Iraq News Roundup

The provincial election plan — strongly backed by Washington — would shift more political powers to regions and is viewed by Sunni Arabs as path to gain more influence over decisions by the Shiite-led government.

Minutes after the Democratic presidential candidate met the Iraqi leader at his private residence, Maliki's spokesman, Ali Dabbagh, announced that Iraq wants American combat troops to leave by the end of 2010, a few months later than Obama has proposed.

"The Americans and their allies transferred our leader, Colonel Fayssal al-Zoba'i from his post because they have bad plans for the city," a major in the Fallujah police force told IPS. "He has all the right to keep his post because he was the one who led us to defeat the insurgency while the Americans failed. They (the U.S. military) seem to have a plan to destroy the city again."

After prayers, hundreds of young men began demonstrating Friday in front of nearby government forces. Some men began lunging at the Iraqi troops; most held them back. "Go on! Go on! Keep walking. Head home to your families," a woman told the men, who sheepishly followed her orders.

Teresa Moss, a counselor at Fort Campbell's Lincoln Elementary School, hears it in the voices of deployed soldiers' children as they meet in groups to share accounts of nightmares, bedwetting and heartache. "They listen to each other. They hear that they aren't the only ones not able to sleep, having their teachers yell at them."

The agreement appears to be a political favor to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, but the White House said it wasn't a reversal of President Bush's long opposition to any fixed schedule for troop reductions, including the veto of bills that included timetables for withdrawal.

Security has collapsed again in Fallujah, despite United States military claims. Local militias supported by US forces claim to have "cleansed" the city, 70 kilometers to the west of Baghdad, of all insurgency. But the sudden resignation of the city's chief of police, Colonel Fayssal al-Zoba'i, has appeared as one recent sign of growing unrest.

As of Thursday, July 17, 2008, at least 4,122 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 3,358 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

Iraq's Kurdish leaders blocked a vote on the country's proposed provincial election law Tuesday when they walked out of parliament, leaving the legislature without a quorum. The dispute centers on Kurdish demands for a referendum in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk on whether it should become part of the Kurds' semiautonomous region in northern Iraq.

Iraq hopes to have control over security across the country by the end of the year, national security advisor Mowaffak Rubaie said Wednesday, as U.S.-led forces handed over responsibility for the southern province of Qadisiya to local authorities. The government is pressing U.S. officials for a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces.

After the first bomber detonated himself at around 8 a.m., the survivors began to flee. The second bomber chased them into a corner and detonated into the crowd seconds later, said a man working at the center who wanted to be identified only as Maj. Ghassan out of fears for his safety.

Though the troop buildup ordered last year has ended, there are still 150,000 in Iraq -- as many as 15,000 more than before it began. There now are technically 13 Army and two Marine combat brigades in Iraq -- the same as before the buildup -- but the force is as much as 10 percent larger than it was in January 2007.

The bombers, wearing belts packed with explosives, waded into a crowd of more than 200 recruits just after 8 a.m. and blew themselves up about 30 seconds apart in front of the headquarters of an Iraqi brigade where the recruits had gathered

As of Tuesday, July 15, 2008, at least 4,120 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. Since the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq, 30,409 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action, according to the Defense Department's weekly tally.

Everett, a member of the Texas Army National Guard, was electrocuted in September 2005, while using a power washer to clean sand from beneath a Humvee. Maseth, an Army Ranger and Green Beret, was electrocuted in January 2008 while taking a shower in his Army barracks in Baghdad.

"The security detail came in literally as they were cleaning the blood from the floor - they had just killed two Sunni kids," said Lt. Col. Craig J. Simper, a Judge Advocate General Corps officer from the Utah-based 419th Fighter Wing, who helped arrange the inspection. "The explanation was that these guys were trying to escape."

A Shia politician said: "The main Mehdi Army bastions in Baghdad were Sadr City, with a population of 2.4 million people, and in al-Hurriyah and al- Shu'ala districts, with a further 1.1 million. That is more than half the people in Baghdad, and I suspect the Mehdi Army could take back these areas in 48 hours' fighting."

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.

The failure of months of negotiations over the more detailed accord -- blamed on both the Iraqi refusal to accept U.S. terms and the complexity of the task -- deals a blow to the Bush administration's plans to leave in place a formal military architecture in Iraq that could last for years.

Bush was not being sincere when he said the United States would leave if asked, according to analyst Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense to president Ronald Reagan, "He said it but he didn't mean it, he never thought they would ask for it."

Al-Jabouri complained bitterly about Baghdad's refusal to permit Sunni volunteers - called the "Sons of Iraq" by the Americans - to join either the Iraqi army or police. There are about 1,300 in this area; they are paid under American contracts to temporarily provide security in their neighborhoods.

Before Army Sgt. First Class Randal Ruby was accused in Iraq of beating prisoners and of conspiring to plant rifles on dead civilians, he amassed a 10-year criminal record documenting assaults on his wife in Colorado and Washington state and a drunken high-speed police chase in Maine for which he remains wanted.

Although it has contributed more than most, the U.S., whose policies unleashed the chaos that spawned the outflow, has clearly failed in its own responsibilities: downplaying the issue, providing far less assistance to host countries than needed and admitting to its own shores merely a trickle of refugees and only after unprecedented security checks to which asylum seekers from other nations are not subjected.

Iraqi security forces have grown to 566,000 as of May 2008, up from 444,000 in June 2007, Dubik said. The quality of those troops also has improved, he said, though leadership is uneven and there are still pockets of sectarianism.

U.S. military officials say IRAM attacks, unlike roadside bombings and conventional mortar or rocket attacks, have the potential to kill scores of soldiers at once. IRAMs are fired at close range, unlike most rockets, and create much larger explosions.

She discovered that cemetery officials were attempting to impose new limits on media coverage of funerals of the Iraq war dead -- even after the fallen warriors' families granted permission for the coverage. She said that the new restrictions were wrong and that Army regulations didn't call for such limitations.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's demand for a timetable for complete United States military withdrawal from Iraq has signaled the almost certain defeat of the George W Bush administration's aim of establishing a long-term military presence in the country.

The Iraqi demands have put Mr. Bush in a politically awkward spot. The president has explicitly opposed any binding timetables — either from the Iraqis or from the war’s critics here at home — but he also pledged less than a month ago to abide by the will of Iraq’s leaders.

Earlier, bombs exploded in the western city of Falluja, killing four policemen and two civilians. Eighteen people were injured in the two blasts outside a bank in the city. The bomber in Mosul targeted the convoy of Gen Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, army commander of the Nineveh province.

Iraq's army and police will be fully manned and operational by mid-2009, possibly as early as April, the top U.S. general in charge of building Iraqi security forces said yesterday.

Iraq's national security adviser said Tuesday his country will not accept any security deal with the United States unless it contains specific dates for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces. U.S. officials had no immediate comment Tuesday on al-Rubaie's statement.

As of Tuesday, July 8, 2008, at least 4,115 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. Since the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq, 30,349 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action.

The military says in a statement that the bomb struck a convoy carrying the contractors Monday near the northern city of Mosul, 225 miles (360 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad.

"I thought, 'Nobody in the U.S. has any idea what it means when they hear that 20 people died in a suicide bombing.' I want people to be able to associate those numbers with the scene and the actual loss of human life. And to show why soldiers are suffering from PTSD.

"The direction we are taking is to have a memorandum of understanding either for the departure of the forces or to have a timetable for their withdrawal," the statement quoted Maliki as saying.

THE UAE has generously written off Iraq’s debts to the tune of just under $7 billion to assist Baghdad’s reconstruction efforts. However, in case other countries are reluctant to follow suit they shouldn’t be negatively judged as, in the past, pumping money into Iraq has been akin to tossing it into a bottomless pit.

