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LONDON - The retired American general who headed the first occupation government in Iraq (news - web sites) says the decision to disband the Iraqi army was one of several major mistakes Washington has made in Iraq. AP Photo Latest headlines: · Pentagon Sending More Marines to Iraq AP - 51 minutes ago · US readies extra marines for IraqAFP - 56 minutes ago · Iraq's Shiites Oppose U.S. Election Plan AP - 1 hour, 47 minutes ago Special Coverage   The United States should also have put more more troops into Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news...

<p>Iraq's American-backed administration failed in its first week to choose a president, abandoning that mission in favor of a weak, three-man rotating leadership. The top U.S. official in Iraq -- who hand-picked the Governing Council -- returned to Washington while an insurgency killed another American soldier Saturday.</p>

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's American-backed administration failed in its first week to choose a president, abandoning that mission in favor of a weak, three-man rotating leadership. The top U.S. official in Iraq — who hand-picked the Governing Council — returned to Washington while a violent insurgency killed yet another American soldier Saturday. The council, agonizingly shepherded into existence by L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, was announced last Sunday, saying its first order of business was the election of a president. When that did not happen after six days in session, officials of the Iraqi government told The...

<p>July 14 (Bloomberg) -- A car bomb blew up today outside the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, an unidentified U.S. military policeman told Agence France-Presse.</p> <p>Details of the attack weren't immediately available.</p> <p>Coalition forces began a crackdown on Saturday aimed at armed groups opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, arresting 226 people, as one American soldier was killed and six were wounded today in the latest attack on a military convoy, the U.S. Central Command said earlier today in e-mailed statements.</p>

BAGHDAD, Iraq Americans can be proud of the role their fighting men and women played in freeing Iraq of Saddam Hussein and his cronies. The people of Iraq are now on the road to political and economic independence.The first official step in this political transition at the national level occurs today, with the convening of the Iraqi Governing Council. This is the latest sign of progress. For the first time in decades, Iraqis are truly free. More than 150 newspapers have been started since liberation. All major cities and 85 percent of towns now have a municipal council where Iraqis...

WASHINGTON — The former head of the U.S.-led effort to rebuild Iraq predicted Wednesday that investigators would find the corpses of as many as 1 million Iraqis executed during Saddam Hussein’s reign.

WASHINGTON, July 1 (UPI) -- If retired Army Lt. Gen Jay Garner knew in January what he knows now, Baghdad might be a very different place. He would have brought with him a telephone system for Iraqi civilians to use so they could instantly communicate with one another and with the Americans running the government. He would have brought a police-training force to rapidly get the law on the street. And he would have brought more cash to stimulate the economy and win the allegiance of Iraqis hard hit by years of sanctions. "If I knew then what I know...

CAMP BOOM, Iraq - U.S. forces launched a massive operation early Sunday to crush insurgents and capture senior figures from the ousted regime in a show of force designed to stem a wave of deadly attacks on U.S. troops. The operation, dubbed "Desert Sidewinder," is taking place in a huge swath of central Iraq stretching from the Iranian border to the areas north of Baghdad, and is expected to last for several days, military officials said. Americans arrested a man in Khalis, 45 miles north of Baghdad. He is suspected of recruiting young men to launch attacks on Americans, according...

The British military has ordered a suspension of weapons searches in the area of southern Iraq where six soldiers were killed, while a fundamental review takes place of the civilian population's right to carry arms. The Army has agreed to a two-month "cooling-off" period in the town of Majar al-Kabir, near Amara, and this may be extended to other areas in an effort to defuse the rise in anti-British sentiment. There is acknowledgement among defence staff that a lack of understanding of the local people contributed to the fatal confrontation on Tuesday in which six members of the Royal Military...

