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America is very close to succeeding in Iraq. The "near-strategic defeat" of al Qaeda in Iraq described by CIA Director Michael Hayden last month in the Washington Post has been followed by the victory of the Iraqi government's security forces over illegal Shiite militias, including Iranian-backed Special Groups. The enemies of Iraq and America now cling desperately to their last bastions, while the political process builds momentum. These tremendous gains remain fragile and could be lost to skillful enemy action, or errors in Baghdad or Washington. But where the U.S. was unequivocally losing in Iraq at the end of 2006,...

Nouri Kamal Al-Maliki, who became prime minister of Iraq in May 2006, was a compromise candidate. He was seen at the time as the weakest of the available candidates - a virtually unknown representative of the Islamic Al-Da'wa Party, at the time a junior partner in the predominantly Shi'ite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). The occupying power, the United States, favored him because of his reputation as "independent of Iran," as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalman Khalilzad put it.(1)  To the surprise - and perhaps consternation - of both his critics and his allies, Al-Maliki not only won the elections, but...

Very very sad: WHERE are the Americans?" Talk to Iraqis in Baghdad these days, and you'll likely hear the question. Of course, everyone knows where the Americans are physically. The 130,000 US troops cantoned in a diminishing number of barracks outside the cities make their presence felt on occasion. The thousands of civilian Americans who are helping build a new Iraq are also easy to spot. The question refers to the United States' fast-fading political profile. Those who deem Iraq as the biggest US foreign-policy success in decades are baffled by Washington's determined efforts to deny that reality -- indeed,...

A multi-billion dollar mystery is unfolding in Iraq, and it may reach to the highest levels of the Iraqi government. It involves what the New York Times calls an "extremist Shiite group" that has now reconciled with Prime Minister Maliki and his regime. The group is responsible for the kidnapping and murder of five British contractors who, according to the Guardian, were installing a sophisticated financial tracking system in Iraq's ministry of finance in 2007. The story so far: Today, the Times reports: "An extremist Shiite group that has boasted of killing five American soldiers and of kidnapping five British...

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said for the first time Thursday that Iraq may ask U.S. troops to stay in his country beyond a previously agreed 2011 deadline for withdrawal. While Iraqi and American military figures have spoken privately about a longer-term presence in part to maintain U.S. military equipment ordered by Iraq, the Iraqi prime minister has not previously acknowledged this publicly. When U.S. combat troops exited Iraqi cities last month under the terms of a Status of Forces Agreement, Mr. al-Maliki declared a national holiday to celebrate the milestone toward full Iraqi sovereignty. On Thursday, however, in response...

WASHINGTON, July 23, 2009 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki discussed Iraq security issues when the two met at the Pentagon late this afternoon. Gates and Maliki addressed the U.S.-Iraqi security relationship and equipment needs for Iraqi soldiers and police, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. Their conversation, Morrell said, focused “largely on our security partnership, on ways that we can continue to help the Iraqi security forces grow in size and capability, so that they are able to fully exert their sovereignty and protect the people from external and internal threats.” Gates acknowledged during...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hailed the seeds of a growing cooperation between their nations, pledging that out of the fires of war would come a new friendship. But they warned the path ahead could yet prove tough, with many obstacles to overcome and sectarian violence still threatening Iraq's stability. "Both of us agree that the bonds forged between Americans and Iraqis in war can pave the way for progress that can be forged in peace," Obama pledged after White House talks with Maliki. "America stands ready to help the Iraqi government build their...

Not that it’s important enough for mainstream media to highlight, but that elusive thing known as Iraqi political reconciliation (remember when its absence was a sign of the apocalypse?) may be upon us:

How worried should we be about reports such as this and this in the Washington Post about how restricted U.S. troops have become in Iraq? One article reports on how U.S. troops, worried about an insurgent plot to mortar their bases, were not allowed to operate in the neighborhood where the attack was supposed to happen — the Iraqis insisted on handling the issue themselves. This is part of a broader Iraqi initiative to take U.S. forces off the streets that is raising concerns among some Americans over being denied the authority to protect their own forces. The other Post...

BAGHDAD -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki struck a conciliatory tone ahead of his trip to Washington, talking about his gratitude for U.S. sacrifices in Iraq, and offering to negotiate a settlement between Iraq's federal government and the country's Kurdish enclave as tensions heighten between the two. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal as he prepared for a visit to the U.S. on July 21, Mr. Maliki said he planned to thank America for its shared sacrifice with the Iraqi people in the tumultuous post-Saddam Hussein years since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. "We have [achieved] a combined victory...

