Interview with Abu Theeb

This will be very con­fus­ing for the Amer­i­cans, but this Abu-Theeb say he dis­like the Ba’ath party and don’t wel­come Al-Qaida in his vil­lage but he is resist­ing the occupation.

Another mas­ter­piece from ex-Blogger Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

We don’t need al-Qaida

“Every­one was fight­ing, men who under Sad­dam spent years as mil­i­tary desert­ers became zeal­ous fight­ers,” says Abu Theeb. “Some­thing like fire was inside us. We would go out to fight for days, leav­ing our fam­i­lies and wives behind.”

Many peo­ple were watch­ing this week’s event, how 2000 dead Amer­i­cans will affect the pub­lic opin­ion there or the bomb­ing of Merid­ian Hotel in Bagh­dad (too bad I won my first dance prize there in 1986).

I was try­ing to search for the moti­va­tion behind this attack and Iraqi gov­ern­ment expla­na­tion is unre­li­able source so I found The Time pub­lished a good story on the subject.

Bagh­dad Hotel Attack: The Real Targets

But sources inside the Iraqi insur­gency tell TIME that the real tar­get was a secu­rity firm based in the hotel.

OK, this is what I was fol­low­ing the whole week “

Elaph news­pa­per

Ankara closely fol­lows sit­u­a­tion in North­ern Iraq

Ankara was dis­turbed by Iraqi Kur­dish leader Mas­soud Barzani’s recep­tion this week at the White House. Sum­mon­ing US Embassy Charge d’Affaires Nancy McEl­downey to the For­eign Min­istry, Turk­ish diplo­mats con­veyed Turkey’s con­cern over the matter.

A very good edi­to­r­ial by Turk­ish Press:

The Name Of North­ern Iraq And Barzani’s Title

Observers with com­mon sense or real­is­tic views believe that Iraq will be swept up in a civil war like Lebanon, and then will be divided like Yugoslavia. We should get used to that possibility.

In that case, can Ankara’s insis­tence on not rec­og­niz­ing a coun­try like Kur­dis­tan find any sup­port­ers other than Syria and Iran?