(Niall )Ferguson sees turmoil possibly spreading through the Middle East as religious and ethnic groups finally sort themselves out, almost a century after Turkey’s vast Ottoman Empire broke apart at World War I’s end and the British and French rearranged the pieces to suit their interests.

In his classic study of those times, “A Peace to End All Peace,” Boston University’s Fromkin quoted an American missionary who warned the British in Baghdad against tying Arab and Kurdish provinces, Sunni and Shiite provinces together: “You are flying in the face of four millenniums of history if you try to draw a line around Iraq and call it a political entity!”

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The bombings, in a crowded market, were among the most deadly attacks since last fall’s bombings in Sadr City killing 144 people.

From NYTimes.com.

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Coalition forces have recently captured a documents in an unsurgent safehouse that indicate plans to attack inside the United States using a simlilar strategy to gain entry to the country that the 911 attackers used - student visas.

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ABC has just released a story saying that the surge in troop numbers that Bush is expected is already underway.

ABC News has learned that the “surge” Bush is expected to announce in a prime time speech tonight has already begun. Ninety advance troops from the 82nd Airborne Division arrived in Baghdad Wednesday.

An additional battalion of roughly 800 troops from the same division are expected to arrive in Baghdad Thursday. Eighty percent of the sectarian violence occurs within a 30-mile radius of Baghdad, so that is where most of the additional troops will be concentrated.

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