Maliki said he was concerned about military pressure aimed at Iran regarding the country's nuclear activities, adding he would not permit U.S. forces to use Iraqi land, airspace and waterways as a means for attacking states in the region.

Iraqi police and medical officials say a bomb has killed the head of a U.S.-allied Sunni group south of Baghdad. The police officer says Ali Abdul Ridha al-Badri was the head of an awakening council in Iskandariyah, 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Baghdad, and was killed after meeting with U.S. forces.

Ray Hunt, the Texas oil man who landed a controversial oil production deal with Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, has enjoyed close political and business ties with Vice President Dick Cheney dating back a decade – and to the Bush family since the 1970s.

"No, no to colonisation! Out, out you occupier!" the crowd shouted in the centre of Sadr City where fierce battles raged in March and April between Shiite militants and US forces in which hundreds of people were killed.

He's going to divide the movement into two parts, just like the IRA did. There'll be a big-tent political party for the ordinary civilian supporter, backed by a small, well-trained urban guerrilla movement. And there'll be a firewall between the two groups, so Sadr can deny any armed operation that gets messy, just like Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein used to do when an IRA attack went wrong

The 58 U.S. servicewomen already killed by hostile action in Iraq equal almost four times the number of U.S. servicewomen killed by hostile action in all of World War II

The stepped-up surveillance reflects breakdowns in trust and coordination between the two forces. Officials said it was part of an expanded intelligence effort launched after American commanders were surprised by the timing of the Iraqi army's violent push into Basra three months ago.

Residents in Baghdad endured a second day of petrol shortages on Wednesday, a stark reminder that Iraq, a country with one of the world's largest oil reserves, faces major challenges delivering fuel to its people.

After inspecting a prison, police chief Tariq Yousef al-Asaal returned to his spacious office, where U.S. military officers and Iraq's power brokers have sought his advice. A week earlier, the governing council, the ruling body here in this dust-swept capital of Anbar province, had fired him.

"There are some who feel like -- that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."

The nation's top military officer said yesterday that more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan to tamp down an increasingly violent insurgency, but that the Pentagon does not have sufficient forces to send because they are committed to the war in Iraq.

Martin Onieal, 92, a patient at the Veteran Affairs medical center, registered to vote Monday, courtesy of the state's chief elections official — Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz.

His mother, Helen Burmeister, is doing everything she can to keep her son out of jail. She will demonstrate outside the post today in hopes of persuading the military to let her take her son home.

The Senate's 92-6 vote to pass the war-funding bill marked a victory for Bush, who has vigorously opposed any move by Congress to impose timetables for ending the Iraq war, now in its sixth year.

Iraq said on Monday that it had failed to sign technical support deals with global oil majors hoping to cash in on boosting the war-torn country's extensive but underexploited oilfields. Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani told a press briefing, "We did not finalise any agreement with them because they refused to offer consultancy based on fees as they wanted a share of the oil."

As of Saturday, June 28, 2008, at least 4,113 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The Pentagon is preparing to order roughly 30,000 troops to Iraq early next year in a move that would allow the U.S. to maintain 15 combat brigades in the country through 2009.

American soldiers fatally shot three Iraqi bank employees as their car passed a convoy near Baghdad International Airport, according to an Interior Ministry official and Yarmouk Hospital, where the bodies were brought.

The Pentagon faces a more than $100 billion bill to repair and replace worn out or destroyed equipment, vehicles and weapons, officials and members of Congress say, but paying for it may endanger plans to boost the size of the military.

The report also calls for a short-term extension of the current UN mandate for the presence of foreign troops as a means to cover US troops from prosecution as they prepare to withdraw. The Bush administration, in contrast, plans to sign a controversial bilateral agreement with the government of Maliki to continue the status quo of US troops as an occupying force.

Officials said the U.S. military, in a review for the Bush administration, has concluded that the Iraqi military and security forces are far from capable of independence. They said Iraq, solid development of its capabilities, was progressing at a slower rate than planned by the U.S.-led coalition.

The latest attack took place about 10:45 p.m. Tuesday in Nineveh province, where al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni extremist groups remain active. An Iraqi interpreter also died in the blast, the U.S. statement said without further details.

In the latest incident, three people including a baby were killed while 12 others were injured when a bus exploded in the Shiite-dominated city of Karbala, 100 kilometres south of the Iraqi capital.

Many political reconciliation efforts have stalled, that Iraq's security forces remain largely unable to operate without U.S. assistance and that its central government has not fulfilled commitments to spend its own money on reconstruction.

Four Americans — two soldiers and two civilians — were killed in a bomb blast Tuesday at a municipal council office in Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City district, U.S. officials said.

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007.

"We put our hopes in the law and in the courts and one after another they are found innocent," said Yousef Aid Ahmed, the lone surviving brother in the family. "This is an organized crime."

A local Iraqi official opened fire Monday on U.S. soldiers attending a municipal council meeting southeast of Baghdad, killing two of them and wounding four other Americans, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

The two sides remain far apart on core issues, including the number of bases where the United States will have a presence and U.S. demands for immunity from Iraqi law for U.S. soldiers and contractors. Other obstacles include U.S. authority to detain suspects, fight battles without Iraqi permission and control the country's airspace.

As of Sunday, June 22, 2008, at least 4,102 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Iraq will award contracts to 41 foreign oil firms in a bid to boost production that could give multinationals a potentially lucrative foothold in huge but underdeveloped oil fields, an official said on Sunday.

It would also provide about $165 billion to the Pentagon to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for about a year. That's enough time for Bush's successor to set Iraq policy.

There is no excuse for the U.S. Army's shabby treatment of Kamisha Block's parents and others who cared for her. Her commanders knew right away that she had been killed by a fellow soldier in Iraq, who had been harassing her. It was a standard murder-suicide. Incredibly, the Army first told her parents that it was an accidental death due to friendly fire.

Responding to an ABC News/Washington Times investigation, the Veterans Administration plans to inform 32,000 veterans that they are using a drug linked to suicide or violent behavior.

But five months later, implementation of the law is bogged down by infighting between politicians, and the committee once tasked with hunting out Baathists in government has found itself in the odd position of overseeing the process of rehiring them or offering them state pensions.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract.

The American concession would have a serious effect in Iraq, where there are an estimated 160,000 foreign contractors, many of them heavily armed security personnel.

Another major trend highlighted by the poll was that most countries held the American people in a more favorable light than the nation itself. In Jordan, there was a gap of 17 percentage points, with 36 percent of Jordanians expressing a favorable view of the American people, compared to 19 percent of the nation.

Many victims were trapped in their apartments by a raging fire that engulfed at least one building, according to police and Interior Ministry officials, who also said about 75 people were wounded. Stunned survivors stumbled through the rubble-strewn street, which was filled with the smoke from burning vehicles, witnesses said.

Mr. Smith refused to sign off on the payments to the company. "They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn't justify. Ultimately, the money that was going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn't going to do that."

Britain should not jeopardise coalition gains in Iraq by withdrawing its troops prematurely, US President George W. Bush said in an interview with The Observer newspaper published Sunday.

They could create their own legislation in their own Congress or Parliament, and thereby dictate to America what U.S. troops can and cannot do in this country, where they can go, where they must stay, and how many you’re allowed to have. So you may see the Iraqis taking over this war, and you may see a lot of U.S. gains being drawn back.

The movement of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr will not compete in local elections under its own name but join with other groups and ask its followers to vote for those candidates.

At the beginning of the conflict in 2003, the Bush administration gave Congress a cost estimate of $60 billion to $100 billion for the entirety of the war. But the battle has been dragging on much longer than most in the government expected, and costs have ballooned to nearly ten times the original estimate.

