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The uproar in Britain over the release of the only person convicted in the Lockerbie bombing gathered momentum on Monday, with critics saying at an emergency session of the Scottish Parliament that the Scottish justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, had brought shame on Scotland and jeopardized its relations with the United States. The fury in Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, echoed indignation in the United States from President Obama; the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III; prominent senators; and relatives of those who died on Pan Am Flight 103 when it exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, killing 270 people,...

Already badly shaken by American outrage and opprobrium over the release of the convicted Lockerbie airliner bomber, the British government faced fresh embarrassment on Saturday when the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, met with the newly liberated prisoner in Tripoli and thanked Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, “my friend,” for interceding with the Scottish government to let the man go. In an appearance characteristic for its capricious mischief-making, Colonel Qaddafi heaped praise not only on Mr. Brown but on Queen Elizabeth and her second son, Andrew, duke of York, for helping in the release of the bomber, Abdel Basset...

“I absolutely reject that idea, I don’t believe it,” the general said, adding: “It is true that there are many places in this country that don’t have an adequate level of security. We don’t have progress as even and as fast as any of us would like. But we are not losing in Afghanistan.” At another point, he was more emphatic. There are major challenges facing the war effort, he said, “But we will win.”

BAGHDAD: General David Petraeus looked out from the Black Hawk helicopter at the early evening vistas of Baghdad rushing by 150 feet below, pointing at bustling markets, amusement parks and soccer fields, scattered through neighborhoods where miles of concrete barriers stand like sentinels against the threat of suicide bombers. Pressing the "talk" button on his headset, the slightly built 54-year-old general, the top American commander in Iraq, said glimpses of the normal life that have survived the war's horrors helped boost his own flagging spirits, especially on days when signs of battlefront progress are offset by new bombings with mass...

BAGHDAD — Gen. David H. Petraeus looked out from a Black Hawk helicopter at the vistas of Baghdad rushing by 150 feet below on a recent summer evening, pointing at bustling markets, amusement parks and soccer fields scattered through neighborhoods where miles of concrete barriers stood like sentinels against the threat of suicide bombers. Pressing the talk button on his headset, the slightly built, 54-year-old general, the top American commander in Iraq, said glimpses of the normal life that have survived the war’s horrors have helped to boost his own flagging spirits, especially on days when signs of battlefront progress...

Critics of the troop surge have been arguing that it isn’t making any difference on the ground—the only thing it’s doing, they claim, is driving up American casualties. The facts are starting to contradict their claims. I’ve recently posted a couple of items noting that reliable on-the-ground observers—namely Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of The Brookings Institution and John Burns of the New York Times—have found that violence against Iraqis is falling. Now comes news that the number of American casualties is also declining, at least temporarily. There were spikes in the number of Americans killed in action in April...

Say what you will about reporters in general or the New York Times in particular: John Burns breaks all the stereotypes. As the Times’ longtime Baghdad bureau chief, he has been a fearless and honest chronicler of the war. He has presented plenty of evidence of disasters, but he isn’t afraid to highlight successes when they occur, and to warn of the dangers of American disengagement.

New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner John Burns on Iraq, Iran and how the surge is working. HH: Pleased to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show John Burns of the New York Times. Mr. Burns, welcome, it’s been about six months since we spoke, and I gather you’re in Baghdad today? JB: I am indeed. HH: How long have you been back in Baghdad? JB: About three months. We take long rotations here, and then we reward ourselves with nice long breaks back home in the United States, or in my case, in the United Kingdom. HH: Well, there...

As president of Iraq's Olympic committee, the president's son was the country's sports czar. According to several accounts from players, he turned his sadistic obsessions on the national soccer team. -Snip- But those were the lesser miseries. Some players endured long periods in a military prison, beaten on their backs with electric cables until blood flowed. Other punishments included "matches" kicking concrete balls around the prison yard in 130-degree heat, and 12-hour sessions of push-ups, sprints and other fitness drills, wearing heavy military fatigues and boots.

New York Times Baghdad bureau chief John F. Burns discusses Iraq on the Charlie Rose Show. BURNS: “Well, I think, quite simply that the United States armed forces here — and I find this to be very widely agreed amongst Iraqis that I know, of all ethnic and sectarian backgrounds — the United States armed forces are a very important inhibitor against violence. I know it`s argued by some people that they provoke the violence. I simply don`t believe that to be in the main true. “I think it`s a much larger truth that where American forces are present, they...

