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:

US war resister Corey Glass, an Iraq war veteran who served with the National Guard, won a stay of removal from a Canadian federal court July 9. Glass, who came to Canada in 2006, was scheduled to be deported the next day. He will remain in Canada while the court reviews and decides on his applications for leave and judicial review. A federal court also ordered the Immigration and Refugee Board to reconsider the failed refugee claim of Joshua Key, who came to Canada in March 2005, after deserting during a two-week break from serving in Iraq.

Yet more evidence (as if we needed any) that the media are making us stupid. From a June 23 New York Times story entitled, "Correspondents Say Networks Put Wars on the Back Burner":

What a telling medley of articles in the New York Times June 19. First this, from the front page:

Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back
BAGHDAD — Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

From the Iraq Freedom Congress, June 16:

On the US-Iraqi Treaty
The US administration plans to tie Iraq to a treaty that will guarantee a US military presence and political interference with absolute control of the wealth and resources of Iraq.

A car bombing that killed 63 June 17 at a bus-stop in Baghdad's predominantly Shi'ite Hurriya area may have been carried out by a militant trying to incite Shi'ite violence against Sunnis, the US military said. Lt. Col. Steve Stover said, "Our intelligence, corroborated through multiple sources, is this atrocity was committed" by Haydar Mehdi Khadum al-Fawadi, leader of an Iranian-backed militant cell. "We believe he ordered the attack to incite Shia violence against Sunnis," he said, adding that al-Fawadi is a "murderous thug." (CNN, June 18)