SAMARRA, Iraq -- U.S. military commanders have ordered a halt to local elections and self-rule in provincial cities and towns across Iraq, choosing instead to install their own handpicked mayors and administrators, many of whom are former Iraqi military leaders. The decision to deny Iraqis a direct role in selecting municipal governments is creating anger and resentment among aspiring leaders and ordinary citizens, who say the U.S.-led occupation forces are not making good on their promise to bring greater freedom and democracy to a country dominated for three decades by Saddam Hussein.

The huge effort to restore Iraq's oil industry begins every day two hours south of the Iraq-Kuwait border, at the lavish Crowne Plaza Hotel in Kuwait City. No sooner does the lobby restaurant open at 5 a.m. than a line of middle-aged men in jumpsuits, golf shirts and identical tan caps forms at the breakfast buffet, eschewing the mezzeh and labneh for French toast, home fries and beef bacon. Outside, a couple of dozen silver S.U.V.'s are lined up, and after a quick breakfast the men are off in a swift northbound convoy, each car marked with the sideways V...

Iraq's 1st Public Poll Backs U.S. June 19, 2003 Attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a U.S. military ambulance in Iraq on Thursday, killing one U.S. soldier and injuring two others, the military said. It was the fourth attack in 24 hours on Americans in Iraq, and the third with deadly results either for Americans or Iraqis. The Pentagon has been playing down the attacks, saying they don't indicate widespread resentment on the part of the Iraqi people. Now, reports CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, Iraq's first-ever public opinion poll seems to back that up. Sixty-five percent of Iraqis...

Wednesday, June 18, 2003 - 2:40 p.m. EDT Secretary Rumsfeld Media Availability with Jay Garner (Also participating is Jay Garner, Former Director, Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.  Photos of today's briefing are available at http://www.defenselink.mil/photos/Jun2003/030618-D-9880W-111.html and http://www.defenselink.mil/photos/Jun2003/030618-D-9880W-100.html.) Rumsfeld: As you may have noticed, Jay Garner -- General Jay Garner is in town and has been good enough to join me here and make a statement and respond to some questions. Before he does, let me just say a few things about him. I do want to thank Jay for the absolutely superb job that he has done in laying the...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq (news - web sites)'s state oil marketing company SOMO on Thursday awarded its first post-war tender to sell 10 million barrels of crude held in storage but only one U.S. company was among the six winners. The tender was won by Spanish refiners Repsol and Cepsa, Turkish Tupras, Italian ENI and French Total while ChevronTexaco was the only U.S. company. Of the 10 million barrels sold from storage in Turkey, 5.5 million will go to the European market and four million to the U.S., the remainder left for "tolerance," SOMO Director-General Mohammed al-Jibouri told reporters. Total...

Saudi Nationals have joined the Sunni insurgency against United States Troops in Iraq. At least one US Soldier daily has been killed over the past few weeks.Meanwhile a US based Saudi opposition organization has reported that two Saudi Nationals have been killed in the sporadic fighting Middle East Newsline reported. Last week, the US Armys Third Division sent its 2nd Brigade to launch an operation in several Sunni cities to quell the insurgency.US Officials confimed that Saudi nationals have financed and participated in the Sunni insurgency. They said elements in Saudi Arabia view the US Military presence in Iraq as...

I'm started to get irked with this nonsense of S*itbird Iraqis killing American soldiers. I'm starting to get irked with this nonsense of not slamdunking anyone shooting at Americans. This touchy feely BS needs to end. Clean out the remaining opposition....not with UN style patrols....clean'em out with CIA payrolled spies and quick strikes carried out by Green Berets, Navy Seals and Recon Marines. Buld a friggin Guantanamo out in the Western Desert and stick every single Arab with a frown on his face in there until the Iraqi Government can be set up. Let them deal with them later. ...and...

Iran warned off 'meddling' in Iraq Bremer admitted he still had a tough task ahead of him The US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, has accused neighbouring Iran of actively attempting to subvert the coalition mission in the country.Mr Bremer said he did not welcome "interference" from Iran while US-led forces in Iraq were engaged in the "process of reconstruction and democratisation." "The message is very clear: the Iranians know they're doing it and they know we're unhappy about it and they ought to stop it," he said. Iran has been critical of the delay in government being put...