THE war in Iraq is officially moving to an end. Six years after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled, several coalition members have ended their missions in Iraq - including Australia, which pulled out its troops 12 months ago - and the US is preparing to wrap up its military involvement in the country. If we examine the question from an American, British or Australian perspective, then it would be difficult to present an answer that could convince all critics. For the coalition members this was a war of opportunity, not a war of necessity. Going to war or not was...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama reversed his decision to release detainee abuse photos from Iraq and Afghanistan after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki warned that Iraq would erupt into violence and that Iraqis would demand that U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq a year earlier than planned, two U.S. military officers, a senior defense official and a State Department official have told McClatchy. In the days leading up to a May 28 deadline to release the photos in response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, U.S. officials, led by Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told Maliki that...

Updated: Monday, April 27, 2009 11:30GMT—7:30AM/EST Washington, 27 April (WashingtonTV)—The US military on Sunday insisted that a raid it had conducted in the southern Iraqi city of Kut, was approved by the Iraqi government, despite Baghdad’s insistence that the action violated a US-Iraqi security pact. In a pre-dawn raid targeting Shiite militants, US forces shot dead an Iraqi woman and policeman, and detained six others. In a statement, the US military said that the woman was killed after she “moved into the line of fire.” “In an operation fully coordinated and approved by the Iraqi government, coalition forces targeted a...

BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, yesterday denounced a predawn U.S. raid in southern Iraq during which two Iraqis were killed, and he sought to prosecute the U.S. soldiers who carried out the operation. -snip- U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, suggested that Maliki's move could be politically motivated. National elections are due next winter. In a statement issued by the Iraqi government's Baghdad security command, which reports to the prime minister, Maliki called the raid "a violation of the security agreement." He said he would ask the top U.S. commander to "send those who carried out this action to the...

BAGHDAD — On April 18, American and British officials from a secretive unit called the Force Strategic Engagement Cell flew to Jordan to try to persuade one of Saddam Hussein’s top generals — the commander of the final defense of Baghdad in 2003 — to return home to resume efforts to make peace with the new Iraq. But the Iraqi commander, Lt. Gen. Raad Majid al-Hamdani, rebuffed them. After a year of halting talks mediated by the Americans, he said, he concluded that Iraq’s leader, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, simply was not interested in reconciliation. The American appeal —...

Ayad al-Samarrai was elected speaker of the Iraqi parliament on Sunday after garnering 153 votes. There are 275 members in the Iraqi parliament, and 138 votes were all Samarrai would have needed to pass the threshold. The ‘yea’ votes in Samarrai’s favor spell trouble for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, since the same number could be arrayed to yield a vote of ‘no confidence’ in his cabinet. The ‘153’ bloc is an anti-Maliki coalition, rather than a pro-Samarrai faction. Those who backed Samarrai did so with the tacit understanding that his election would be the opening act in the drama to...

Nouri al-Maliki coailition scores landslide victory in Iraq elections Deborah Haynes and Wail al-Obaidi in Baghdad Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s Prime Minister, savoured a stunning election victory last night, as improved security drew voters to his coalition and away from the sectarian division offered by hardline religious parties. The victory in provincial elections will encourage him to run for a second term in office in the approaching general election, less than a year after he was derided in the West for his ambitious military crackdown on militants. A coalition headed by Mr al-Maliki had landslide wins in Baghdad and Basra, the...

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Mark “Black Hawk Down” Bowden says yes. I think it’s a no-brainer, but for different reasons: The stunt was rude and no doubt embarrassing to the Iraqi authorities, but it is hardly a high crime. For Americans, the only serious issue raised by the shoe-throwing episode is how Mr. Zaidi was able to throw the second one. With its national pride at stake, the Iraqi government is unlikely to cut the journalist a break. If a gesture is to be made, it has to come from Mr. Bush… It would also be a small way of acknowledging that Iraqis have...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15, 2008 – With fewer than 40 days left in office, President George W. Bush signed a security pact in Baghdad yesterday, putting an end in sight for the Iraq war after nearly six years of fighting. “The war is not over yet,” Bush said, “[but] it is decisively on its way to being won.” During a surprise farewell visit to Baghdad yesterday, Bush met with Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for a signing ceremony, affirming the two landmark agreements to withdraw U.S. troops and formalizing a long-term relationship between the two countries. “[The agreements] cement a...

