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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,...

BAGHDAD (AFP) — The US military is to hand over security control of the former Sunni insurgent bastion of Anbar province to Iraqi forces in the next 10 days, a US military spokesman announced on Monday."The handover of Anbar is expected to take place in the next 10 days," Lieutenant David Russell told AFP, declining to provide an exact date.Anbar would be the tenth of Iraq's 18 provinces to be handed back to Iraqi forces by the US-led coalition amid a push to transfer security control of the entire country back to Baghdad.Anbar province in western Iraq, the country's largest,...

Democrats no longer talk of the 18 benchmarks for measuring progress in Iraq because so much progress has now taken place. Way back in the dark days of 2007, when the only popular question about the Iraq war concerned the degree of tragedy, Congress’s Iraq “benchmarks” were all the rage among Democrats. Every argument against a continued U.S. presence in Iraq was constructed around the Maliki administration’s apparent inability to meet the political and security-based milestones as outlined by America’s Democratic-majority Congress. Then something happened. The gains of the troop surge allowed the Iraqi government and citizenry to implement the...

Nancy Pelosi(D-San Francisco) is the third in line for the Presidency. How is it that she gets away with such nonsense as crediting the goodwill of the Iranians for the surge in Iraq? This woman is Not too swift, illinformed , dangerous and a very loose unite. (Audio Included)

Fallujah is strange, sullen, wild-eyed, badass, and just plain mean,” writes Bing West in his 2005 war chronicle No True Glory. “Fallujans don’t like strangers, which includes anyone not homebred. Wear lipstick or Western-style long hair, sip a beer or listen to an American CD, and you risk the whip or a beating.” Fallujah has been Iraq’s bad-boy city since at least the time of the British in Mesopotamia; even then, travelers were warned to stay out. More recently, Saddam Hussein recruited some of his regime’s most ruthless officers from Fallujah. Even though it was a quieter city than most...

General cites recent rise in violence and urges senators to halt troop withdrawals for at least 45 days this summer. WASHINGTON -- Arguing for a continuing U.S. troop presence, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus told Congress today that the recent flare-up of violence across Iraq demonstrates that recent security improvements are "fragile and reversible." The top U.S. commander said that troop reductions begun in December should continue through July, but that withdrawals should halt after that for at least 45 days. Petraeus said that further cuts would depend on progress in security, leading Democrats to charge that that Petraeus was...

One of our most faithful readers writes from Baghdad, where he is serving as an officer in the Army Reserve: I'm back over here for my fourth Army Reserve stint since 2004. What a difference a year makes. In late 2006 and early 2007, just after surge had been announced, many commentators and thinkers -- in uniform and out -- thought that Anbar was hopeless, a lost cause. Just google "Anbar Lost" to see what I mean. Nowadays, it has been weeks since we lost a soldier in Anbar. More incredibly Iraqi Army units, composed of Anbari Sunnis, have deployed...

Pelosi calls Iraq a 'failure' By: Mike Allen February 10, 2008 01:16 PM EST House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said twice Sunday that Iraq “is a failure,” adding that President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.” “The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.” The speaker hastened to add: “The troops have succeeded, God bless them.” Pelosi’s harsh verdict is a reminder of the dilemma for Democrats as...

<p>It has been a frustrating year for the Democrat-controlled Congress.</p> <p>They came to power on an anti-war ticket but have so far failed to change the course in Iraq or bring American troops home.</p> <p>Despite holding the purse strings, attempts to cut funding for the conflict have been met with the President's veto and an inability to raise enough votes to overturn it.</p>

The great thing about the Web is that we can easily RETRIEVE embarrassing information about the candidates. In this case, a video of Joe Biden loudly putting his foot in the mouth earlier this year about the "inevitable" failure of the Surge was posted on YouTube by none other than Joe Biden himself (JoeBidendotcom). This video was posted on YouTube on March 14 of this year so this bloviating Senate speech by Biden was made on or before then. Notice how the Democrats are now RELUCTANT to talk about Iraq? That is because the Surge has been an astounding...

US 'kills key Iraq al-Qaeda man' Abu Maysara was said to be a senior figure in al-Qaeda in Iraq A man killed during fighting in Iraq last month was a key figure in the al-Qaeda in Iraq movement, the US military has said.Abu Maysara, a Syrian, was a senior adviser to the group's leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, a statement said. Abu Maysara died during a raid near Samarra and was identified using DNA evidence, the military said. Separately, US military officials say they regret the killing of an Iraqi civilian during operations on Monday. The militant Abu Maysara and...