CENTCOM:   June 10, 2003Release Number: 03-06-39 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TASK FORCE "IRONHORSE" LAUNCHES OPERATION PENINSULA STRIKE CAMP DOHA, Kuwait -- During the early morning hours of June 9th, Task Force Ironhorse soldiers conducted a series of raids to eradicate Ba’ath Party loyalists, paramilitary groups and other subversive elements located on a peninsula along the Tigris River, northeast of Balad, Iraq. The raids signaled the start of Operation Peninsula Strike. The operation took place in two major stages. The first stage of the operation involved moving soldiers and equipment into strike positions, intelligence gathering, and coordination with local police. During...

Wednesday June 11, 00:36 AM US warns of prolonged Iraqi resistance as violence flares again US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that coalition forces in Iraq will need many more months to eliminate armed resistance from fighters loyal to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, as hostile fire wounded four more US soldiers.The dangerous disorder still prevailing over two months after the fall of Saddam's regime was further highlighted when three Iraqis were killed in a munitions explosion.Speaking in Lisbon at the start of a four-day tour of Europe, Rumsfeld blamed the attacks that have claimed mounting US casualties on former...

MOSUL, Iraq -- A soldier with 2nd Battalion, 44th Air Defense Artillery, 101st Airborne Division, assembles an AK-47 rifle with a soldier from the Joint Iraqi Security Company, left, and a translator, center, June 5. The 2-44 ADA  is training Kurdish and Iraqi forces to become the first self-sufficient Iraqi military force. Photo by Pfc. James Matise/U.S. Army. 2-44 ADA Trains Joint Iraqi Security CompanyIraq's First Military Security Force is Made Up of Iraqis From Across the Countryby Pfc. James Matise101st Airborne Division writer MOSUL, Iraq (June 6, 2003) – The soldiers gathered inside the dilapidated building were certainly...

ASRA, Iraq, June 6 — Standing under the merciless sun outside his office, surrounded by employees shouting angrily about pay, Jabbar Ali al-Leaby, the director general of the South Oil Company, lost the little patience he had left. "Be satisfied with what you got," he told the men. "Do you know what I went through to get even this money for you?" It was only three hours into the workday, but Mr. Leaby's frustrations started, as they do every morning, when he arrived around 8 to the lone refurbished office in a complex of buildings so thoroughly ransacked that...

New Hampshire On the face of it, Jordan’s election this month would seem to be a lively affair. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve driven the length and breadth of the country. Well, not the length, but the breadth — from the Allenby Bridge across from the ghastly Arafat squat on the West Bank over to the eastern desert and the Iraqi border post at Trebil. And in every town you pass through there are handmade banners strung across the streets proclaiming the merits of a zillion candidates. Nothing fancy, just dense text on white sheets. But lots of...

There's no dysentery or cholera, no sign of a human catastrophe, the roads and medical centres are empty and the countryside charming. Yes, writes Mark Steyn, there's no place like Iraq for a holiday I've spent the past couple of weeks on a motoring tour of western and northern Iraq, and I can't recommend it highly enough. The roads are empty except for the occasional burnt-out tank and abandoned Saddamite limo. You can make excellent time, because it will be several months before a deBa'athified Iraqi highway patrol squad is up and running and even longer before they replace the...

<p>BAGHDAD--"This is my brother," cries a man. "This is not my husband," wails his sister-in-law. They are arguing over a bag of bones, and it is hard to tell whether he is over-eager for closure or she in denial. The man says he recognizes his brother's dishdasha, or robe, but admits that he could be more certain if there were a skull and dental work to look at. Hundreds of identical plastic bags, likewise filled with the remains of Shiites who rose up against Saddam in 1991, litter the ground nearby.</p>

CAIRO - The United States stepped up moves this week to revive Iraq's war-battered economy, temporarily lifting tariffs to boost cross-border trade and business and announcing plans to set up a major credit facility. With a UN Security Council resolution on May 22 ending 13 years of international sanctions on Iraq, the United States and Britain have now taken the reins of Iraq's economy, controlling notably its key oil revenues to fund rebuilding efforts. The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) announced that a tariff holiday would be applied in a few days to boost commerce and relieve Iraqi...