Nouri al-Maliki said the talks slumped because each side refused the other's demands. The initial framework agreed upon was to have been an accord "between two completely sovereign states, al-Maliki said. The U.S. demands "violate Iraqi sovereignty. At the end, we reached a dead end," he said.

Not a single qui tam case against war contractors has been joined by the Bush administration DOJ despite the possibility of recovering billions of dollars for the US taxpayer and reining in war profiteers, who continue to cheat and defraud the government and the US troops mired in battle.

"The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonization of Iraq," said Sami al-Askari, a senior Shiite politician close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "If we can't reach a fair agreement, many people think we should say, 'Goodbye, U.S. troops. We don't need you here anymore.' "

In fact, the entire debate about bringing them home is puzzling and frustrating to McCain. After all, why should we bring them home when being there for ever is the point?

Insomnia complaints among the vets were as severe as complaints among insomnia patients, and the vets had significantly worse sleep quality than good sleepers.

The Bush administration is conceding for the first time that the United States may not finish a complex security agreement with Iraq before President Bush leaves office.

Iraqi lawmakers say the United States is demanding 58 bases as part of a proposed "status of forces" agreement that will allow U.S. troops to remain in the country indefinitely.

"The U.S. and Iraqi officials I’ve spoken to say they would not be U.S. permanent bases in Iraq, they would be Iraqi bases and that U.S. troops would reside on them as tenants and may even have to pay some sort of nominal rent, so there would be a face saving device."

One US soldier was killed and 18 more wounded when a suicide car bomb exploded near to a patrol base in northern Iraq today. It is rare for such a high number of US troops to be injured in a single attack.

“This was either an attempt by General Johnson to deliberately deceive the Congress, or a display of negligent disregard for facts,” Dorgan wrote in the March 12 letter.

Whether or not Sadr has been weakened by the clashes in Basra and Sadr City, marginalising the Sadrists will be almost impossible, for they remain the only genuine mass movement in Iraq, with roots that long predate the fall of Saddam.

"In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”

As of Thursday, June 5, 2008, at least 4,092 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The doctor sent him back to war armed with the antidepressant Zoloft and the antianxiety drug clonazepam. "It's not easy for soldiers to admit the problems that they're having over there for a variety of reasons," LeJeune says. "If they do admit it, then the only solution given is pills."

Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

"From the principle of reciprocity, would it be appropriate for Iraqis to establish a 3,000 employee embassy in Washington?"

A truck packed with rockets blew up Wednesday in a Shiite area of Baghdad, killing 18 people in the deadliest single blast in the city in more than three months. Three U.S. soldiers were killed by gunfire north of the capital.

Brig. Gen. Gary Cheek, director of the Army's Warrior Care and Transition Office, which oversees 12,000 wounded soldiers, said: "I can see how that would be a problem. It's something we haven't considered."

An American soldier was killed by an armor-piercing roadside bomb in northeastern Baghdad yesterday, the military said. At least 4,087 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003,

A proposed U.S.-Iraq security agreement is shaping up as a major political battle between America and Iran, as the debate over the future of troops here intensifies ahead of the fall U.S. presidential election.

The contracts call for new spending, from supplying mentors to officials with Iraq's Defense and Interior ministries to establishing a U.S.-marshal-type system to protect Iraqi courts. Contractors would provide more than 100 linguists with secret clearances and deliver food to Iraqi detainees at a new, U.S.-run prison.

"One has to ask, 'Is it the policy of the United States of America that contractors can get away with murder?' And frankly, so far, it seems like the answer is 'yes.'"

All the arguments Australia marshalled to justify sending troops to fight in Iraq proved to be wrong, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said today, as the country's 550 combat soldiers headed home.

Sgt. Justin Laughner, shot dozens of photographs of the dead Iraqis. Laughner testified Thursday that Grayson ordered him to delete those images from his computer in February 2006, shortly before Watt arrived in Haditha to begin his investigation.

Sheikh Mohanned al-Gharrawi denounced the negotiations draped in an Iraqi flag, "The agreement says that there will be a security, military and economic extension that America controls. Why do they want to break the backbone of Iraq? The agreement wants to put an American in each house. This agreement is poison mixed in poison, not poison in honey because there is no honey at all."

Nadir Hamid Shamkhi has not stepped outside since March 24, when she retrieved her kidnapped husband's tortured body from a Baghdad morgue, buried him, and fled to her relatives' house in Risala – a slum in southwestern Baghdad.

A key member of the Sadrist movement, Sheikh Mohannad Al-Gazawi, denounced the proposed deal that will extend the US troop presence in Iraq beyond 2008,"This agreement binds Iraq and gives 99 percent of the country to America."

From an Apache helicopter, Capt. Ben Katzenberger's battlefield resembles a vast mosaic of tiny brown boxes. "The city looks like a bucket of Legos dumped out on the ground," the 26-year-old pilot said. "It's brown Legos, no color. It's really dense and hard to pick things out because everything looks the same."

Army soldiers committed suicide in 2007 at the highest rate on record, and the toll is climbing ever higher this year as long war deployments stretch on. At least 115 soldiers killed themselves last year, up from 102 the previous year, the Army said Thursday.

A suicide bomber blew up an explosive belt strapped to his body targeting a group of police volunteers near the Sinjar police department, west of Mosul, killing 16 and injuring 18.

Residents said some Marines at the western entrance to their city have been passing out the coins for two days in what they call a "humiliating" attempt to convert them to Christianity. In the markets, people crowded around men with the coins, passing them to each other and asking in surprise, "Have you seen this?"

McClellan, once a staunch defender of the war from the podium, comes to a stark conclusion, writing, "What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."

Iraq's largest Sunni Arab political bloc said Wednesday it has suspended talks on ending its boycott of the Shiite-led government due to a dispute over which positions it would assume, the head of the bloc said Wednesday.

Officials believe many more are keeping their illness secret. Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker says officials have no reliable figures on how many troops have PTSD or how many have sought treatment for it after serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Q: I sell foodstuffs. Sometimes the Occupying Powers or their associates come to my establishment. May I sell them foodstuffs?

A: Selling foodstuffs to the Occupying Powers is not permitted.

"Our being in Iraq helps Al-Qaeda. We have to beat them in the ideological struggle. Getting out of Iraq will help that."

U.S. Air Force Technical Sergeant Jeffrey VerSteegh, who repairs F-16 jets for the 132nd Fighter Wing, departed Des Moines, Iowa, in April for his third tour in Iraq. The father of four may lose his home when he returns.

McPhearson said the group does not dishonor veterans. The parades, which highlight wars waged for political ends, are also inherently political, he said. "It is ridiculous to say we have this political objective when the whole thing is about politics," McPhearson said.

And yes, we have many more tombstones than we have room for. As far back as they all stretch, we could put even more in.

The actual total is over 85,000 because the Pentagon chooses not to count as "Iraq casualties" the approximately 20,000 casualties discovered only after they returned from Iraq -mainly brain trauma from explosions.

Cody Morris is small and nimble - 5 foot 6 and 140 pounds. He refers to himself as "not a real smart guy." He has a severe learning disability and reads below the eighth-grade level. He failed fourth grade and repeated ninth grade before dropping out. At 15, he was sent to a military-themed reform school for standing lookout while a friend robbed a store.

Lawmakers loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr accused the Iraqi government of trying to crush the movement and warned Saturday of "black clouds" on the horizon for truces that have eased fighting between al-Sadr's militia and security forces.

The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the United States military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash.

An American soldier has been killed by roadside bomb southwest of Baghdad. The military says in a statement that the soldier died on Thursday in the attack 20 kilometers (12 miles) southwest of the capital.