The San Francisco Chronicle, newspaper of the liberal elite from the West Coast capitol of the far left, is making some astonishing observations today regarding Iraq: Is the troop surge in Iraq working?If it is, the battleground at home could shift in ways unthinkable just two months ago: President Bush could be off the ropes and Republicans back on offense. The Democratic Congress and presidential candidates could lose their footing on their biggest issue. And U.S. troop commitments and war funding could be set on a higher, more permanent trajectory.… There is no question that violence in Iraq has ebbed...

Map of Salahadin province and the Za'ab Triangle region. Click map to view. As al Qaeda in Iraq attempts to reestablish its networks in the Northern provinces, the Iraqi military and Multinational Forces Iraq have been shaping the battlefield in the north for a showdown with the terror group. Iraqi and US forces received a big boost the past week when a significant number of Iraqis formed a Concerned Local Citizens group in the region. Meanwhile, the Islamic Army of Iraq in Mosul has vowed to dig in and fight the Coalition. Iraqi and US forces have been focusing...

BAGHDAD, Nov 27 (KUNA) -- Leading Shiite cleric in Iraq Ali Sistani Tuesday banned the killing of Iraqis, particularly the Sunnis, and urged the Shiites to protect their brother Sunnis. Sistani bans the Iraqi blood in general the blood of Sunnis in particular. His announcement came during a meeting with a delegation from Sunni clerics from southern and northern Iraq. The clerics are visiting Najaf to participate in the first national conference for Ulemaa of Shiites and Sunnis. Sistani called on the Shiites to protect their Sunni brothers, according to Sheikh Khaled Al-Mulla, head of the authority of Ulemaa of...

Image from recently released Al Furqan / Al Qaeda in Iraq execution video. Click to view. After nearly a two month lull in videos released by Al Furqan, al Qaeda in Iraq's primary propaganda arm, two new videos of attacks on US forces have been released over the past three days. Al Qaeda in Iraq is attempting to reestablish its propaganda presence in Iraq, while Multinational Forces Iraq is seeking to dismantle the network. "Despite the recent loss of numerous cells across Iraq, the media wing of al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) has produced a second video product,...

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Hundreds of Iraqi refugees boarded buses for home on Tuesday in the first convoy from an Iraqi-funded effort to speed the return of families that fled the country's violence and insecurity. Many Iraqis have headed back on own their own from Syria and elsewhere as extremist attacks have fallen sharply in Baghdad and other areas. But now the Iraqi government is hoping to accelerate the flow - and draw more attention to the recent drop in violence - by offering to pay for trips home. The program also seeks to win favor from neighboring countries such...

Iraqi forces can now gather intelligence and go after targets as successfully as U.S. units there, a senior intelligence advisor in the region said today. Iraqi intelligence gathering and processing has progressed at the tactical level to the point that target information is collected, processed and approved and then sent to Iraqi units, who go after the target. The cycle is successful in yielding results about 30 percent of the time. That is about the same as U.S. efforts, said Daniel M. Maguire, the senior intelligence advisor and director of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior intelligence...

Iraqis who fled their country because of the war are returning by the hundreds of thousands to Iraq from Syria, Egypt and Jordan because of the improved security.  Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is providing the free bus and flight travel: Residents welcome their relatives who have just returned from Syria after arriving in Baghdad November 21, 2007.   REUTERS/Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud (IRAQ) The return is dramatic. Baghdad has been transformed:  Iraqi refugees are returning home in dramatic numbers, concluding that security in Baghdad has been transformed. Thousands have left their refuge in Syria in recent months, according to some estimates. The Iraqi Embassy is organising...

Violence in Iraq has fallen at a rate that has surprised military commanders and even one of the architects of the “surge” that boosted US troop numbers in the country this year, according to figures gathered by the US. The figures show the numbers of suicide attacks, roadside bombings, mortar and other attacks on US forces and on the Iraqi population have more than halved since 30,000 extra troops in June. The military attributes the decline to the surge, the spread of local ceasefire deals across Iraq, a ceasefire by radical Shia militias and an improvement in the Iraqi security...

BAGHDAD, Nov. 19 — Five months ago, Suhaila al-Aasan lived in an oxygen tank factory with her husband and two sons, convinced that they would never go back to their apartment in Dora, a middle-class neighborhood in southern Baghdad. Today she is home again, cooking by a sunlit window, sleeping beneath her favorite wedding picture. *snip*The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February. The number of bodies appearing on Baghdad’s streets has plummeted to about 5 a day, from as many as 35...