BAGHDAD: Through the televised parliamentary brawling, shouting and points of order, the battle lines are becoming clear in the Iraqi political debate over a security agreement that would govern the last three years of the American military presence in Iraq. But the pact that is nominally at the center of the wrangling appears not to be the main problem. The quarreling is really about what the country will look like when the American troops eventually depart, and whether the security agreement will give too much control to the Shiite-led Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.When cornered on the stairways and...

The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is systematically dismissing Iraqi oversight officials, who were installed to fight corruption in Iraqi ministries by order of the American occupation administration, which had hoped to bring Western standards of accountability to the notoriously opaque and graft-ridden bureaucracy here. The dismissals, which were confirmed by senior Iraqi and American government officials on Sunday and Monday, have come as estimates of official Iraqi corruption have soared. One Iraqi former chief investigator recently testified before Congress that $13 billion in reconstruction funds from the United States had been lost to fraud, embezzlement, theft and...

A senior Western diplomat in Baghdad said that Mr Maliki told close aides he would hold the new president to an obligation to oversee a rapid withdrawal of US troops, a key Iraqi government demand in recent talks. "Maliki has said he took the Iraq issue 'off the table' for Obama by endorsing his timetable during his visit to Baghdad in July," the diplomat told The Daily Telegraph. "Maliki firmly hoped for an Obama victory and has used expectations of such to drive a very hard bargain with the US over its presence in Iraq. "The prime minister has extracted...

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government reacted sharply Friday to published allegations that the U.S. spied on Iraq's prime minister, warning that future ties with the United States could be in jeopardy if the report were true. The allegations appear in a new book, The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008, by journalist Bob Woodward, who writes that the United States spied extensively on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, his staff and other government officials. The report emerged as the two governments are in delicate negotiations over the future of American troops in Iraq. Those talks have already extended past...

At the "make-or-break" stage of talks with the U.S. on the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has swept aside his negotiating team and replaced it with three of his closest aides, a reshuffle that some Iraqi officials warn risks sabotaging the agreement. The decision on the team negotiating the pact, which the Americans have described as the basis of a long-term strategic alliance between the United States and Iraq, remains so sensitive that it has not been announced. In disclosing the switch to the Los Angeles Times this weekend, a senior Iraqi official close to...

Report on Iraq by: Ben Giles, August 04, 2008 Now that major gains have been made to bring stability to Iraq, it would be foolish for the United States to simply leave the country arbitrarily, military strategists say. “The purpose of this [war] is to advance our interests,” said Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute. “That’s why America fights wars. And I think that this conflict has the potential to advance our interests in the region and in the global war on terror dramatically, but only if we see it through to its conclusion.” Kagan’s consistent support of the...

Castel Gandolfo, Jul. 25, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki met with Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) on July 25 at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. Pope Benedict underscored his concern about the Christian minority in Iraq during the conversation. A Vatican statement released after the meeting noted that the Holy Father had decried the continuing violence in Iraq and pointed out that the bloodshed has taken a heavy toll on "the Christian communities which strongly feel the need for greater security." The Pope also spoke about the needs of Iraqi refugees and-- returning...

In a stunning upset, Barack Obama this week won the Iraq primary. When Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki not once but several times expressed support for a U.S. troop withdrawal on a timetable that accorded roughly with Obama's 16-month proposal, he not only legitimized the plan. He relieved Obama of a major political liability by blunting the charge that, in order to appease the MoveOn left, Obama was willing to jeopardize the astonishing success of the surge and risk losing a war that is finally being won. Maliki's endorsement left the McCain campaign and the Bush administration deeply discomfited. They underestimated...

In a stunning upset, Barack Obama this week won the Iraq primary. When Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki not once but several times expressed support for a U.S. troop withdrawal on a timetable that accorded roughly with Obama's 16-month proposal, he not only legitimized the plan. He relieved Obama of a major political liability by blunting the charge that, in order to appease the MoveOn left, Obama was willing to jeopardize the astonishing success of the surge and risk losing a war that is finally being won. Maliki's endorsement left the McCain campaign and the Bush administration deeply discomfited. They underestimated...

IRAQI Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has cut the legs out from under John McCain by basically endorsing Sen. Barack Obama’s troop-withdrawal plan. Just when McCain had Obama on the defensive over the Democrat’s plan to surrender after we’ve won in Iraq, Maliki has made McCain look the naif for opposing a timetable for withdrawal. Unless McCain changes his approach, he’s lost the use of this issue. He can’t come out for staying in Iraq longer than the government we support wants.