The number of US soldiers "stop-lossed," or forced to serve past their agreed terms of enlistment (from an additional few months to over a year), has reached 58,000 in the past six years.

Iraqi soldiers opened fire to disperse supporters of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who were gathering for prayers in Basra on Friday, jeopardising a fragile peace in the southern city.

Gunmen assassinated Colonel Abdul Kareem Muhsin, the director of the protection department in the ministry of transportation while he was in his way back home on Mohammed al Qasim high way in east Baghdad around 3:00 p.m.

The U.S. must be careful not to withdraw forces from Iraq too quickly because security gains could be lost, warn Gen. David Petraeus, nominated to assume control of U.S. forces in the Middle East, and Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, picked to replace Petraeus as the top commander in Iraq.

Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric has been quietly issuing religious edicts declaring that armed resistance against U.S.-led foreign troops is permissible — a potentially significant shift by a key supporter of the Washington-backed government in Baghdad.

Senate Democrats are offering to drop billions of dollars in domestic programs from President Bush's war-funding bill in hopes of avoiding a veto. The plan by Majority Leader Harry Reid would also provide for passage of Bush's funding request without restrictions on his conduct of the Iraq war.

Seven active-duty Army brigades have been scheduled to deploy to Iraq later this year, a plan that would allow U.S. commanders to keep troop levels at about 140,000 through the end of the Bush administration and into the next president's term.

Until now, the Mosul sweep had seen almost no violence, even as U.S.-backed Iraqi soldiers and police conducted arrest raids in the city — a sign that militants had fled or were lying low.

Some 10,000 Iraqi troops fanned out in Baghdad's Sadr City on Tuesday, taking positions on main roads, rooftops and near hospitals in an attempt to establish government control in the Shiite militia enclave for the first time since Saddam Hussein's ouster.

The Louisiana National Guard unit that was called home in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was ordered yesterday to prepare to return to Iraq for its second tour.

The Pentagon has alerted nearly 40,000 active duty and National Guard soldiers that they will be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan starting this fall, in a sign that it expects hard fighting to continue on both fronts in what Pentagon officials call "the long war."

Robin Milonas says she's been stopped three times by police for erratic driving. When she sees a dark spot in the road, she thinks it's a landmine and swerves. Except for her job teaching special education, she stays home. She constantly checks to see whether the doors and windows are locked.

The skyrocketing cost of fuel isn’t just hitting U.S. drivers in the pocketbook — it’s blowing a bit of a hole in the Pentagon budget as well. 2009 isn’t the only concern; the Pentagon needs more money for fuel to cover the remaining five months of this fiscal year.

A dark pool of dried blood and a fallen red scarf mark the place where Ronak, who had fled to a woman's shelter in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah when she was accused of adultery by her husband, was shot three times by a man hiding on the roof of a nearby building.

A tribal leader said "the criminal act by U.S. forces" took place at a shooting range at the Radhwaniya police station. An Iraqi policeman found a target marked in the middle of the bullet-riddled Quran. Copies of the pictures of the Quran show multiple bullet holes and an expletive scrawled on one of its pages.

Oil exports in April were about 57 million barrels, down from 59 million in March. The official said the country usually exports oil from three ports: two in Basra and one in southern Turkey. This effort has been hampered by fighting.

"I'd like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out. Consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder. Additionally, we really don't or have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD."

As of Wednesday, May 14, 2008, at least 4,077 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,325 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

Al-Qaida persists in western Iraq and that a recent increase in attacks shows that the group remains a threat. A group of al-Qaida fighters recently infiltrated the area, went to the homes of 11 Iraqi police officers and beheaded them and one of their sons.

President Bush said yesterday that he gave up golfing in 2003 "in solidarity" with the families of soldiers who were dying in Iraq, concluding that it was "just not worth it anymore" to play the sport in a time of war.

The U.S. government has quietly withdrawn a $5 million reward it was offering for the killing or capture of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, named by Pentagon officials as the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Al-Masri had been one of America's most wanted figures in Iraq ever since his identity was revealed in 2006.

The Bush administration repeatedly disregarded corruption at the highest levels within the Iraqi government and kept secret potentially embarrassing information, two former State Department employees say.

As of Monday, May 12, 2008, at least 4,076 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,324 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

Eighteen American war veterans kill themselves every day. One thousand former soldiers receiving care from the Department of Veterans Affairs attempt suicide every month. More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas.

One day after an agreement between followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr and the Iraqi government to end more than six weeks of fighting, the streets in parts of the vast Shiite slum of Sadr City were deserted, amidst signs of a battle. Wires snaked out of potholes and from underneath tires - signs of past or future roadside bombs; abandoned pickup trucks, destroyed by airstrikes, littered the streets, and bullets or shrapnel scarred the houses.

"VA's decision, during wartime, to block voter registration for our hospitalized veterans is shameful, outrageous, and despicable," said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense.

U.S. forces are holding nearly all of these persons indefinitely, without an arrest warrant, without charge, and with no opportunity for those held to defend themselves in a trial. While the United States has put in place a formal review procedure that supposedly evaluates all detainees for release on a regular basis, detainees cannot attend these reviews, cannot confront evidence against them, and cannot be represented properly by an attorney.

People of Baquba are used to seeing bodies floating by in the Diyala river, and have long since ceased to use water from the river or fish in it. Rising summer temperatures have made these problems worse. Many families like to use air coolers that rely heavily on water. Without some cooling it is difficult to sleep through the heat.

Officials said they do not know the number of service members cremated at the Kent County facility, which is identified on a billboard as Friends Forever Pet Cremation Service.

A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding that emerged after an Iraqi Army general in Karbala erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin. When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all.

The State Department has just renewed its contract to provide security for American diplomats in Iraq for at least another year. Threats by the Iraqi government to strip Western contractors of their immunity from Iraqi law have gone nowhere. The chief reason for the company’s survival? State Department officials said Friday that they did not believe they had any alternative to Blackwater.

Blackwater Worldwide, the security contractor blamed by an angry Iraqi government for the shooting deaths of 17 civilians, is not expected to face criminal charges — all but ensuring the company will keep its multimillion-dollar contract to protect U.S. diplomats.

Violence in this country creates more widows by the day, and some members of parliament and women's advocates warn of a growing class of poor, single mothers unable to raise Iraq's next generation. They say the situation has been made worse by U.S.-backed constitutional changes that allow each religious sect to decide its own rules on marriage, divorce, inheritance and child custody.

The middle-aged cleaner told The Times that a British contractor with KBR, the company hired to maintain the embassy’s premises, offered to double her daily pay if she would stay the night with him. When she refused, she said, her pay was cut and she was later dismissed.

As of Tuesday, May 6, 2008, at least 4,072 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,319 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

"The military "can't move a substantial amount of additional forces into Afghanistan unless there are additional forces which come out of Iraq. We might be able to generate a little bit more, but not 10,000 to 12,000 more troops."

Now, five years into the Iraq conflict, a movement is gathering steam in Washington to boost the payout of the GI Bill, to provide a true war-time benefit for war- time service. But the effort has run headlong into another reality of an unpopular war: the struggle to sustain an all-volunteer force. The Pentagon and White House have so far resisted a new GI Bill out of fear that too many will use it - choosing to shed the uniform in favor of school and civilian life.

MOM SEES IRAQ VET KILL HIMSELF

Dorothy Screws "witnessed her only son, U.S. Army Pvt. Tommie Edward Jones, commit suicide right before her eyes six weeks ago in Colorado. She says the Army, which promised to be there for Screws and her family to deal with the loss, has yet to provide assistance."

