Violence in Iraq continues to be at the lowest level since 2003. There were only 2 incidents reported in the country from April 22-28. Two people were kidnapped in southern Irbil and one of them, a Kurdish soldier, was executed by the Islamic State.
1919 War Min Churchill wrote PM George that British army was overstretched with new
additions like Mesopotamia
(Musings On Iraq Churchill In His Own Words On Mesopotamia/Iraq)
(Musings On Iraq review Churchill’s Folly, How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq)
(Musings On Iraq review Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied)
(Musings On Iraq review Supremacy And Oil, Iraq, Turkey, and the Anglo-American World Order, 1918-1930)
Leffler, Melvyn, Confronting Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq, New York: Oxford University Press, 2023
At the very end of Melvyn Leffler’s book he wrote that “It is important to get the story right in order to grapple earnestly with the dilemmas of statecraft.” He failed to accomplish that in his Confronting Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq. Leffler ended up agreeing with the White House that Iraq was a threat to the United States, that President Bush only wanted Iraq to change course using diplomacy, and Bush did not decide upon war until he publicly said so in March 2003. In the process the author completely missed how the debate over Iraq had changed during the 1990s from containment to regime change and war. The main cause of Leffler’s failure was his reliance upon Bush administration officials who were still trying to justify the war.
1920 San Remo Agreement created British Mandate in Iraq France agreed to give up Mosul vilayet in
return for oil concessions in Iraq
(Musings On Iraq How The Ottoman Province Of Mosul Became Part Of Iraq)
(Musings On Iraq interview with Princeton’s Sara Pursley on Sykes-Picot and creation of Iraq)
(Musings On Iraq review The Creation of Iraq 1914-1921)
(Musings On Iraq review Dictatorship, Imperialism & Chaos, Iraq since 1989)
(Musings On Iraq review An Analysis of Hanna Batatu’s The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq)
(Musings On Iraq review Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied)
(Musings On Iraq review Supremacy And Oil, Iraq, Turkey, and the Anglo-American World Order, 1918-1930)
(Musings On Iraq review The Chatham House Version and other Middle-Eastern Studies)
(Musings On Iraq review Enemy On The Euphrates, The Battle For Iraq 1914-1921)
(Musings On Iraq review When God Made Hell, The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921)
(Musings On Iraq review Iraq Since 1958, From Revolution To Dictatorship)
(Musings On Iraq review Iraq’s Democratic Moment)
1915 UK Gen Townshend ordered by Mesopotamia cmdr Gen Nixon to take Qurna and Amara
(Musings On Iraq review When God Made Hell, The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921)
Kelly, Lt Col David, (Ret), Hell In The Streets Of Husaybah, The April 2004 Fights Of 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines In Husaybah, Iraq, Philadelphia & Oxford: Casemate, 2022
Hell In The Streets Of Husaybah, The April 2004 Fight Of 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines In Husaybah, Iraq came out of the Marine Corps Oral History Program. Two officers went to Iraq and interviewed 190 Marines who took part in a battle with insurgents in April 2004 in Husaybah along the Syrian border in western Anbar province. The book provides the commentary of the author and firsthand accounts of the Marines. It gives details on one small battle early on in the war. It starts off interesting but then all the stories become repetitive as the major action only covered a few days.
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1919 France and England signed Long-Berenger oil deal France got 20% of Iraqi oil via Turkish
Petroleum Company
(Musings On Iraq review The Creation of Iraq 1914-1921)
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1914 US consul in Baghdad reported rumors spread that all Christians and Jews in city
would be massacred due to start of 2nd Balkans War Rumors started after newspaper asked Mufti and Shiite clergy what was duty of Muslims in war They said to protect Islam and raise money Said Christians were defiling Muslim women in Balkans
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1915 UK War Ministry committee heard from Adm Slade leading UK oil expert Said if Ottoman
Empire divided UK had to get Mosul vilayet because had oil
(Musings On Iraq review Enemy On The Euphrates, The Battle For Iraq 1914-1921)
Pollack, Kenneth, The Threatening Storm, The United States and Iraq: the crisis, the strategy, and the prospects after Saddam, New York: Random House, 2002
The Iraq War is blamed upon the Republicans but that ignores the fact that there were many Democrats who were also for regime change as well. Kenneth Pollak a former CIA analyst and member of the National Security Council was in that camp. He wrote The Threatening Storm, The United States and Iraq: the crisis, the strategy, and the prospects after Saddam arguing that Saddam Hussein was the greatest foreign threat to the United States and an invasion was the only solution.
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1915 Ottomans and tribesmen began probing attack upon British outpost in Shaiba, Basra to try to
expel UK forces from vilayet
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1915 New UK cmdr in Iraq Gen Nixon arrived Ordered to take all of Basra Secure Tigris to protect
Anglo-Persian Oil Company in Persia Plan for advance on Baghdad 1st step in escalating war from protecting oil concession to taking all of Mesopotamia
(Musings On Iraq review Enemy On The Euphrates, The Battle For Iraq 1914-1921)
(Musings On Iraq review Iraq In World War I, From Ottoman Rule to British Conquest)
(Musings On Iraq review When God Made Hell, The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921)
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1915 UK Gen Nixon ordered to prepare attack on Nasiriya and Amara to protect Basra vilayet and
Persian oil concession
(Musings On Iraq review Iraq In World War I, From Ottoman Rule to British Conquest)
(Musings On Iraq review When God Made Hell, The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921)
Musings On Iraq has recently been mentioned in several articles about the Islamic State. That includes “US strike kills ISIS leader in north-west Syria” by Mina Aldroubi in The National, “Why Daesh is still not a spent force despite facing terminal decline in Iraq” by Paul Iddon in Arab Weekly, and “Iraqi commandos kill 22 ISIS fighters in Anbar desert” by Sinan Mahmoud also in The National.
Whippy, Julian, Burning Horizon, British Veteran Accounts Of The Iraq War 2003, Oxford and Philadelphia: Casemate, 2023
Burning Horizon, British Veteran Accounts Of The Iraq War 2003 by Julian Whippy is about the experiences of British soldiers during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It mixes commentary by the author about the overall events before and during the war with long interviews with troops. Most military histories focus upon the generals and officers but this one is more about the regular soldier and what they saw and felt about serving in Iraq.
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1941 Regent of Iraq arrived at UK airbase at Habaniya Anbar after Golden Square officers tried to
arrest him after coup Regent tried and failed to organize resistance to coup in Basra Then fled to Jordan
(Musings On Iraq Iraq’s First Battle Of Fallujah 1941)
(Musings On Iraq interview with Prof Boich World War II In Iraq and Syria)
(Musings On Iraq review Persian Gulf Command, A History of the Second World War In Iran and Iraq)
(Musings On Iraq review Rashid Ali al-Gailani, The National Movement in Iraq 1939-1941)
(Musings On Iraq review The Role of the Military In Politics, A case study of Iraq to 1941)
(Musings On Iraq review Iraq Between the Two World Wars, The Militarist Origins of Tyranny)
1914 UK made 2 nd attack on Qurna, Basra forcing Ottomans to retreat Lost around 200 killed 130 taken prisoner UK los...