It turns out that the Iraqi leadership essentially backed the Syrian side of the divide over their repressive attacks on their own people. It’s credible to suggest that Iran played a role in Iraq’s decision-making.

The Iraqi government is most certainly not unified on this point. The Parliament has denounced the violence in Syria, particularly the Kurdish and Sunni factions. But Maliki appears firmly in the Syrian camp, in contrast to his government’s anger at Bahrain when the Sunni minority brutalized a Shiite majority. So the sectarian lens has come to govern Iraq’s positions in the region.

Memorial Day is often a time to reflect on the soldiers who die in war. Why not also the civilians? Why not these five girls, seven boys and two women killed in their sleep from an object dropped on them at 10,000 feet, without warning? Don’t they deserve a memorial? Don’t their families and countrymen deserve to be free of a life in fear that they could be the next target of a poorly aimed bomb from the sky?

Yet another bomb dropped on a Head of State we don’t like

“A rebel spokesman in Benghazi said Sirte was now in the hands of rebel forces – but there has been no independent confirmation of the claim, and international journalists inside the city suggested it was still in government hands on Monday.”

When the mission in Libya began, the President was clear that it would be measured in days and not weeks. Well, NATO has told us how many days. Apparently, about 90.

As French jets continue to run sorties against Libyan targets, they claim that Qatar will soon deploy four planes into the region. The contention from the coalition enforcing UN resolution 1973 is that they have Arab League buy-in on the operation, and the inclusion of Qatar in the coalition would seem to confirm it. But the Arab League has actually criticized the effort after only one day.

Anytime someone in Washington puts the brakes on empire, it’s worth noting

Qaddafi makes a last desperate attempt to keep power…naturally this involved bombing his citizens.

The never dying chorus of old reprobates demands more and more awesome wars.

What is important to understand about Reuel Marc Gerecht’s screed and the campaign which encompasses it is that Gerecht and the Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government supports an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran.