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AMMAN -- It was an usually quiet day in Iraq on Friday in terms of violence, but the debate over a long-term security and military pact that the Iraqi government is secretly negotiating with the United States continued to raise a political storm among leaders eager to regain sovereignty over their country. Iraqi lawmakers said they were increasingly concerned that an Iraqi-U.S. pact, which would determine the role of U.S. troops in Iraq after the U.N. mandate's term expires at the end of the year, would pass without their endorsement amid indications that the two sides were rushing to forge...

It was meant to be the rising tide that would lift the Iraqi economy out of years of war and sanctions, to finance reconstruction and guarantee cheap global supplies. Yet, five years on, big oil is only just starting to move cautiously into Iraq and, despite record prices, experts caution against another false dawn of optimism. Four oil giants - Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP - are to announce next week no-bid contracts to start servicing the creaking Iraqi oil infrastructure, crippled for decades by lack of investment and often targeted by insurgents. The deals came as the Oil...

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (center) talks with lawmakers about the security situation in the southern city of Basra during a meeting yesterday in Baghdad. BAGHDAD — Iraq's prime minister got a show of support from political leaders of both Muslim sects at a meeting yesterday as he moved to isolate anti-U.S. Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers. Sadrist lawmakers warned that the government's effort against them could backfire even as fighting between Shi'ite militants and U.S.-Iraq forces eased after days of fierce clashes in Baghdad's Sadr City district. The fighting has taken its toll on all sides....

First Lt. Greg Highstrom (left), from Cedarburg, Wisc., a platoon leader, and Spc. Nick Waterman, from Princeton, Idaho, an artilleryman, both with Battery B, 1st Battalion, 9th Field Artillery, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, speak with students of the Manahel primary school in Kutimiyah, March 30. The school is temporarily using a nearby home to hold classes because al-Qaida insurgents destroyed the school building. Photo by Sgt. Luis Delgadillo. FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU — Many schools in the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division's area of operation have been rebuilt through the efforts of coalition forces.There were...

About three days ago, when the clash between the Iraqi Army and the Madhi army was in its fourth day, I asked a senior officer returned from Iraq after his presentation whether Maliki would go all the way against Sadr. He said he didn't know, but added that militias were a problem that had to be eventually addressed. Another questioner asked about the quality of the Iraqi Armed forces, and on this point the answer was more definite. The quality was uneven. Many parts of it were rudimentary; some parts of it were extraordinarily good.But the subject of the talk...

Five years after the initial invasion of Iraq, Americans wonder where we are. Iraq is like no other conflict in American history. It is arguably no longer a war, but a low-level insurgency. We are not fighting a country, but a transnational conspiracy that operates more like an international fast-food franchise than a military force. In this conflict, there will be no "D" Day or signing of a peace treaty. What is victory? It is easy to take for granted the fact that there has not been another attack on American soil since 9/11 – how do you show progress...

Bush: Progress in Iraq is real By JAMES HANNAH, Associated Press Writer DAYTON, Ohio - President Bush on Thursday promoted his war policies, a possible focal point in the presidential campaign as the November election approaches in politically pivotal Ohio. The troop surge in Iraq has resulted in significant security gains for the country, he said at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The number of sectarian attacks in the volatile Anbar province have plummeted since the surge, he said. "The progress in Iraq is real, it's substantive," he said. Recent news...

"No one can spend some 10 days visiting the battlefields in Iraq without seeing major progress in every area. ... If the U.S. provides sustained support to the Iraqi government — in security, governance and development — there is now a very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state."—Anthony Cordesman, "The Situation in Iraq: A Briefing From the Battlefield," Feb. 13, 2008This from a man who was a severe critic of the postwar occupation of Iraq and who, as author Peter Wehner points out, is no wide-eyed optimist. In fact, in May 2006, Cordesman wrote...

Greetings Jim, Today is the one year anniversary of the launch of operation 'Rule of Law' or the ‘Surge’ as we know it. Iraqis are celebrating all over Iraq and especially in Baghdad for this occasion. Military parades were held in Baghdad with a commemorative laying of flower wreaths at the tomb of the unknown soldier. What a difference a year makes! This was possible thanks to all of the effort and sacrifices of our men and women and the efforts and sacrifices of the Iraqis, who trust our military and their military more than their own government (this a...

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi River Patrol Police station is training their trainers to maintain and troubleshoot their river craft while underway with a 10-day basic engineering course taught by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Joseph Aldana, Naval Special Warfare Unit 3, Bahrain. Students are participating in the Basic Engineering course offered as a way to assist the river police in troubleshooting malfunctions of boat equipment and help them understand how the river craft operate. The topics taught within the Basic Engineering course are Internal Combustion; Basic Electricity; Marine Battery/Electricity; Backing Gaskets and Seals; Troubleshooting and Planned Maintenance System checks....

Virtually everywhere you look these days in Iraq, the signs are of a country slowly hauling its way back from the precipice of self-destruction. It is not only the successful return of Basra, the last of the four Iraqi provinces under British control, to the local authorities that gives cause for optimism, although that event could have a profound effect in helping Iraq return to something approaching normality. By far the most impressive part of the hand-over ceremony, which, fittingly, took place in the disused departure lounge of the former Saddam Hussein international airport, was the appeal made by the...

The Iraqis are at present conducting an experiment with no equivalent anywhere else in the world. Despite a confrontation between terrorists from all over the world and the forces of the state, a democratic experiment is being built and developed. But we are bound by a principle of unanimity. We must all be in agreement - we different Iraqi political families - before moving forward. This does not facilitate decisionmaking. It is less easy than in democracies that function according to a simple majority, or a two-thirds majority, for fundamental decisions. Of course our European friends and Arab brothers are...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14, 2007 – “Getting the next part right” in Iraq is critical to America, and forthcoming steps there must capitalize on opportunities created by the troop surge, project U.S. might and show long-term commitment, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said here today. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, left, and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conduct a press briefing at the Pentagon, Sept. 14, 2007. Defense Dept. photo by U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jerry Morrison  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. During a briefing at the Pentagon with Marine Gen. Peter...

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. plans for handling Iraq after the 2003 invasion were "fatally flawed," a retired British general said, adding that the U.S. administration had refused to listen to British concerns about postwar planning. Major General Tim Cross said he had talked to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before the invasion about the need to have international support and enough troops on the ground to reconstruct Iraq. "He didn't want to hear that message. The U.S. had already convinced themselves that Iraq would emerge reasonably quickly as a stable democracy," Cross told the Sunday Mirror. "Anybody who tried to...

Pentagon sees 5 million child terrorists in Iraq Next generation could join jihad if reconstruction fails Posted: July 15, 2007 1:00 a.m. Eastern The Pentagon warns that if U.S. reconstruction efforts fail in Iraq, punishing unemployment could drive the country's next generation of workers to join the jihad. In that event, America and the West potentially would face an army of as many as 5 million young terrorists. Right now, Iraqis suffer from 50 percent unemployment, and the prospects are especially grim for the nation's youth, noted Paul Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense at the Pentagon. Iraq is largely a...

June 20, 2007: After weeks of maneuvering in and around Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi forces have isolated and cornered large numbers of terrorists in Diyala province (northeast of Baghdad), and especially in the provincial capital, Baqouba. This is a major operation, with 9,000 Americans and a thousand Iraqi troops (and police) involved. In addition, there are several hundred local irregulars, who have switched sides. This is a big change in the Baghdad suburbs. While tribal leaders and warlords in the west (Anbar province) have been turning on terrorist groups, especially al Qaeda, for several years, the gangs of Baghdad were...

The Other Face of IraqBy: Nimrod Raphaeli IntroductionFor most people, the images of Iraq are of a country mired in sectarian violence or civil war - a country suffering car bombs, random killing, kidnapping, ethnic cleansing - a country in collective despair. There is validity to these images. However, alongside these tragic daily occurrences Iraq has its other face, a face of life and a degree of normalcy. This other face of Iraq is reflected in a series of pictures published by Halim Salman in his two monthly magazines published in London. The first is al-Tab’a al-Jadida [The New Publication]...

Long before the United States invaded Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday. In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan. Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure post-war Iraq. Scheid, who is also the commander of Fort Eustis, made his comments in an...

Who messed up Iraq? Donald Rumsfeld is the usual nominee. For conservative hawks, attacks on the U.S. Defence Secretary provide a way to attack the war without attacking the larger administration. And for liberal opponents of the war, attacks on Rumsfeld provide a way to attack the war without attacking the military that planned and executed that war. Now comes an important new book, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, by New York Times correspondent Michael Gordon and retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Bernard Trainor. Their story bears hard on Rumsfeld. But it daringly...

L. Paul Bremmer THE recent debate set off by the publication of my book about my time in Iraq has shed more heat than light.... And while I had concerns about the quality of Iraqi forces two years ago, their training has since been revamped. Today they are playing an increasingly important role in defending Iraq. Despite the missteps and setbacks, there is little question that, thanks to efforts by the American-led coalition, enormous political and economic progress is being made in Iraq today. ... Iraqis voted in the country's first genuine elections. Then they wrote and approved a new...