May. 29, 2003 US raids Palestinian mission in Baghdad By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Baghdad US troops raided the Palestinian Authority's mission in Baghdad and arrested 11 members including its top diplomat after ransacking the building, Palestinian officials said Thursday. A top US general said only eight people had been arrested. "They even took all of our water bottles and food cans," said Mohamed Abdul Wahab, a mission official. "They behaved like common thieves." Although US troops have conducted numerous sweeps against suspected criminals and loyalists of Saddam Hussein's regime, Wednesday's raid was the first such action against a foreign diplomatic...

U.S. administrator Paul Bremer Wednesday reported "troubling" Iranian activity in Iraq and said it could result in serious problems if it went too far. "We have seen a rather steady increase in Iranian activity here, which is troubling," Bremer said in the interview with ABC News, excerpts of which were released Wednesday. His comments were the latest in a series of critical U.S. statements about Iran, lumped by President Bush in an "axis of evil" with North Korea and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in remarks published Tuesday the United States would not allow Iraq's neighbors to...

2:26PM US lifts sanctions against Iraq by Rex Nutting The U.S. government has lifted most economic sanctions against Iraq that have been in place for 12 years, as called for by the U.N. Security Council on Friday. U.S. companies and individuals will be able to trade with and invest in Iraq. "The Iraqi people can look forward to an end to the crippling deprivation," said U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow. Trade with Baath Party leaders, weapons trade and commerce in stolen cultural artifacts are still prohibited. The Treasury also said $570 million in Iraq Central Bank assets has been discovered...

May 26, 7:39 PM EDT U.S. Fires Baathist Police Chief in IraqBy JIM KRANEAssociated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The top U.S. official in Iraq fired a Baghdad police chief because of his Baath Party membership, despite the help he provided American forces in rebuilding the capital's ravaged police force.West Baghdad police chief Abdul Razak al-Abbassi was dismissed Sunday, said Lt. Col. Richard Vanderlinden, commander of the U.S. Army's 709th Military Police Battalion.Al-Abbassi was found to have had full membership in Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, disqualifying him from any of the three top positions in an Iraqi government bureaucracy,...

The US civil administration paid out the first government wages to Iraqis since the US-led war, giving wages to thousands of Baghdad electricity workers. It hopes the payments - set eventually to reach about 1.4 million civil servants and ranging from $80 to $400 a month - will send a signal that normal life is returning to the country after weeks of chaos and deteriorating security conditions. "Its a start, a good start and the rest will get paid through the rest of the week," said Jay Garner, the outgoing director of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA)....

A few days ago, a group of students from Baghdad's Hurriyyah (Freedom) neighborhood complained to their parents about Ismail Shahade Meshadai, much-hated school principal at the Nahr el-Khalid high school. An activist in Saddam Hussein's Baath party, Meshadai, along with his wife (a teacher), has not only been terrorizing the neighborhood for some years, but was also known to regularly report to Iraqi mukhabarat on "suspect" students and families. Still, the principal did not make it to the top of anybody's agenda until last week, soon after schools reopened. When a teacher removed a picture of Saddam, the principal burst...

WASHINGTON -- Call it the curse of crude. The 11 countries that comprise the OPEC cartel amassed nearly $180 billion in oil revenues last year. None is a thriving democracy. Coincidence? Oil wealth hinders development of a tax-paying middle class, the very segment of society most likely to agitate for a voice in government, political economists say. Bountiful crude reserves also discourage the kind of diversification needed for a successful capitalistic economy. This is the dilemma the Bush administration must confront if it hopes to plant democracy in Iraq. In fact, the White House is pondering a radical approach. To...

