The first US war resister deported from Canada was sentenced to 15 months in prison Aug. 22 at a court martial hearing in Colorado. Pte. Robin Long, 25, of Boise, Idaho, was also given a dishonorable discharge after pleading guilty to charges of desertion. The sentence was the longest any convicted army deserter has received since the beginning of the current Iraq war, according to retired US Army Col. Ann Wright, a former diplomat who resigned from her post in protest at the war's outset. Wright testified against the legality of the Iraq war on Long's behalf. Of the thousands of soldiers sentenced for desertion or going AWOL, only former army sergeant Kevin Benderman received an equal term in 2005.

Turkish fighter planes again bombed PKK guerilla positions in northern Iraq Aug. 16, in what a military statement in Ankara called a "successful operation." The raid targeted a cave in the Avasin-Basyan region, which served as a base for a "large group" of PKK militants who were preparing for an attack across the border in Turkey, the statement said. Ankara claims there are more than 2,000 PKK fighters in northern Iraq. The Turkish government has a one-year parliamentary authorization for cross-border military action against the PKK, which expires in October. (Al-Arabiya, AFP, Aug. 17)

Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Jaber Fares Dhaher was killed and 17 people, mostly Iraqi police, were injured in a wave of bombings in Baghdad Aug. 18. The Sheikh was killed when insurgents attacked his car in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Zafaraniyah. His wife and daughter were also wounded. The previous night, a suicide bomber who blew himself up near Abu Hanifa mosque, one of Iraq's most prominent Sunni shrines, in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyah, killing at least 15 and wounding 30. The dead included Faruq al-Obeidi, a local leader of the Sons of Iraq, a US-backed force of former Sunni insurgents who have turned their weapons against al-Qaeda. (AFP, WP, Aug. 18)

A double suicide attack killed at least 19 Shi'ite pilgrims and wounded 75 in a town outside Iskandariya Aug. 14. Two female suicide bombers detonated their explosives vests amid the group of pilgrims headed for Karbala to commemorate the birth of the Twelfth Imam. In another incident, a roadside bomb killed at least two pilgrims and wounded seven more as they walked through Karrada, a central Baghdad's neighborhood, embarking on the pilgrimage. (AlJazeera, Aug. 14)

Kurdish PKK guerillas claimed responsibility for an Aug. 5 blast near Refahiye, in eastern Turkey's Erzincan province, that shut down the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. "Attacks on economic interests have a deterring effect... As long as the Turkish state insists on war, such acts will be naturally carried out," PKK commander Bahoz Erdal told the pro-rebel Firat news agency. The conduit is expected to remain shut for about 15 days. (AFP, Aug. 8)

Suicide bombers struck Shi'ite pilgrims in Baghdad and a Kurdish rally in Kirkuk July 28, killing at least 57 people and wounding nearly 300, police said. Three female bombers detonated their explosive vests in the middle of a group of pilgrims in Baghdad, moments after a roadside bomb attack. At least 32 were killed and wounded 102. In Kirkuk, 25 were killed and 185 wounded when a blast tore through a crowd of Kurds protesting against a draft provincial elections law. Authorities said the Kirkuk bomber was also a woman. (Gulf Daily News, July 29)

It is axiomatic that the closer Obama gets to the White House, the more beholden to oil interests and imperial designs he will become—and therefore the more equivocal his opposition to the Iraq occupation. Watch this process in action. Andrew Malcolm writes for the LA Times' Top of the Ticket blog, July 16:

In a piece entitled "Bush & Cheney Always Saw Iraq as a Sweetheart Oil Deal," Noam Chomsky writes that "US war planners want an obedient client state that will house major US military bases, right at the heart of the world's major energy reserves." (AlterNet, July 12) Chomsky references reports by Andrew Kramer in the New York Times last month that "Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq's Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq's largest fields." Since then, the soup has considerably thickened: