U.S. diplomats will begin moving into the mammoth new, heavily fortified embassy in Baghdad next month after long delays in the $736 million project — and not a moment too soon.
….S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said Friday that construction is complete at the Vatican-sized compound
…The new embassy will be the largest U.S. diplomatic mission […]

“The US military bases and the presence of around 150,000 American soldiers in Iraq have made the United States one of the neighbouring states in the region.” - Prince Hassan, in a seminar on “Armament and Security in the Middle East” on Tuesday. [source]
The Prince also said he said he doesn’t expect US troops to […]

Salah Malkawi/Getty Image
Mr. McCain said at a news conference in Amman that he continued to be concerned about Iranians “taking Al Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.” Asked about that statement, Mr. McCain said: “Well, it’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into […]

Number of souls that have been freed:
- 82,000 and 89,000 - Iraq Body Count
- 151,000 - Iraqi government & the World Health Organization (Mar.03 - Jun.06)
- 654,865 - British medical journal The Lancet (March 2003 and July 2006)
- 1,189,173 - Opinion Research Business (as of 2008)
Take your pick.
Then read Fisk:
We have dispatched our armies […]

Here is a selection of my delicious picks: a few interesting articles/links from across the Net.
- Robert Fisk recalls his first meeting with assassinated Hizballah commander, Imad Mougnieh, in 1991.
- Arab information ministers have met in Cairo to endorse an Arab League charter, which allows host countries to annul or suspend the licence of any […]

The snow is on its way out so I thought I’d shift gears here on the Black Iris. Transitioning back to reality isn’t easy when snow is still the talk of the town, so here’s a selection of my delicious picks these past few days you might find interesting. Only the first two are about […]

This was an interesting article in today’s Jordan Times outlining the Jordan-Iraqi border check procedures that include radiation scans:
The most common products containing radioactive elements that enter the border are agricultural goods, as years of warfare have contaminated Iraqi soil. Border officials had to deny entry to Iraqi trucks carrying dates, as their radiation levels […]

Here’s a collection of some of my delicious links I’ve been looking at these past few days:
- “Ahmadinejad” a film by Oliver Stone: Finally, a movie that will bring together America and Iran’s far right hatred of Oliver Stone.
- Young chimp beats college students: And these were Japanese college students!
- The 50 Richest Arabs: […]

A few of the stories I found interesting these past few days:
- UnIslamic Ringtones: A top Islamic body in Saudi Arabia has hosted a stormy debate on controversial issues, including the use of Koranic verses as mobile phone ringtones, newspapers reported Monday. “The scholars were divided on the use of verses from the Koran […]

It’s strange.
The whole world marks 9/11 like an international day of tragedy.
For me, every year, 9/11 has come to mean a feeling of sympathy for the 3,000 innocent lives that were lost on that day.
But as the years pass on, that feeling has been eroded, if not almost entirely replaced, with the overwhelming sympathy […]

nuff said…
AMMAN — Oil-parched Jordan said Thursday it was due to take delivery, within days, of much-delayed supplies of Iraqi crude oil at preferential rates under a year-old agreement with Baghdad.
Jordanian tanker trucks have headed to the border to await the crude that is expected to reach the Zarqa refinery in northeast Jordan […]

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So it’s becoming a bigger story now on the blogosphere, Iraqis in a prison at the Queen Alia Airport, where they are interrogated for hours, whipped by the evil Jordanians, then put in a cage with lions and those who are lucky enough to survive the ordeal are sent back to Iraq to die. It […]

The Soviets built the Berlin wall to try and keep East Berliners from leaving.
Then the Israeli’s built the Seperation wall, to keep suicide bombers out while making a land grab.
Then the American’s started building walls to surround Sunni communities in Baghdad.
What’s with the world and walls? I thought the metaphor was “building bridges” not walls? […]

“The street was transformed into a swimming pool of blood.” - Ahmed Hameed, a shopkeeper in Shia-dominated Sadriya where 170 over 200 Iraqis died after a powerful bomb exploded in the middle of a market full of shopkeepers and shoppers. On the same day a bomb went off in Sadr City killing 35, in Karadda […]

I was kind of shocked and saddened to hear about the shooting in Virginia Tech that has dominated western media in the past 48 hours, especially the Internet. I tend to pay close attention to how such incidents unravel in the media and the public eye. The number 30 was splashed across home pages of […]