 2007 | No Comments »
A curious silence has descended on Britain’s political news and blogging spheres in the aftermath of last week’s announcement that another 1,000 British troops were being sent to the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. The war zone is captured in the footage found on this link. The fatalities in this largely forgotten battle zone, within the [...]
Filed under: foreignpolicy, iraq on February 25th, 2007 | 17 Comments »
It’s every politician and journalist’s favourite phrase, it seems (googling ‘political blame game’ gave me “about 1,610,000″)…and also favourite occupation to indulge in, officially or not. Aside from the fact it’s a nice-sounding phrase (or was, until it became so clichéd it made me want to smash my TV to bits with a croquet mallet [...]
Filed under: election2008, iraq, uspolitics on February 24th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
