Morning Brief, Monday, June 5
As if you need any more proof that life in Baghdad is a terrifying ordeal, 20 people are executed at a fake checkpoint just outside the city, and gunmen wearing special security forces uniforms kidnap 50 on a busy Baghdad street. Maliki cancels votes on the crucial defense and interior ministers in favor of more negotiation. Iran flexes ...
As if you need any more proof that life in Baghdad is a terrifying ordeal, 20 people are executed at a fake checkpoint just outside the city, and gunmen wearing special security forces uniforms kidnap 50 on a busy Baghdad street. Maliki cancels votes on the crucial defense and interior ministers in favor of more negotiation.
As if you need any more proof that life in Baghdad is a terrifying ordeal, 20 people are executed at a fake checkpoint just outside the city, and gunmen wearing special security forces uniforms kidnap 50 on a busy Baghdad street. Maliki cancels votes on the crucial defense and interior ministers in favor of more negotiation.
Iran flexes its oil muscle, and oil prices jump accordingly. Condi isn't impressed. But perhaps it's because the US and Iran are coming at the prospect of talks with completely different expectations? Take it away, Jackson Diehl:
…U.S.-Iranian talks, though now formally endorsed by both sides, are more likely than not to fail, if they happen at all. That's because Iran and the United States approach the option of dialogue from opposite sides of the spectrum. Iran seeks a strategic encounter, a historic moment of accommodation between two powers. The United States offers pragmatic bargaining over single issues, such as the nuclear program and Iraq….
Last week Rice seemed to go out of her way to rule out the kind of engagement Tehran wants. "Let's remember what is not happening here," she said at a press conference. "This is not a bilateral negotiation between the United States and Iran on the whole host of issues that would lead to broader relations between Iran and the United States. . . . This is not a grand bargain."
Peru's ex-president carries the day, and Bolivia starts to distribute land to indigenous peasants. In Chile, 700,000 high schoolers have walked out of class demanding education reforms.
Rumsfeld visits Hanoi, but dismisses speculation the US is after more bases in the region. The FT likes the new, chastened Rummy of the last several weeks.
Do not miss Julian Barnes in the LA Times today: Since the US military has found itself in so much hot water over detainee abuse, rather than fix the problem, they're going to simply omit a ban on degrading treatment in future policies.
It's been 25 years since Israel took out Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. Islamist militias now run Mogadishu. Hamas refuses to get behind a border referendum. Anti-Muslim backlash in Canada after weekend terror arrests. Han Chinese flock to the country's West, but the area's ethnic Uighurs are left out of the economic boom. It's never been a better time to be corporate America.
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