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The bizarre story behind the construction of Boston's most controversial building

BAGHDAD – Iraq's largest Sunni party said Saturday that it has suspended official contacts with American military personnel and civilians after the killing of a man near Fallujah. The Iraqi Islamic Party accused the raid of having a "hidden political motive" in an indication of rising tensions in Anbar province ahead of provincial elections, due to be held by the end of January. The U.S. military said U.S.-backed Iraqi soldiers arrested a wanted insurgent leader suspected of training roadside bomb cells in an operation Friday that killed an armed man who opened fire on the troops. The IIP alleged that...

As violence in Iraq recedes, neighboring states are pondering how to deal with an unwieldy country that could re-emerge as a key player along with Saudi Arabia and Iran in one of the world's most strategic regions. The role of regional power broker may seem far-fetched for Iraq _ a devastated land best known for car bombs, death squads and suicide attackers. Still, countries of the Middle East cannot ignore the potential role of a resurgent Iraq, a nation of 28 million people, bordering Iran to the east, Syria and Jordan to the west and sitting on one of the...

Democracy: Lawmakers in Iraq reached a crucial milestone this week by approving provincial elections. This is more evidence for the "reconciliation" that Barack Obama claims not to see.Good news is no news these days, especially when it comes from Iraq. So you might have missed the story about the political breakthrough in the Iraqi parliament, which approved legislation to hold a new round of provincial elections early next year. The bill — which awaits approval by a three-person presidential council — is important because it sets up the first provincial vote in four years and because the voting promises to...

Police in Iraq say at least one person has been killed in a truck bomb attack on the home of a Sunni tribal leader known for opposing al-Qaeda extremists. The attack in al-Qaiyara, south of Mosul, left about 20 people injured, including the presumed target, Sheikh Abdul Razaq al-Waqaa. Several houses were destroyed in the powerful blast. In other violence blamed on Sunni militants, at least six were killed in the eastern province of Diyala. The dead included a member of a US-backed Sunni militia who was manning a checkpoint. Troops launched an offensive to re-establish control over the Diyala...

Iran, Friend of the Sunni Terrorists (Surprise!) [Michael Ledeen] I guess I've been saying and writing this for more than seven years, but it's always nice to have support, especially when, as in this case, it comes from the general manager of al Arabiya TV, and a columnist in several publications in the Middle East. That is to say, not a neocon. Abdul Rahman al-Rashed states quite categorically: ...Iran, an extremist theocratic Shiite regime with Ahmadinejad at its helm, is orchestrating and funding the activities of extremist Sunnis in the region. The paradox is most striking in the case of...

For two and a half days, Hussein al-Haj Obaid lay on the floor of a darkened warehouse in west Beirut, blindfolded and terrified. Militiamen loyal to Hezbollah had kidnapped him at a checkpoint after killing his nephew right in front of him. Throughout those awful days, as his kidnappers kicked and punched him, applied electrical shocks to his genitals.... ******************* Those feelings are being echoed throughout Lebanon. After almost a week of street battles that left scores dead and threatened to push the country into open war, long-simmering Sunni-Shiite tensions here have sharply worsened, in an ominous echo of the...

Al-Qaeda has reportedly called on its operatives to go to Lebanon and defend what it called the Sunni community of the country. The report came while some Arab media outlets described the current clashes in Lebanon as a fight between Sunni and Shia communities. In an interviews with Sunni clerics with links to Saad Hariri's pro-government bloc, Al-Arabiya TV network described the ongoing clashes as a sectarian strife. Sheikh Ali al-Jozo, Mufti of the Jebel region, who is well known for his harsh stance against Hezbollah told the TV network that the clashes are a battle between Lebanon's Shia and...

A crackdown on leading clerics and politicians from Kuwait's Shiite minority has stoked sectarian tensions in the oil-rich Gulf state, raising questions about its aim and timing, analysts say. Claims that Shiite activists who took part in a controversial rally in February are seeking to topple the regime "amount to a sectarian campaign by the security agencies ... against prominent figures of the Shiite community," a group of leading Shiite clerics said in a statement. "If you're a Shiite in Kuwait, you have to swear five times a day after each prayer that you hate Iran and love Israel" in...

Was Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King on the mark last week when he asserted Islamic terrorists would rejoice if Sen. Barack Obama becomes the next U.S. president? As a journalist and author who has conducted dozens of on-the-record interviews with Muslim terrorists, including with some of the most notorious Palestinian terror leaders, and who has documented many of those interviews in a recently released, 210-page book, "Schmoozing with Terrorists," I can answer the above question with a resounding "yes." Terrorists worldwide would indeed be emboldened by an Obama election victory not so much because of the senator's middle name –...