Britain was 'weak-kneed' over arrest of Iraq cleric, says Bremer By Francis Harris in Washington (Filed: 10/01/2006) The British Government and Armed Forces were "weak kneed" and displayed "cold feet" over plans to arrest a radical Islamic cleric in Iraq, the former US administrator in Iraq claimed yesterday. Paul Bremer also turned his fire on organisations with a reputation for hawkishness, including the CIA, the US Marine Corps and the US chiefs of staff, who were berated for their timidity in refusing to arrest Moqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand Shia leader. His accusations came in a long-awaited memoir of his 13-month...

L. Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. civilian occupation authority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, urged U.S. President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to increase U.S. postwar troop strength in the country, but his pleas were ignored, the former diplomat said. In an interview on NBC Television broadcast Sunday night, Bremer said he sent a memo to Rumsfeld suggesting that half a million soldiers would be needed, three times the number deployed by the Bush administration. "I never had any reaction from him," Bremer told Brian Williams". Bremer, on a media blitz in connection with release...

Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. civilian occupation authority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, has admitted the United States did not anticipate the insurgency in the country, NBC Television said on Friday. Bremer, interviewed by the network in connection with release of his book on Iraq, recounted the decision to disband the Iraqi army quickly after arriving in Baghdad, a move many experts consider a major miscalculation. When asked who was to blame for the subsequent Iraqi rebellion, in which thousands of Iraqis and Americans have died, Bremer said "we really didn't see the insurgency coming," the network said...

The White House said on Wednesday it had put the State Department in charge of U.S. efforts to stabilize and rebuild nations roiled by war or civil upheaval, seen as an attempt to avert the inter-agency bickering that plagued the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. President George W. Bush signed the directive last week giving Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice the lead in such missions, a White House statement said. "(This will) empower the Secretary of State to improve coordination, planning and implementation for reconstruction and stabilization assistance for foreign states at risk of, in, or in transition from...

FOR THE SECOND TIME IN recent weeks the Department of Defense has denied a request from The Weekly Standard to release unclassified documents recovered in postwar Iraq. These documents apparently reveal, in some detail, activities of Saddam Hussein's regime in the years before the war. This second denial could also be the final one: According to two Pentagon sources, the program designed to review, translate, and analyze data from the old Iraqi regime may be shuttered at the end of December, not just placing the documents beyond the reach of journalists, but also making them inaccessible to policymakers. As a...

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq - A growing number of senior American military officers in Iraq have concluded that there is no long-term military solution to an insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,300 U.S. soldiers during the past two years.</p>

THE FERTILE PLAIN between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers could not be more different than the mountains of central Bosnia. Here farmers in small villages hidden beneath a canopy of palm trees exist much as they have since Ancient Mesopotamia. Canals criss-cross the landscape irrigating the land from the waters of the two great rivers. Where modern urban Iraq is dirty, ugly and threatening, in the countryside there is a timeless quality which suggests that these simple villagers may have escaped the mayhem gripping the rest of the country. But as Yusuf Shaalan explains, first appearances can be very deceptive....

...Despite the amazing progress in Iraq in two short years, some armchair experts carp that we should have moved even faster. Frankly, it's hard to understand what they are thinking.... From the outset, the Coalition recognized that democracy requires more than just elections. We judged that we had a special obligation to help Iraqis design a political and legal structure to guide Iraq's journey from tyranny to democracy. The result, after three months of intense negotiations and compromise, was the interim constitution. This revolutionary document addresses three crucial areas. First, the Coalition insisted that checks and balances guard against the...

<p>There's no telling how much Saddam Hussein's palaces would be worth had he held on to them.</p> <p>Residential real estate prices in Iraq's capital have quadrupled in many parts of the city, says Ali al-Difaie, 54, the manager of a government office that processes property deeds. Al-Difaie and real estate agents say the rise is driven by an increase in income since the U.S.-led invasion two years ago and the liberalization of building and property laws.</p>

...Gotcha! (Or Maybe Not) Blogger Joe Fairbanks notes a hilarious exchange between Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D., Calif.) and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. As the latter testified Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee, the former tried but failed to catch him in a misstatement of fact: Sanchez: Unfortunately, as I said, this committee has had a hard time assessing where we really stand with the Iraqi army as an effective fighting force. Over the past year, we've received incredibly widely fluctuating estimates of that. And I think you have a real credibility problem on this issue. Rumsfeld: Fluctuations of what?...