RAMADI, Iraq: Sunni merchants watched warily from behind neat stacks of fruit and vegetables as Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno walked with a platoon of bodyguards through the Qatana bazaar here one recent afternoon. At last, one leathery-faced trader glanced furtively up and down the narrow, refuse-strewn street to check who might be listening, then broke the silence. "America good! Al Qaeda bad!" he said in halting English, flashing a thumb's-up in the direction of the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq.

Excerpt - BAGHDAD, June 24 — As the judge pronounced five death sentences on him on Sunday, the man Iraqis know as Chemical Ali seemed a shadow of the merciless enforcer who oversaw poison gas attacks that killed thousands of Kurdish villagers in Iraq’s northern uplands nearly 20 years ago. In his early 60s, severely weakened by diabetes, Ali Hassan al-Majid leaned heavily on a walking stick for the 18 minutes it took the judge to read guilty verdicts on counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Unlike his cousin Saddam Hussein, whose shouted defiance nearly drowned out...

I just wanted to let anyone who reads this know that: NYT Bureau Chief John Burns, who has seen more of Iraq than any other reporter, and is described by Ed Koch as, “ The most respected war correspondent in Iraq ........................ who seems to discuss the war in Iraq nightly on New York City television stations. You can’t mistake him. While the U.S. soldiers he regularly describes have G.I. haircuts, his hair has the look of an unshorn Merino sheep.”Anyhow, and I didn’t see it (apparently the video is available) but Mr. Burns was on The Charlie Rose Show...

Excerpt - BAGHDAD, Jan. 8 — The courtroom he dominated for 15 months seemed much smaller on Monday without him there to mock the judges and assert his menacing place in history. But the thick, high-register voice of Saddam Hussein was unmistakable. In audio recordings made years ago and played 10 days after his hanging, Mr. Hussein was heard justifying the use of chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s, predicting they would kill “thousands” and saying he alone among Iraq’s leaders had the authority to order chemical attacks. In the history of prosecutions against some of...

BAGHDAD: When American soldiers woke Saddam Hussein in his cell near Baghdad airport at 3:55 a.m. last Saturday, they told him to dress for a journey to Baghdad. He had followed the routine dozens of times before, traveling by helicopter in the predawn darkness to the courtroom where he spent 14 months on trial for his life. When his cell lights were dimmed on Friday night, Hussein may have hoped that he would live a few days longer, and perhaps cheat the hangman altogether. According to Task Force 134, the American military unit responsible for all Iraqi detainees, Hussein "had...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 5 - Amid the wrenching testimony of a survivor who told of the atrocities wrought by Saddam Hussein's secret police, the presence of a former American attorney general on Mr. Hussein's defense team in the trial court on Monday seemed to be one of the day's less bewildering things. Ramsey Clark, one of America's more renowned contrarians, made a mark notable even by his own singular standards on Monday when he delivered a lecture to the judges on the elements essential to a fair trial, including adequate physical protection for the defense lawyers. Earlier, flushed and indignant,...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 12 - Former officials of the Baath Party confirmed Saturday on their Web site the death of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the last of Saddam Hussein's inner circle still at large in Iraq and a man long sought by the American military command as the effective leader of the Baathist insurgent underground here. "On the blessed soil of Iraq, the soul of our comrade in struggle, and field commander of the heroic resistance, Izzat Ibrahim, passed away to his creator at dawn yesterday," the posting said. The Web site, which is considered an authentic voice of the Baathist...

At least four women serving in the American military, including three marines, are among the six known dead in a suicide car bombing in Falluja on Thursday, military officials in Baghdad and Washington said Friday...

WASHINGTON, May 14 - The Bush administration, struggling to cope with a recent intensification of insurgent violence in Iraq, has received signals from some radical Sunni Arab leaders that they would abandon fighting if the new Shiite majority government gave Sunnis a significant voice in the country's political evolution, administration officials said this week. The officials said American contacts with what they called "rejectionist" elements among Sunni Arabs - the governing minority under Saddam Hussein, which has generated much of the insurgency, and largely boycotted January's elections - showed that many wanted to join in the political system, including the...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Nearly two years after American troops captured Baghdad, Haifa Street is like an arrow at the city's heart. A little more than two miles long, it runs south through a canyon of mostly abandoned high-rises and majestic date palms almost to the Assassin's Gate, the imperial-style arch that is the main portal to the Green Zone compound, the principal seat of American power. When most roads in central Baghdad are choked with traffic, there is rarely more than a trickle of vehicles on Haifa Street. At the day's height, a handful of pedestrians scurry down empty sidewalks,...