As anonymous American officials continue to leak information suggesting Iran's involvement in Iraq to the New York Times, even Iraq has begun fighting back. A top Iraqi official said Sunday there was no conclusive evidence that Shiite extremists have been directly supplied with some Iranian arms as alleged by the United States.

Forget rocket attacks, concrete blast walls and no sewer system and try picturing luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad. It’s all part of an ambitious five-year development “dream list” to transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone from a walled fortress into a gleaming centerpiece for Baghdad’s future. The $5 billion plan has Pentagon backing.

Insurgents blew up four US marines in Iraq's Anbar province, marking one of the deadliest attacks against US troops in the former Sunni rebel bastion in months, the military said on Sunday. The marines died when their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device on Friday, the US military said in a statement, without specifying the exact location of the attack.

Thousands of dockworkers at West Coast ports stayed off the job on Thursday in what their union said was a call for an end to the war in Iraq. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union said more than 25,000 members in 29 ports stayed off the job. The action came despite an order issued Wednesday by an arbitrator directing the union to tell its members to report for work as usual in response to a request from employers.

The bulletin, with the headline “The Unexpected Killer,” was issued after the horrific deaths of two soldiers who were caught in water — one in a shower, the other in a swimming pool — that was suddenly electrified after poorly grounded wiring short-circuited.

As of Thursday, May 1, 2008, at least 4,065 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,312 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates Thursday said the military had made mistakes in its treatment of returning combat troops including in their physical and mental health care and by providing some sub-standard housing. He acknowledged not all of the more than 1.5 million military service members who have been deployed overseas have received needed medical treatment and accommodations.

West Coast cargo traffic came to a halt Thursday as port workers ditched work to commemorate May Day and call on the U.S. to end the war in Iraq. Thousands of dockworkers at 29 ports in California, Oregon and Washington did not show up for the morning shift, leaving ships and truck drivers idle at ports from Long Beach to Seattle, Pacific Maritime Association spokesman Steve Getzug said.

Two hospitals in Sadr City, the Shi'ite slum that has been the focus of fighting in the capital, said they had received the bodies of 421 Iraqis killed and treated more than 2,400 wounded there since late March. Government spokesman Tahseen al-Sheikhly said the toll there was higher, with more than 900 killed. Many of the dead and wounded have been civilians, caught in the crossfire in the crowded slum.

“Today, no matter how hard we try, we can’t put enough lipstick on this pig to make it more pretty,” the spokesman said. “So are there soldiers complaining? Yeah.” He said they’ve been complaining for decades.

The U.S. military withdrew from a building of the education department in Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, which they used it as a barrack last month, an official source in the education department said on Wednesday.

U.S. commanders in Iraq have ordered an unprecedented number of airstrikes by unmanned airplanes in April to kill insurgents in urban combat and to limit their ability to launch rockets at American forces, military records show.

Four US soldiers have been killed along with scores of militants following two days of fighting in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City and rocket fire elsewhere in the capital. The latest casualties make April the deadliest month in Iraq for the US military since last September, with at least 44 soldiers dying.

ARMY ARTILLERY REDUCED TO SHAMBLES

"The once-mighty 'King of Battle' " is a "dead branch walking," write the active-duty colonels. With “growing alarm,” they describe “deterioration” in artillery readiness. In training, "firing incidents [occur] during every rotation"; "crew drills are very slow, and any type of [disorder] halts operations"; and, absent instructor intervention, "most" cannon platoons would have fired in unsafe conditions.

Militants bombarded Baghdad's Green Zone with rockets on Sunday, taking advantage of the cover of a blinding dust storm to launch one of the heaviest strikes in weeks on the fortified compound.

About 50 leaders representing a variety of Iraqi political blocs took to Baghdad's Sadr City on Sunday, a stronghold of fiery religious leader Muqtada al Sadr, to protest the U.S.-led siege of that area. The leaders promised to work together with Sadrists to remove insurgents and weapons in the area. But they also had six other demands of the government, including that it immediately suspend military activity in the city, supply basic services to residents and prioritize peaceful solutions over military conflicts.

Millions of dollars of lucrative Iraq reconstruction contracts were never finished because of excessive delays, poor performance or other factors, including failed projects that are being falsely described by the U.S. government as complete, federal investigators say.

An explosion on a fuel pipeline south of Baghdad on Friday caused a large fire and wounded eight guards, police said. The pipeline carrying fuel south from Baghdad's large Doura oil refinery was attacked by a bomb near the town of Iskandariya south of the capital, police said.

"Muqtada has shown a great deal of patience not calling for an all-out war yet with so much pressure on him. The Mahdi Army is by far the most powerful Iraqi faction. It can cause damage on a massive scale if it goes to war."

That means a significant portion of embassy personnel will remain in the trailers behind the former Saddam palace. Some trailers have sandbags, but no strengthened roof coverings that are common at the embassies of other nations and the villas of many private companies. One senior U.S. official who spent more than a year in Baghdad described the living situation as "Russian roulette" for staffers in the trailers that could resolved with a relatively small investment.

The attack raises the American death toll in April to 37. An Associated Press tally shows that is the highest rate of death for troops in Iraq since September, when 65 Americans were killed. At least 4,051 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003.

Iraq's military and police forces need years of improvements before they have enough recruits, officers and support systems to secure the country, the government's Iraq reconstruction watchdog says in a report to be released today.

"Not only do I have to worry about staying alive, but now I got to worry about whether or not my family's going to get kicked out of the house."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mocked anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as a coward on Sunday, hours after the radical leader threatened to declare war unless U.S. and Iraqi forces end a military crackdown on his followers.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments. Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.

Lynch, whose area of control includes the Shiite provinces of Babil, Wasit, Karbala and Najaf, said his forces were ready to take on Sadr and his feared Mahdi Army militia if they choose to fight Iraqi and American forces.

"Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East."

The cleric says he is giving his final warning to the Iraqi government to stop working with the U.S. military against him or he will "declare an open war until liberation."

American soldiers who try to move around this urban area, even in the U.S. Army's state-of-the-art Stryker armored vehicles, risk being ambushed. The soldiers in a platoon from the 25th Infantry Division quickly learned that holding a position puts them in the line of fire from both the Mahdi Army militia and the U.S.-backed Iraqi forces.

As of Thursday, April 17, 2008, at least 4,036 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians.

"There is a major health crisis facing those men and women who have served our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Terri Tanielian, the project's co-leader. "Unless they receive appropriate and effective care for these mental health conditions, there will be long-term consequences for them and for the nation."

A series of bombings this week in Sunni areas of Iraq – in some cases targeting the Awakening Councils, or sahwas, that have resisted the spread of militant Islamist extremism – is raising concerns that Al Qaeda in Iraq may be regrouping following recent defeats.

Options in Iraq are now limited to a set of bad choices. Even if the next president navigates skillfully, Iraq could still collapse into chaos, drawing its neighbors into a bloody regional conflict costing countless lives and wreaking havoc on the world economy. The gloomy situation is an undeniable legacy of the Bush administration.

"Unidentified gunmen attacked a U.S. vehicle patrol by RPG on the main street in al-Maliya neighborhood in eastern Mosul," Brig. Khaled Abdul Sattar told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq (VOI). "The forces stormed a nearby house, killing a man and his daughter."

A company of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions on Tuesday night in Sadr City, defying American soldiers who implored them to hold the line against Shiite militias. The retreat left a crucial stretch of road on the front lines undefended for hours.

A cable sent to all foreign service officers says the department is facing a looming crisis to fill about 300 jobs that will come open in 2009 in Iraq and that it may not get enough qualified volunteers. If it doesn't, the department will begin selecting diplomats for compulsory duty.

The bloodshed — in four cities as far north as Mosul and as far west as Ramadi — struck directly at U.S. claims that the Sunni insurgency is waning and being replaced by Shiite militia violence as a major threat.

When the Battle of Basra opened on Mar. 25, President Bush described it as a "defining moment" for the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Within days, however, the White House was scrambling to distance itself from the shellacking the Iraqi Army took at the hands of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

How much more American and Iraqi blood must be spilled between now and January 20, 2009, so George W. Bush can boast that Iraq wasn't lost on his watch, that he never cut and ran and that — never mind — it wasn't al Qaida or Iran that defeated us in Iraq, it was the Democrats?

State Department official James Mattil told CBS that the corruption is "across-the-board." Much of the stolen money finds its way to Iraqi insurgents or militias, while "in other cases, it is the militias and insurgents themselves who control some of the ministries who are involved in the corruption. It's known and tolerated by the prime minister and other officials within the government."

A U.S. army statement then read that some of the bodies showed signs of having been tortured and remained in that site for a period of 2-6 months. That site happened to be 100 meters north of another mass grave with 37 bodies discovered a couple of days earlier.

Washington maintains that as the Iraqi forces increase their capabilities, they will replace U.S. troops providing security in much of the country. But last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged that future U.S. troop withdrawals will go more slowly than had originally been hoped for. Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said the government had fired 421 policemen who have not returned to duty since fighting ended. They included 37 senior police officers ranging in rank from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general.

An American Apache helicopter has accidentally destroyed one of its own armoured vehicles in eastern Baghdad. Iraqi police confirmed that a Humvee was set ablaze in the Mashtal area of Baghdad. They said two US soldiers and three Iraqi civilians were wounded and that American troops immediately blocked off the neighbourhood.

"The Americans have hundreds of meetings and testimonies like this, and what has it done for the Iraqi people? Nothing. So why do we care? We just want all the foreigners to leave and stop causing disasters for our country."

The US will continue to hold Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein despite an Iraqi judicial order dismissing all terrorism-related charges against Hussein, a US military spokesman has said. Hussein, who has been detained in Iraq by the US for two years, was granted amnesty this week under Iraq's amnesty law, which effectively closes the case against him.

Shia militants fought US and Iraqi forces around Baghdad's Shia district of Sadr City yesterday, despite a call for calm by the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr following the assassination of one of his top aides. At least 13 Shia militants and seven civilians died in the clashes between US and government troops and Mr Sadr's Mehdi Army militia. One US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb.

Followers of the renegade cleric Muqtada al Sadr chanted anti-American slogans and vowed revenge for the assassination Friday of Sadr's top aide in Najaf, where outrage over the killing threatens to spiral into the second deadly uprising in southern Iraq in a month.

Just days after US General David Petraeus said "there are no lights at the end of the tunnel" in Iraq, US President George W. Bush spoke of numerous successes in the conflict. All the US must do, he said, is stay the course -- and keep a close eye on Iran.

But Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki disagreed with Petraeus' proposal to delay further U.S. troop withdrawals, citing the growing capabilities of Iraq's own security forces.

In correspondence from Iraq's fortified Green Zone, Col. Stephen Scott had always insisted to relatives that he was safe. But recently, family members noticed a surge in violence had him worried. "You could tell in his voice that he was telling us he was safe, but he wasn't really believing it in the last three weeks," his sister, Kathleen King said.

The floor of the hospital is covered with the blood of children," said Dr Qasim al-Mudalla, manager of the Imam Ali hospital in Sadr City, where he said four children and two women were among 11 dead bodies brought in on Wednesday. "What is the world doing? They have seen the blood of our children and are doing nothing."

>br>

No. 5 was only 14 years old. Kristine Klein, a home schooler who lounged on the floor with a copy of “Sealed with a Diss,” said she had come to sit quietly in the hearing and hold up a picture of her brother, who had been wounded in a mortar attack in Iraq. He was not the same when he got back, she said. “He has really severe flashbacks. He would think I was an Iraqi. He would go berserk.”

"If it is required to lift the freeze (ceasefire) in order to carry out our goals, objectives, doctrines and religious principles and patriotism, we will do that later and in a separate statement"

Eight of the 11 U.S. troops killed in Iraq on Sunday and Monday died in fighting in Baghdad. Four U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in the capital, the U.S. military said. One soldier was killed by a roadside bomb, two by a rocket-propelled grenade and one by small-arms fire after a roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle during a patrol in eastern Baghdad.

Iraqi critics point out that the agreement contains no limits on numbers of US forces, the weapons they are able to deploy, their legal status or powers over Iraqi citizens, going far beyond long-term US security agreements with other countries.

Four days after Converse's death, Mazin Zwayne, a 62-year-old American civilian working for the Defense Department, was killed in a shelling attack. On Monday, shells killed two American soldiers and wounded 17 others.

In a New York Times/CBS poll released today, 89 percent of those surveyed believe the cost of the war has contributed "a lot" or "some" to U.S. economic problems.

In a dramatic reversal, Iraq's prime minister ordered a nationwide freeze yesterday on Iraqi raids against Shiite militants, bowing to demands by anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr only one day after promising to expand the crackdown to Baghdad.

Among the 513,000 active-duty soldiers who have served in Iraq, more than 197,000 have deployed more than once, and more than 53,000 have deployed three or more times. The percentage of troops sent back to Iraq for repeat deployments would have to increase in the months ahead. The Army study of mental health showed that 27 percent of noncommissioned officers — a critically important group — on their third or fourth tour exhibited symptoms commonly referred to as post-traumatic stress disorders.

The statement said protesters should head to the Shiite holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad waving Iraqi flags "to cement the unity of Iraq and demand its independence." It called on demonstrators to "raise your voices high in the skies of Iraq against the oppressing occupier."

Senior Army and Marine Corps leaders said yesterday that the increase of more than 30,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has put unsustainable levels of stress on U.S. ground forces and has put their readiness to fight other conflicts at the lowest level in years.

If anyone is telling you that the cleansing of Baghdad has not contributed to the fall in violence, then they either simply do not understand Baghdad or they are lying to you.

A Red Crescent official, Ammar Khalid Saied, said his convoy tried to deliver food, medical supplies and water to Sadr City but could not get permission from the US to enter the area.

President Bush last week declared the offensive, which ended Sunday, "a defining moment" in Iraq's history. "There is no empirical evidence that the Iraqi forces can stand up" on their own, a senior U.S. military official in Washington said, reflecting the frustration of some at the Pentagon.

"We realized what kind of government we have: They are like foxes," Abu Amir said. "The Americans are our enemies, not our friends. Maliki is an agent of the Americans."

As of Tuesday, April 1, 2008, at least 4,011 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians.

Sweden has given shelter to about 100,000 Iraqis, 40,000 of them since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. That's far more than any other Western country including the U.S., which admitted just over 1,600 Iraqi refugees in the 2007 fiscal year, nearly 400 short of the annual goal of 2,000, and a big reduction from an initial target of 7,000.

The government's plan to win control of Basra may now be abandoned, after more than 300 deaths. Its authority was further damaged when soldiers were shown on television handing over their weapons to the Mehdi Army. The US military was shocked at the speed with which the crisis span out of control. Boasts about the ability of the Iraqi army to cope on its own are demonstrably untrue.

"We voted for a government to help us, not to do this to us," says an angry woman, who gave her name as Umm Jasem. She sold fresh eggs at the market. Her stall was reduced to a heap of charred metal. "Enough! Tell America enough."