Earlier this week, millions of Iraqis turned out to vote in the country’s first free election in over 50 years. They battled violence and intimidation to cast their ballots, determined to overcome terrorism and create self-government. Despite several terrorist attacks, mostly by suicide bombers, the Iraqis celebrated their freedom with fingers stained purple as proof of having cast a ballot. The incidents, fewer in number than had been feared, could not destroy the feeling of joy among the Iraqi people of being able to have a voice in the election. One man, a Sunni engineer and ex-soldier said of the...

It is now 3 am in Iraq the polls will be opening in the next few hours as the world watches and hold's it breath. Iraq is about to undertake a historic vote.Lets wish them well....... please post all comments and election photos to this thread.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU, Iraq, Jan. 10, 2005 — An Iraqi man foiled an assault by three armed attackers outside his home in south-central Iraq Jan. 5, shooting one of the attackers and sending the other two fleeing, according to 1st Cavalry Division officials. The man flagged down a group of Marines patrolling the area and described the incident. He said the assailants, armed with AK-47 rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, were attempting to set an improvised explosive device at his front door, in apparent retaliation for an earlier argument. Spotting their attempt to blow up his house, he...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said that the insurgency in Iraq (news - web sites) "will not end," as insurgents are determined to derail the country's democratic transition. Powell reiterated that Iraq's January 30 elections will take place as scheduled and that the US and Iraqi forces are working to have security in place for the polls. But, he told CBS television, "the insurgency will not end." "These insurgents are determined to have no representative government. They want to go back to a tyranny," Powell said. "And so the insurgency will continue...

NEW YORK (AP) An expert on Iraq's postwar reconstruction was sentenced Monday to six months house arrest and two years probation for trying to smuggle into the United States 4,000-year-old artifacts stolen from Iraq's national museum in the chaos after the U.S.-led invasion. Joseph Braude, 30, had pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Allyne Ross in August to charges of smuggling and making false statements. Braude could have faced up to 16 years in prison. Braude is a Middle East expert fluent in Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi, who had for years assisted the FBI and CIA with counterterrorism efforts. When...

The president declared victory over a year ago, but terrorists continue to pick off U.S. troops and even American civilians at the rate of three per day. The maniacal dictator may be long gone, but his hard-core followers continue to wreak havoc across the land, with the interim government seemingly powerless to stop the mayhem. Back home, the press takes an increasingly pessimistic tone, with some of the most prominent news organs pronouncing the U.S.'s postwar strategy an abject failure. Iraq 2004? Not exactly.Try Germany 1946, in the first year after World War II.To hear the liberals tell the story,...

HEIDELBERG, Germany — The U.S. military overwhelmed Saddam Hussein’s forces on the way to Baghdad in spring 2003. But the man who led the ground invasion told soldiers Wednesday that he wished he had done a better job directing his units as the war shifted from conventional to street warfare. Army Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, the former commander of V Corps, also said he wished he had recognized more quickly when the power in Iraq shifted from Saddam’s regime to the Iraqi people. “There was a point when the regime was no longer relevant, no longer pulling the strings...

It’s not an “if.” It’s a “when.” Pentagon officials have indicated that they plan to send as many as 15,000 additional troops during the first four months of 2005, and the President George W. Bush continues to insist “we will stay the course” until Iraq is stabilized. (I do wish his advisers would provide a different vocabulary so that those of us steeped in the mistakes regarding Vietnam could be spared painful flashbacks.) Where will the additional troops come from? The Bush administration insists there will be no draft, but its credibility has been badly tarnished. The “backdoor draft” that...

If a new Iraq government should agree to let American forces stay on, how many bases will the US request? One, as the United States Army currently maintains in Honduras? Six, the number of installations it lists in the Netherlands. Or maybe 12? The Pentagon isn't saying. But a dozen is the number of so-called "enduring bases" located by John Pike, director of GlobalSecurities.org. His military affairs website gives their names. They include, for example, Camp Victory at the Baghdad airfield and Camp Renegade in Kirkuk. The Chicago Tribune last March said US engineers are constructing 14 "enduring bases," but...

Iraq: a descent into civil war? Luke Harding in Baghdad Wednesday September 15, 2004 The Guardian The aftermath of a car bomb outside a police station in Baghdad. Photo: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/Getty Images Lying amid the debris strewn near Al-Karkh police station was the photo of a young man in a blue T-shirt. The passport snap had been part of his application to join Iraq's police force. Yesterday, however, he and dozens of other recruits queueing outside the station in central Baghdad were blown to pieces by a car bomb. Near the photo, someone had heaped the shoes of the dead...