Rome, 23 July (AKI) - Pope Benedict XVI will meet Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki on Friday for the first time during his official visit to Italy. Al-Maliki is due to arrive in Rome on Thursday to meet his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi on the second leg of his European visit after talks with German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in Berlin on Tuesday. The Iraqi prime minister will meet the Pope at the pontiff's summer residence at Castelgandolfo, outside Rome. He will then hold separate talks with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state. Iraq is home to the Chaldean...

Senator Obama refuses to be boxed in between what he considers two “false choices”, either:1) …On such and such date, come Hell or high water we’ve gotten our troops out, and be blind to anything that happens in intermediate months2) …completely defer to whatever the commanders on the ground say (because his military and strategic knowledge is better than theirs)LINKBy dismissing out of hand the absoluteness of a calender date by which all Americans will be out of Iraq, Senator Obama has just capitulated the political left’s dogma for the past six years (a debate that started in 2002 before...

The Columbia Journalism Review has a maddeningly sloppy and incomplete, but also interesting and informative article about how the Maliki remarks came to be translated so differently by the New York Times and Der Spiegel. It turns out that, not only did Der Spiegel rewrite the critical passage without telling anyone, it also rewrote the whole interview, while pretending that it was a verbatim exchange. The piece quotes Der Spiegel’s second version of the remarks (the author of the piece seems blissfully unaware of the first version) and then the New York Times translation, and notes the differences: How come...

There is some irony in the fact that Democrats, after years of deriding Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as a hopeless bungler and conniving Shiite sectarian, are now treating as sacrosanct his suggestion that Iraq will be ready to assume responsibility for its own security by 2010. Naturally this is because his position seems to support that of Barack Obama. A little skepticism is in order here. The prime minister has political motives for what he's saying -- whatever that is. An anonymous Iraqi official told the state-owned Al-Sabah newspaper, "Maliki thinks that Obama is most likely to win in...

CAMPAIGN 2008 Backing for Barack Obama's troop-cut policy gets support from the Iraqi government Thaier al-Sudani / Getty Images-pool Obama and Maliki at their Baghdad meeting By Larry Kaplow and Lennox Samuels | Newsweek Web Exclusive Jul 21, 2008 | Updated: 1:12  p.m. ET Jul 21, 2008 Sen. Barack Obama got a red-carpet greeting in the Green Zone. The Democratic presidential contender, who was in Baghdad Monday, was seated one-on-one with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki at the end of his marble-lined salon, while Obama's senate colleagues sat at the side with the aides. But the greatest gesture of Iraqi hospitality came just after...

There's been much ado about Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki's interview with German newsmagazine Der Spiegel about a timeframe for withdrawal of U.S. troops. Here's the key text: SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq? Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we're concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes. SPIEGEL: Is this an endorsement for the US presidential election in November? Does Obama, who has no military background,...

The statement by an aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki calling his remarks in Der Spiegel "misinterpreted and mistranslated" followed a call to the prime minister's office from U.S. government officials in Iraq. Maliki had expressed support for a withdrawal plan similar to that of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama in an interview with Der Speigel. U.S. troops should leave Iraq "As soon as possible, as far as we're concerned," Maliki had said. "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight...

BAGHDAD, July 20 (VOI) – Iraq's national security council expressed support for the Iraqi delegation negotiating a long-term security agreement with the United States, according to a presidential statement on Sunday. "The Political Council for National Security had met at Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's office on Saturday to discuss recent developments on the track of negotiations currently taking place between the Iraqi and U.S. sides to broker a long-term strategic agreement," read the statement received by Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI). A declaration of principles had been signed by U.S. President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime...

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s vocal support for Barack Obama’s 16-month withdrawal timetable goes to show how distorted the Iraq drawdown argument has become in light of the election narrative. Of course a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq becomes less preposterous as security increases in that country — because during that transition the idea of timetables stops being purely artificial and becomes more reality-based. To think otherwise is a logical absurdity, and that’s what the popular state of this discussion has become. As a war draws to a close, individual soldiers don’t start calling travel agents and packing bags...

The White House this afternoon accidentally sent to its extensive distribution list a Reuters story headlined "Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan - magazine." The story relayed how Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the German magazine Der Spiegel that "he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months … ‘U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,'" the prime minister said. The White House employee had intended to send the...

A German magazine quoted Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as saying that he backed a proposal by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months. Nuri al-Maliki told Der Spiegel that he favors a "limited" tenure for coalition troops in Iraq. Nuri al-Maliki told Der Spiegel that he favors a "limited" tenure for coalition troops in Iraq. "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months," he said in an interview with Der Spiegel that was released Saturday. "That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the...