Last week, Iraq’s defense minister, Abdul Kadir al-Obeidi, conceded that the government’s military efforts in Basra have met with far more resistance than was expected. Many Iraqi politicians say that Mr. Maliki’s political capital has been severely depleted by the Basra campaign and that he is in the curious position of having to turn to Mr. Sadr, a longtime rival, for a way out.

The fortified Green Zone came under fresh attack Monday, less than 24 hours after anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told his fighters to stand down following a week of clashes with government forces. At least two Americans working for the U.S. government died in attacks on the zone last week. Separately, an American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in northeast Baghdad on Monday, the military announced. It was unclear whether the attack was carried out by Shiite or Sunni militants.

The four soldiers were killed when their patrol struck a homemade bomb at about 10 p.m. Sunday, according to a statement from the U.S. command in Baghdad. Another soldier was wounded. The deaths came at the end of what had been a bloody day that left at least 57 Iraqis dead and the heavily fortified Green Zone, where the U.S. and Iraqi governments are headquartered, smoking from a barrage of rockets and mortars.

At least 97 percent of the deaths occurred after US President George W. Bush announced the end of "major combat" in Iraq on May 1, 2003, as the military became caught between a raging anti-American insurgency and brutal sectarian strife unleashed since the toppling of Saddam.

Calculations by the Associated Press show that for every fatality in Iraq there had been 15 soldiers wounded. The news agency compared this with 2.6 wounded for every death in the Vietnam war.

Four American soldiers were killed near the capital in the past two days, the military said Saturday, and north of Baghdad an American attack helicopter killed six people who the Iraqi police said were pro-American Sunni militia fighters.

Joan McDonald believes her son was a casualty of the war in Iraq, but the Army says that while he did suffer a severe head wound in a bomb blast, the cause of his death is undetermined, keeping him off the casualty list.

Rockets and mortars pounded Baghdad's U.S.-protected Green Zone Sunday and a suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi army post in the northern city of Mosul in a surge of attacks that killed at least 57 people nationwide. The latest violence underscored the fragile security situation and the resilience of both Sunni and Shiite extremist groups as the war enters its sixth year.

An American helicopter mistakenly opened fire on an Awakening Councils’ group patrol in Salahudin province, killing six fighters of the group, a provincial police source said Saturday. The incident took place at dawn in the Um al-Talayeb village south of the city of Samarra.

The tensions flared a day after Iraqi security forces clashed with Mahdi Army gunmen in the southern city of Kut on Thursday. The fighting broke out when Iraqi security forces tried to capture a group of fighters there, killing three and injuring nine others, an Interior Ministry official said. Leaders in Kut said they had brought the city under control. The violence could test a cease-fire ordered by Sadr last August.

"We know the Americans are using us to do their dirty work and kill off the resistance for them and then we get nothing for it," said Abu Abdul-Aziz, the head of the council in Abu Ghraib, where 500 men have already quit.

Gleefully adapting the "direct action" tactics that their parents used to help stop the Vietnam War, thousands of activists disrupted traffic and both government and corporate business Wednesday in Washington to protest the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Any improvements discussed by Bush today do not change the fact that Iraqis continue to suffer from this war. Five years on, the war-torn country faces the same horrors inflicted upon it in 2003. The Iraq war will haunt future generations.

In the short run, supporters of Petraeus would like to see about 140,000 troops, including 15 combat brigades, remain in Iraq through the end of the Bush administration. Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their advisors favor a faster drawdown.

US troops shot dead three Iraqi policemen by mistake near the northern city of Kirkuk. A US military statement described the incident in Kirkuk as a tragic accident, which was sincerely regretted.

The next showdown comes in April, when Gen. David Petraeus will deliver another progress report to Congress. Democratic leaders will try and make the case that the cost of the war is sapping resources from important domestic priorities. But we've seen this movie before, and it always ends with the president getting his way on more war funding.

Year 1: "There is no guerrilla war."

Year 2: "Iraq is a model democracy."

Year 3: "Zarqawi is causing all the trouble."

Year 4: "There is no Civil War."

Year 5: "Everything is calm now."

But even after all this time, the US may not really know whether the Kurds want their own state, whether Shiites will allow true Sunni participation in central government, and whether the Sunnis – Iraq's old ruling class – truly have given up dreams of reconquering the country.

We are told that the surge has worked brilliantly and violence is way down. And yet the plan to reduce troop levels—which was at the heart of the original surge strategy—must be postponed or all hell will once again break loose.

There are now more 5.1 million Iraqis who are either displaced (IDPs) within Iraq or are living as refugees abroad. Of these, 2.7 million are IDPs and more than 2.4 million refugees, predominantly living in neighbouring Syria and Jordan.

Last year, The IoS revealed that a BearingPoint employee based at the US embassy in Baghdad was involved in drafting the controversial hydrocarbon law that was approved by Iraq's cabinet last March. The legislation opens up the country's oil reserves to foreign corporations for the first time since 1972. Western companies will be able to pocket up to three-quarters of profits from new drilling projects in their early years.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday declared the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq a "successful endeavor" during a visit to Baghdad, on the same day a woman suicide bomber killed 40 people.

Only 21% believe that the increase in US forces has made conditions for political dialogue in Iraq better, while 43% think the surge has made conditions worse.

"From a coldly realist perspective, Iraq was the wrong war against the wrong foe at the wrong time."

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks."

Clifton Hicks talked about free fire orders in city neighborhoods and the indiscriminate, often vengeful, targeting of cars and civilians, and about riding through the gates of their compound one night, aware that the humvee in front of his had run over a civilian. No one said anything because it had been a long hard day. They had all been in country long enough to feel that the bigger deal was "being separated from your cot" for the hours it would have taken to fill out the paperwork.

THE plight of people displaced by the Iraq war is getting worse, refugee experts warn. Five years after the US-led invasion, a House of Representatives subcommittee heard that serious problems persist for the 2.5 million people displaced inside Iraq and the 2 million who have fled to other countries.

$500 billion later, experts worry about the impact on the world's biggest economy, already facing a crippling housing crisis. "The short-term economic consequences of the war have been manageable and modest. But the long-term consequences will be substantial," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com.

This morning, the Pentagon cancelled plans to send out a press release announcing the report's release and will no longer make the report available online. The report will be made available only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. It won't be emailed to reporters and it won't be posted online.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed in a rocket attack in southern Iraq on Wednesday, bringing to 12 the number of Americans who have been killed in Iraq over the past three days.

Three other soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb that struck their patrol in the troubled eastern province of Diyala, the military said in a statement released early Tuesday. Their Iraqi interpreter also was killed, and another U.S. soldier was injured. Also on Tuesday, a roadside bombing killed 16 Iraqi civilians traveling in a bus near the southern city of Nasiriyah, a part of Iraq that rarely experiences bombings.

Ahlam al-Wakeel, an Iraqi doctor, says she hasn't driven since she was shot by soldiers in an American convoy for driving too close to them. Today she won't even drive to the market in broad daylight. "Iraq won't be back to life again until I can drive without fear — until I can stop at a red traffic light and can drive away when it turns green. Only then I can say that everything is back to normal."

In a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing today on waste, fraud, and abuse, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) questioned two Iraq watchdogs on how many of their auditors speak Arabic. Pentagon Inspector General Claude Kicklighter responded that of 196 auditors, just one speaks Arabic. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen said that his team has only four.

A man walked up to a group of American soldiers on foot patrol in an upscale shopping district in central Baghdad on Monday and detonated the explosives-filled vest he was wearing, killing five soldiers and wounding three others and an Iraqi interpreter who accompanied them.

Shortly after the famous statue of Saddam Hussein was dragged off its pedestal five years ago, I hopped into the back of an unarmoured American Humvee to visit an electricity sub-station with a kindly reservist American major who is an electrical engineer. Kindly, but unrealistic. "Hugh," he promised, "we'll get normal power back up and running in Baghdad in 48 hours."