WASHINGTON — President Bush said Thursday that he believes he made the right decision to invade Iraq and thinks voters will not deny him a second term even if they disagree with the war. With the number of U.S. casualties expected to reach 1,000 well before the election, Bush said, "The president has to make hard decisions. My job is to confront problems not pass them on. And the American people have seen me make the hardest of decisions. That's just going to have to be a part of their decision-making process." He made his comments in an interview with...

Many on the left, most visibly Presidential contender John Kerry, often claim that the "coalition of the willing" is weak and that participation from the international community has been minimal if anything. Opponents of President Bush use such claims in order to discredit the legitimacy of this noble endeavor for freedom. It may not be such a bad idea to look at the state of our coalition, not in an effort to attack President Bush, but rather to conduct a healthy reassessment and critique of the coalition and our allies. Several weeks ago, Michael Rubin returned from the Coalition Provisional...

WASHINGTON - President Bush said for the first time on Thursday he made a "miscalculation of what the conditions would be" after U.S. troops went to Iraq, The New York Times reported. The insurgency, he maintained, was the unintended result of a "swift victory" that led to Iraqi troops disappearing into the cities and mounting a rebellion. Bush also told the newspaper he did not believe his Democratic opponent had lied about his time in Vietnam. The group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has aired advertisements challenging John Kerry's account of his service, and claiming Kerry lied about circumstances surrounding...

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) said for the first time on Thursday he made a "miscalculation of what the conditions would be" after U.S. troops went to Iraq (news - web sites), The New York Times reported. The insurgency, he maintained, was the unintended result of a "swift victory" that led to Iraqi troops disappearing into the cities and mounting a rebellion. Bush also told the newspaper he did not believe his Democratic opponent had lied about his time in Vietnam. The group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has aired advertisements challenging John Kerry (news -...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - U.N. weapons experts have found 20 engines used in banned Iraqi missiles in a Jordan scrapyard along with other equipment that could be used to make weapons of mass destruction, an official said Wednesday. The discoveries were revealed to the U.N. Security Council by acting chief U.N. inspector Demetrius Perricos during in a closed-door briefing. The text was obtained by The Associated Press. The U.N. team was following up on an earlier discovery of a similar Al Samoud 2 engine in a scrapyard in the Dutch port of Rotterdam. Perricos said inspectors also want to check...

U.S., U.N. Blindsided on Iraq PM Announcement 1 hour, 55 minutes ago Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Caren Bohan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When word surfaced in Baghdad on Friday that Iyad Allawi would lead Iraq's interim government, confusion reigned both in Washington and at the United Nations, despite President Bush's assurances of an orderly handover. For weeks, the Bush administration has described the selection of the interim government as a process that was being spearheaded by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in consultation with the United States and Iraqis. Bush, in a major address on Monday, laid out...

PARIS, May 25 (Reuters) - France demanded changes on Monday to a U.S.-British draft U.N. resolution outlining the handover of power to an interim Iraqi government and said Iraqis must be handed genuine sovereignty on June 30. President Jacques Chirac, whose country led opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq and holds a power of veto in the United Nations Security Council, set out France's concerns in a telephone conversation with U.S. President George W. Bush. The draft, presented on Monday to the Security Council, sets June 30 as the date for a transfer of power to Iraqis. "This draft...contains...

Read, if you haven’t already, Barbara Lerner’s important piece in last week’s NRO. Lerner is indispensable to understanding the string of troubles that have hit the US in Iraq over the past few days, from the stalemate in Fallujah to the photos of abused Iraqi prisoners that have so badly damaged America’s image in the Arab and Muslim world. At bottom, the US government seems paralyzed between two contradictory approaches to the reconstruction of the country. Approach number one is advocated by the US State Department, the British Foreign Office, much of the uniformed military – and most of the...

Rumsfeld’s War, Powell’s Occupation Rumsfeld wanted Iraqis in on the action — right from the beginning. By Barbara Lerner The latest post-hoc conventional wisdom on Iraq is that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld won the war but lost the occupation. There are two problems with this analysis (which comes, most forcefully, from The Weekly Standard). First, it's not Rumsfeld's occupation; it's Colin Powell's and George Tenet's. Second, although it's painfully obvious that much is wrong with this occupation, it's simple-minded to assume that more troops will fix it. More troops may be needed now, but more of the same will not do...