...Robert J. Pranger Robert Olson: The Goat and the Butcher: Nationalism and State Formation in Kurdistan-Iraq since the Iraqi War . Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 2005. 278 pages. ISBN 1-56859-186-1. $35.00. Reviewed by Robert J. Pranger. Robert J. Pranger is a private consultant with...

...Bernard Reich Operation Iraqi Freedom and the New Middle East Bernard Reich The war in Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom) and the termination of Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical regime have had wide-ranging effects worldwide, but nowhere have...

... by the Iraqi leadership to defend against threats to its incumbency. In recent years, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has increasingly pursued engagement with Iranian representatives in an effort to counter domestic challenges and consolidate state resources. However, while the present Iraqi elite has...

... Iraqi regime forces, rebel groups, Kurdish militants, and US-led coalition air strikes. The essay’s concluding observations analyze the parallels and differences between the Armed Islamic Group’s campaign in Algeria in the 1990s and ISIS’s position in Iraq and Syria in 2015. Anthony N. Celso is...

... difficulties they encountered and were slow to adjust to realities. It was a Herculean task to put the war-torn coun- try back together and to capture the disposed leader, who went into hiding before Baghdad fell and called for armed resistance against the American occupation. Many Iraqis had...

... golden opportunity to bypass the United Nations Security Council? Few Americans expected that Turkey would rebuff a U.S. request to use its territory to attack Iraq, and especially that it would reject an appeal delivered by Ankara’s best friend in Washington, Paul Wolfowitz. Initial Iraqi resistance...

... country by the end of 2011. That is also the wish of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s government and a majority of the Iraqi people. The first step in that process was the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq’s cities (with the exception of Mosul, where the anti- government insurgency remains potent...

... local surrogates who are ideologically com- patible with the Bush administration. The role the Pentagon had hoped would be played in the post-Saddam era by Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi exile with neoconservative associations, is an example. The new form of nation building, however, relies primarily on...

... incorpo- rating militias, who are not cooperating in the development of a pluralistic democracy in Baghdad. Iran is also allegedly making more difficult the establishment of security inside Iraq through its support of insurgents who are attacking US and multinational troops as well as Iraqi...

... to prevent further disruptions in Middle Eastern oil production and transporta- tion overseas; the closing of the Suez Canal, along with Syrian attacks on the Iraqi Petroleum Company’s (IPC) pipelines, had caused chaos and uncer- tainty in the international oil market and very nearly...

... Iraqis to celebrate and dance in the streets. It meant that they no longer had to fear that the dictator who had brutalized them for more than three decades would return to oppress them again. And President Bush received a nice holiday gift of a boost in his approval rating to over 60 percent as well...

... its ter- ritories as a stable and reliable source of income. This strategic vision was clear from the very start, when (initially) ISIS and later the IS began taking control of parts of Iraq and Syria and consequently gaining access to several Syrian and Iraqi oil deposits and gas fields...

... Americans. Although the Iran-Iraq War ended on an indeterminate note, by 1990 the Iraqi leader had taken an apparent lack of U.S. concern about his irredentism as license to seize Kuwait in a bold pre- emptive move. Yet, along with the British, the United States had adamantly opposed past Iraqi claims...

... Saudi Arabia and Iraq have been characterized by mutual hostility and suspicion. Originally, relations were shaped by the rivalry between the Al Saud and the Hashemite ruling families in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, respectively. This rivalry continued until officers in the Iraqi army carried out a...

... southern Iraq. Attempts by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the Clinton administration to orchestrate Kurdish opposition as a counter to Saddam’s rule, and to promote a coup d’état from within the Iraqi military, were failures. Whether the failures were preordained by inad- equate policy or...

... happens to be in vogue, have managed to craft a situation that can be described only as a dis- aster for everyone involved—with the possible exception of Saddam. Nei- ther Iraqis nor Americans, nor anyone else who matters, have benefited in any way from...

.... Russia in Search of a New Foreign Policy Strategy The numerous factors that directly influence the formation of Russian for- eign policy all played a role during the Iraqi crisis. First, in many ways the Nikolai Zlobin is director of Russian and Asian studies at the Center for Defense Information in...

... told we had stopped looking for those elusive weapons of mass destruction, the adminis- tration seems to have evolved the line that we had not found them “yet We and Iraqi friends orchestrated and held elections in the midst of a virulent insurgency with a most uncertain outcome in the months...

... Saddam Hussein’s regime was crushed, Iraqi military resistance would fade quickly. According to that sce- nario, American military commanders would transfer political power within weeks to an Iraqi transition government and begin to draw down U.S. forces from the 150,000 who waged the war to...

.... •  In summer 2002, the CIA’s European Division recruited Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri. It was a major intelligence coup, and Sabri agreed to work in place to answer questions posed to him by his CIA handlers. He stated, inter alia, that Iraq had had no connection with al Qaeda and...