BAGHDAD: Western administrators may ban from public office between 15,000-30,000 die-hard Saddam Hussein loyalists of Iraq's dissolved Baath Party, senior officials said on Friday. But Iraqi intellectuals said the United States risked emulating Saddam by purging the Iraqi bureaucracy in favour of loyalty to America as criteria for hiring civil servants as it restores government to Baghdad. Two senior officials of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) -- which runs Iraq until an Iraqi interim authority takes over -- told reporters they recognised the risks of such a vetting process in a society where up to 700,000 people...

<p>It's true that more Iraqis in Basra have power than ever before, but most of Baghdad is dark at night, and that simply wasn't the case until three days into the war.</p> <p>The rules of engagement - which have not changed - always allowed troops to fire on looters or any armed person if they feel threatened. The only change - an overdue one - is that they have been ordered to be more aggressive in their policing duties.</p>

US sacks its woman in BaghdadWashington replaces its team for the anarchy-hit capital after failures Ewen MacAskill in Baghdad Monday May 12, 2003 The Guardian The US yesterday sacked one of its most senior envoys to Iraq after only three weeks, in an admission that the task of running the country is proving tougher than expected. With Baghdad still in a state of chaos, there was a whiff of panic about Washington's removal of the top layer of its team responsible for reconstruction. There was also a hint that it is being forced to rethink its post-war strategy. Barbara Bodine,...

THERE are few more dramatic periods in human history than the toppling of a brutal tyranny and dictatorship. When the fighting ends, and the world and media spotlight dims, a less-noticed period unfolds. In the case of Iraq, it is the job of getting a punch-drunk and war-weary country back on its feet. That is the reality in the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance — the most complex and challenging job I have faced in more than 30 years of military service. This is not just a country damaged by conflict but by 30 years of systematic intimidation and...

As Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, the 63 years old leader of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SAIRI) is preparing to leave for his hometown of Najaf, a double conflict is surfacing, pitting senior Iraqi and Iranian Shi’ite leaders and their respective rival religious circles (hawzeh) of Qom in Iran and Najaf in Iraq against each other. Hundreds of Iraqi clerics who had escaped to Iran the inferno Saddam Hoseyn has created for the Shi’as have already left the Iranian religious of Qom, where they were teaching and learning, for their native Iraq, most of them assuring...

WASHINGTON - Bush names career diplomat to be top U.S. civilian in Iraq. No Info yet. Searching!!

Parties, plunder, and prayer in liberated Baghdad Matthew Gutman May. 5, 2003 In Sadr City, the lawless and impoverished district in east Baghdad formerly known as Saddam City, the US has found a friend. The Shi'ite residents and their powerful clerics have thrown their support behind American troops, grateful that they rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein and hopeful that the US might drag them out of dire poverty. "We were the living dead under Saddam," said Said Fathen al-Yasser, a metal trader who specializes in pillaged Iraqi tank and artillery shells. "Now we are free. For the first time...

<p>BAGHDAD — Nawwas, a clerk in the literature department of the University of Baghdad, was feeling more agitation than excitement this week in anticipation of the $20 she would soon receive from the U.S. government.</p> <p>The money, a one-time cash gift, is aimed at helping civil servants tide over until the transitional administration can sort out the salary structure and resume payments.</p>

Reds under the ruinsBy Paul Belden BAGHDAD - He still calls himself Abu Ayad, but that's only because old habits die hard. "It's my secret name," he explains with a smile, wiping his professorial spectacles against the sleeve of his neat, nerdy, button-down yellow shirt. This secret-named, hardened political fighter is, it turns out, a shy man at heart. Shy - but not embarrassed. The name and the reason behind it, may seem to be holdovers of a different era, but they were once the dead-serious necessities of political activism in this land where even the suspicion of such an...

