Democratic committee chair compares US to Iran, claims both are 'killing protesters'













My Flemish giant bunny loved chomping on carrots, computer cables and my skirting board – and being walked on a leash. When I suffered a medical emergency, she jumped into action
The first time I saw a Flemish giant rabbit was at TruckFest in Peterborough in 2002. Among a sprawling maze of stalls at the East of England showground, I was led into a tent filled with the biggest rabbits I’d ever laid eyes on. I’d never heard of Flemish giants before, but I knew then that I needed one. I couldn’t have predicted in that moment that one of these beautiful creatures might save my life.
Dory was a baby when I met her, but even as a bunny she was already bigger than most normal-sized rabbits. We brought her home in a cat carrier, but she soon outgrew it. By the time she was fully grown, she weighed nearly 10kg, and I was walking her on a leash like a dog.
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© Photograph: Courtesy of Simon Steggall

© Photograph: Courtesy of Simon Steggall

© Photograph: Courtesy of Simon Steggall
As it did in 2003, the US is underestimating the potential for instability as Trump resurrects one of the Iraq war’s biggest myths
“Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!” Paul Bremer, the US proconsul in Iraq, famously declared at a press conference in Baghdad on 14 December 2003, a day after US troops had captured Saddam Hussein. Iraqis in the audience broke out in cheers, leapt up from their seats and pumped their fists in the air – many had waited decades for that moment. “This is a great day in Iraq’s history,” Bremer said, adding: “The tyrant is a prisoner.”
I was in the audience that day in Baghdad, covering the Iraq invasion’s aftermath as a correspondent for a US newspaper. It quickly became clear that Bremer and other jubilant US officials would use the occasion – US soldiers dragged the disheveled former Iraqi dictator out of a hole in the ground where he had been hiding near his home town – to declare that America’s war had reached a decisive turn. Despite a growing insurgency led by ex-members of the Iraqi security forces, US officials in Baghdad and Washington projected confidence that victory was in sight now that Saddam was locked up and headed for the gallows.
Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University
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© Photograph: Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images
Why should he, an eight-month-old boy, have more pockets on his clothes than I do?
There’s much about becoming a new mother that could be filed under “maddening”. The phrase “sleep when the baby sleeps”. The way people stop asking how you are, instead only asking after the baby. The sheer volume of unsolicited advice – some barbed, some so painfully obvious it’s borderline offensive, and all of it totally inescapable. (I suppose I could try living on a desert island, though no doubt someone would send a plane to skywrite: “They’re probably just hungry!”)
But it was while doing the laundry last week that I found something truly unhinged. I was sorting my infant son’s clothes from mine when I noticed that he had more pockets on his clothes than I did. What exactly does an eight-month-old need with a tiny pocket? Is he supposed to keep something in there? A dummy? Bits of rice cake? All the sleep he’s stolen from me (in which case he’d need a bigger pocket)?
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© Photograph: Posed by model; Tetra Images, LLC/Alamy

© Photograph: Posed by model; Tetra Images, LLC/Alamy

© Photograph: Posed by model; Tetra Images, LLC/Alamy





