I had to look up the word "conniption." I wasn't sure how to spell it, but I'm sure that the likes of Code Pink, MoveOn, and other far left anti-war groups had a collective conniption fit last week. One of their poster boys, John Murtha, quit toeing their line. Surely what followed were the same fits of rage I've seen them have before. In September at a Washington D.C. rally as Senator Joe Lieberman began to address a group of pro-mission vets and Gold Star Families, several members of the anti-war groups charged toward the stage with seemingly unrestricted fury,...

Question: If success in Iraq isn't reported, does that mean it's not news? Last month saw the trickle of positive news from Iraq turn into a flood. Our troops, our allies and the people of Iraq are winning the war against fanatical jihadists murderers. By any measure. But curiously, the American media, the same media that gave 24/7 coverage of Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and the "quagmire" in Iraq, has suddenly gone silent. Here's a sampling of the astonishing good news out of Iraq in just this last week. News our American media either overlooked or relegated to a couple paragraphs...

BAGHDAD, Nov 27 (KUNA) -- Leading Shiite cleric in Iraq Ali Sistani Tuesday banned the killing of Iraqis, particularly the Sunnis, and urged the Shiites to protect their brother Sunnis. Sistani bans the Iraqi blood in general the blood of Sunnis in particular. His announcement came during a meeting with a delegation from Sunni clerics from southern and northern Iraq. The clerics are visiting Najaf to participate in the first national conference for Ulemaa of Shiites and Sunnis. Sistani called on the Shiites to protect their Sunni brothers, according to Sheikh Khaled Al-Mulla, head of the authority of Ulemaa of...

Nearly 6,000 Sunni Arab residents joined a security pact with American forces Wednesday in what U.S. officers described as a critical step in plugging the remaining escape routes for extremists flushed from former strongholds.The new alliance — called the single largest single volunteer mobilization since the war began — covers the "last gateway" for groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq seeking new havens in northern Iraq, U.S. military officials said.U.S. commanders have tried to build a ring around insurgents who fled military offensives launched earlier this year in the western Anbar province and later into Baghdad and surrounding areas. In...

Egypt: Activists Detained for Advocating for Shi`a Minority Human Rights Watch (press release) - Oct 6, 2007 The two men were arrested after also criticizing the prevalence of torture in Egyptian prisons. The charges equate defending Shi`ism with an attack on Islam ...http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/10/06/egypt17042.htm

As the Maliki government continues its slow pace towards legislative reform, the US has increased its efforts to bring reconciliation to Iraq, and has met with some quiet but significant success. Evolving from the surge strategy and counterinsurgency tactics of General David Petraeus, the Sunnis and Shi'ites have begun reaching out to each other as the violence continues to ebb: Aboard the 70-mile flight from Baghdad to Ramadi was a top Pentagon envoy and a leader of Iraq's biggest Shiite political party. They were paying a visit to Sunni sheiks who have joined the U.S. battle against extremists. The meeting...

KALSU, Iraq – The government of Musayyib hosted a celebration of security and economic growth at the city’s police station Oct. 8. In a move to help reduce sectarian violence in North Babil, leaders from the predominately Shia city of Musayyib came together with sheiks and representatives of the largely Sunni region of Jurf As Sukhr to share their optimism for the growth and development of the entire area. With Sunni extremists influence such from the north and west, and rogue Shia militias from the south, the region surrounding Musayyib and Jurf has been a sectarian fault line for years....

President Bush has endorsed General David Petraeus's recommendation to begin withdrawing 30,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by next summer. Yet the drawdown would only restore troop levels to where they were before the surge began in January 2007. In the final months of 2006, debate in Washington centered on how fast a reduction from pre-surge levels could occur. The Iraq Study Group recommended that approximately half of the 130,000 troops then in Iraq be withdrawn by early 2008. In marked contrast to that and similar proposals, President Bush is now endorsing a step that would mean a return to the...

History, as Marx famously said (by way of paraphrasing Hegel), repeats itself -- "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." A catchy concept, to say the least. And while there's definitely something to it, it's also true that sometimes history does not repeat itself. Take American wars in Japan, the Koreas, Vietnam and Iraq. President Bush, addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, recently made a case -- a flawed case -- for a kind of core continuity linking these disparate conflicts. It's not that he didn't admit there are many differences among them ("There are many differences" among...

The tempting thought that it is now safe to begin withdrawing from Iraq is being dangled in front of the American people this summer. Maybe if the United States and our allies pull out, or pull over, or pull to the side, the Shiite and Sunni moderates — facing destruction — will summon the ability to defeat al-Qaida and Iran's Shiite surrogates and go on to construct a solid peace. It is more likely, however, that bloodshed of historic proportions will flow. Not hundreds of deaths a week, as now, but hundreds of thousands in a few months, and the...