<p>FALLUJAH, Iraq — Attackers lobbed two grenades over a wall and into a compound of U.S. troops in Fallujah (search) on Thursday, wounding seven soldiers just hours after they had opened fire on anti-American protesters, a U.S. intelligence officer reported.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration has chosen L. Paul Bremer, a former head of the State Department's counterterrorism office, to become civilian administrator in Iraq and oversee the country's transition to democratic rule. Bremer's selection, disclosed Wednesday by a senior U.S. official, will put him in charge of a transition team that includes retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner and Zalmay Khalilzad, the special White House envoy in the Persian Gulf region. Bremer left the State Department, where he was an assistant to former secretaries William P. Rogers and Henry Kissinger, to join Kissinger Associates, a consulting firm...

NEW DELHI APRIL 29. NDTV brings you a world exclusive from Baghdad. Did the people of Iraq welcome the American troops or not? Does the ordinary Iraqi want the Americans to stay or go back now that Saddam Hussein is dethroned? If Saddam Hussein is found do the people of Iraq want to see him punished or not? Is this war all about oil or not? With the embedded Western media being widely accused of bias there appear to be no reliable answers to many of these questions. In order to cut through the cacophony of opinions and views, NDTV...

QUM, Iran, April 26 — A black-turbaned Iraqi cleric, his belongings packed in a small blue bag sitting at his feet, led about 50 clerics in prayer. Kneeling on red Persian rugs, the men, many of whom who had spent the last two decades in Iran, gathered to catch the train that would take them to Iraq. "I am going first to Kazemein for a pilgrimage and then will go to Baghdad to find a home for my family," said Muhammad Hassani, a 52-year-old mid-ranking cleric, who had lived in Iran since 1980. Mr. Hassani, the father of 10, had...

Submitted by: 15th MEU Story Identification Number: 200342534427 Story by Cpl. Anthony R. Blanco AN NASIRIYAH, Iraq(April 25, 2003) -- Marines and Sailors of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) are working together with local law enforcements to restore law and order in an area where it has been absent since the start of the war. Some of the first steps in re-establishing the legal system is to clean up the courthouse, institute a police force and start a penal system to help Iraqi's transition from a United States military presence to a local one. To kick things...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 25 — A religious edict issued in Iran and distributed to Shiite mullahs in Iraq calls on them "to seize the first possible opportunity to fill the power vacuum in the administration of Iraqi cities." The edict, or fatwa, issued on April 8 by Kadhem al-Husseini al-Haeri, an Iraqi-born cleric based in the Iranian holy city of Qum, suggests that Shiite clerics in Iraq are receiving significant direction from Iran as they try to assert the power of Iraq's long-oppressed religious majority. It is not yet clear how much popular support Mr. Haeri and other clerics emerging...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. forces on Sunday arrested an Iraqi exile who had proclaimed himself Baghdad's mayor, saying he was exerting authority he didn't have. Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi was arrested at 5 p.m. in downtown Baghdad "for his inability to support the coalition military authority and for exercising authority which was not his," said U.S. military spokesman Capt. David Connolly, speaking in Baghdad. Soldiers arrested seven others found with al-Zubaidi, Connolly said without identifying them. Al-Zubaidi, who has cast himself as a volunteer to help Iraq (news - web sites) get back on its feet, never discouraged widespread rumors that...

Suspects in USS Cole Attack Escape Prison Friday April 11, 2003 12:20 PM SAN`A, Yemen (AP) - Yemeni authorities were hunting for 10 of the main suspects in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole after they escaped from prison Friday, officials said. The fugitives, including chief suspect Jamal al-Badawi, had been jailed in the port city of Aden since shortly after the destroyer was bombed, killing 17 American sailors. Officials at Aden's governor's office would not say how the men escaped early Friday. But they quoted intelligence sources as saying security forces were out in force in a major...

<p>Carolyn McIntyre can hardly wait to go back to Iraq.</p> <p>The Middle East director for San Francisco adventure travel company Geographic Expeditions last saw Baghdad in the late 1970s, just as Saddam Hussein was taking over and long before the first Gulf War and trade sanctions put Iraq off-limits for U.S. companies.</p>