ARLINGTON, Va., July 19 /Standard Newswire/ -- Today, McCain 2008 Senior Foreign Policy Advisor Randy Scheunemann issued the following statement: "The difference between John McCain and Barack Obama is that Barack Obama advocates an unconditional withdrawal that ignores the facts on the ground and the advice of our top military commanders. John McCain believes withdrawal must be based on conditions on the ground. Prime Minister Maliki has repeatedly affirmed the same view, and did so again today. Timing is not as important as whether we leave with victory and honor, which is of no apparent concern to Barack Obama. The...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's main Sunni Arab bloc rejoined the Shi'ite-led government on Saturday in a breakthrough for national reconciliation after parliament approved its candidates for several vacant ministerial posts. Getting the Accordance Front to return after it quit a year ago in a row over power sharing has been seen as key to healing divisions between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs. Sunni Arabs have little voice in the current cabinet, which is dominated by Shi'ites and ethnic Kurds. "Today, parliament voted to accept our candidates ... This means the Accordance Front has officially returned to the government," a...

The top American commander in Iraq is downplaying recent comments by Nouri al-Maliki on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, claiming that the Iraqi prime minister wants “time horizons,” not timetables. During an interview that aired Friday on MSNBC, Gen. David Petraeus cast al-Maliki’s growing assertiveness on the presence of US. troops as a positive sign of the government’s sovereignty while lauding Iraq’s improved military ability. But Petraeus indicated that doesn’t necessarily mean American troops will be able to leave by the end of next year, a goal many Democratic lawmakers favor. “Again, what [al-Maliki] has said is not...

Iraq faces dilemma over US troops US presidential contender Barack Obama has repeatedly seized on statements attributed to Iraqi leaders to support his call for a troop withdrawal deadline. The key statement cited by Mr Obama and others was made by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki last Monday in his address to Arab ambassadors in the United Arab Emirates. The prime minister was widely quoted as saying that in the negotiations with the Americans on a Status of Forces Agreement to regulate the US troop presence from next year, "the direction is towards either a memorandum of understanding on their...

The green zone of Baghdad, a highly fortified slice of American suburbia on the banks of the Tigris river, may soon be handed over to Iraqi control if the increasingly assertive government of Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, gets its way. A senior Iraqi government official said this weekend the enclave should revert to Iraqi control by the end of the year. “We think that by the end of 2008 all the zones in Baghdad should be integrated into the city,” said Ali Dabbagh, the government’s spokesman.

BAGHDAD • Iraq's main Sunni Arab bloc is close to rejoining the Shia-led government, officials said yesterday, a move that would amount to a long-awaited political breakthrough. Getting the Accordance Front to return to government after it quit nearly a year ago is widely seen as a key step in reconciling feuding factions after years of sectarian conflict. Sunni Arabs have little voice in the current cabinet, which is dominated by Shias and ethnic Kurds. Asked if the Front was set to rejoin, spokesman Salim Al Jubouri said: "Yes. Many of our demands have been executed ... sharing of responsibility,...

JANAJA, Iraq — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki grew up in this village of lemon and date orchards about half an hour from the southern Shiite Muslim holy city of Karbala . He attended school in the area, according to his official biography, and members of his extended family keep elegant villas here. Maliki is Janaja's most famous son, but he's been conspicuously silent in the aftermath of an apparent covert coalition raid Friday morning -- finally acknowledged Sunday by the U.S. military -- that killed one of his relatives and terrified the villagers, many of whom share the...

June 13 -- The Bush administration's Iraq policy suffered two major setbacks Friday when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki publicly rejected key U.S. terms for an ongoing military presence and anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for a new militia offensive against U.S. forces. During a visit to Jordan, Maliki said negotiations over initial U.S. proposals for bilateral political and military agreements had "reached a dead end." While he said talks would continue, his comments fueled doubts that the pacts could be reached this year, before the Dec. 31 expiration of a United Nations mandate sanctioning the U.S. role in Iraq....

There's one thing you have to admire about the Iranians - they always tell you just what they think of you. They never beat around the bush. On Tuesday, the day after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki completed his three-day visit to Iran, his envoy to the Islamic Republic received a care package - delivered to his front door. When Iraqi Ambassador Muhammad Majid al-Sheikh's driver opened the package, he discovered it was a bomb. In their best Farsi imitation of the Godfather, Iranian police spokesmen claimed that the package was not a bomb - but aquarium equipment. And in...