Iraq's children have been more gravely affected by the U.S. occupation than any other segment of the population. A report from the non-governmental relief organisation Save the Children shows Iraq continues to have the highest mortality for children under five. Since the first Gulf War, this has increased 150 percent. It is estimated that one in eight children in Iraq dies before the fifth birthday: 122,000 children died in 2005 alone. Iraq has a population of about 25 million.

On Friday, a U.S. soldier was killed and another injured in an explosion while conducted operations in Diyala, the military said in a statement. At least 3,975 U.S. personnel have been killed since the start of the Iraq war in 2003, according to the independent website icasualties.org.

"I think what bombings of this sort indicate is just how violent and unsettled a situation that in Iraq still is. I think it's important to appreciate this, given some of the gushy comments that have been made about achievements of the surge in the period since it was commenced by the United States."

"There was a stranger at the door. He gave me an envelope which had two bullets and a letter that said 'if you do not close your beauty parlour, we will kill you. Your work is haram (forbidden),'" says Asma Kadhim, 40, one of the thousands of Iraqi women facing the brunt of daily bloodshed.

The move comes as a new Army study of the mental health of troops deployed to war found that third and fourth combat deployments were wearing down soldiers' mental health at the same time that access to counseling and treatment was becoming more difficult.

"There was a stranger at the door. He gave me an envelope which had two bullets and a letter that said 'if you do not close your beauty parlour, we will kill you. Your work is haram (forbidden),'" says Asma Kadhim, 40, one of the thousands of Iraqi women facing the brunt of daily bloodshed.

Turkish warplanes bombed villages in remote northern Iraq on Tuesday, a week after a major eight-day offensive by Turkish forces against Kurdish PKK guerrillas in the region, border officials said on Wednesday.

Iraqi Christians are target of oppression from religious militias and despite their suffering there is no one to defend them, said Patriarch Amaneul Dali, the head of the Chaldean Catholic community in Iraq. He said neither U.S. troops nor the Iraqi government were concerned about Iraqi Christians, their churches or monasteries.

More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq - including about 10,500 Americans - are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in the Cayman Islands.

Two coordinated bomb blasts blamed on al Qaeda killed 55 people in a crowded Baghdad shopping area on Thursday, on the day the U.S. military said it was withdrawing 2,000 troops from the Iraqi capital.

The United States may be forced to halt planned troop withdrawals from Iraq unless Iraqi authorities move faster to create jobs and improve basic services, a top U.S. general said on Wednesday.

You see your father wanted only to rescue you. He wanted only to grab you from your dead mother’s arms, and he gave his life trying because he loved you so much. My son and his sergeant did not understand. They mistook your father’s actions as a threat to their comrades and fired upon and killed your father. So you see we are connected because my son killed your father.

Marine Corps Base Hawaii is investigating a shocking video of what appears to be a smiling Marine throwing a puppy off the top of a steep desert hillside in Iraq into a gully below.

An Iraqi teenager was killed during an attack by coalition forces south of Samarra on Friday, officials said. Apache pilots attacked six people digging on a road known to have a past history of bomb attacks. Forty people in a nearby house said six boys were digging roots for firewood. No one was detained and no evidence was found of bomb materials, officials said.

The mainstream Sunni insurgents who have been fighting al Qaeda appear to have outmaneuvered U.S. strategists by using Awakening Councils to pursue their interests in weakening their most immediate enemy, reducing pressures from the U.S. military and establishing new political bases, while continuing to mount attacks on U.S. and Iraqi government forces.

At a news conference with Ahmadinejad, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq seemed to defy American hopes that he would criticize Iran for meddling inside Iraq. "I think that the level of trust is very high," Maliki said. "And I say frankly that the position Iran has taken recently was very helpful in bringing back security and stability."

"There's a whole tradition we're really trying to awaken, of US soldiers coming back from wars and resisting. We're trying to perpetuate that and make sure that when the government goes on military ventures for profit, the veterans are going to resist. We want to make sure it's a tradition that's being carried through."

It is the first visit by an Iranian president to Iraq and comes at a time when the US military is occupying the country and Washington, as the main power-broker, is keen to curb the influence of Shiite Iran on Maliki's government.

Mosul, Iraq--Gunmen kidnapped a Chaldean Catholic archbishop and killed three of his guards Friday in the latest attack targeting Iraq's dwindling Christian minority in this northern city.

They have been translators and interpreters, who have helped our soldiers and provided or relayed information that no doubt saved many lives. They have been forced to flee because of death threats to themselves and to their families. They have been tortured by insurgents and have also been betrayed by the U.S. government.It is nothing less than tragic that in the last fiscal year, Sweden has taken in almost ten times as many Iraqi refugees as the United States.

Violent civilian deaths in Iraq rose 36 percent in February from the previous month after a series of large-scale bombings blamed on al Qaeda, Iraqi government figures showed on Saturday.

As of Thursday, Feb. 28, 2008, at least 3,973 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,237 died as a result of hostile action.

"It's true; I volunteered for this," Parra said before departure. "My wife hates me for it." It's not uncommon to find troops like Parra, who have been to Iraq two, three or four times. What is remarkable about this deployment is that his unit, the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, is the first unit in the Marine Corps to be sent to Iraq five times.

Turkey insisted Thursday that its offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq will continue "as long as necessary," while US President George Bush mounted pressure on Ankara to wrap up its incursion quickly.

Peshmerga Gen. Muhammad Mohsen took down his American flag, folded it up, and placed it in his office corner Sunday, reflecting the growing anger in Iraq's Kurdish north with US support for Turkey's campaign against separatist rebels operating in the region.

The rejected bill, which sets out the political structure for Iraq's provincial governments and establishes a basis for elections in October, was only the second of 18 U.S.-set political benchmarks that the war-tore nation needs to reach.

"The cumulative effects of the last six-plus years at war have left our Army out of balance, consumed by the current fight and unable to do the things we know we need to do to properly sustain our all-volunteer force and restore our flexibility for an uncertain future."

Gasoline prices, which for months lagged behind the big run-up in the price of oil, are suddenly rising quickly, with some experts saying they could approach $4 a gallon by spring. The increases could not come at a worse time for the economy. These costs could worsen the nation’s economic woes, piling a fresh energy shock on top of the turmoil in credit and housing.

THE Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.The spending on Iraq was a hidden cause of the current credit crunch because the US central bank responded to the massive financial drain of the war by flooding the American economy with cheap credit.

Turkey says it is not targeting civilians as it chases after separatist rebels in northern Iraq, but people in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region say they have lived in fear since the incursion began.

About 7,200 service members or people who have been recently discharged have citizenship applications pending, but neither the Department of Defense nor Citizenship and Immigration Services keeps track of how long they have been waiting.

The cost of direct US military operations - not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans - already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.

"We are not authorised to issue any numbers, but I can tell you that we are still receiving human bodies every day; the men have no identity on them," a doctor at the Baghdad morgue told IPS. "The bodies that have signs of torture are the Sunnis killed by Shia militias; those with a bullet in the head are usually policemen, translators or contractors who worked for the Americans."

The 30-song, two-disc album "Body of War: Songs That Inspired an Iraq War Veteran" will be released March 18 via Warner Music's Sire Records label. All proceeds from the sale of the album will benefit Iraq Veterans Against the War.

U.S. embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo refused to say whether there had been casualties or damaged. "To maintain operational security, we do not comment on indirect fire into the International Zone," she said.

“Most of the killings are done by gunmen in police cars,” said Sheik Khadem al-Ribat, a Basra tribal leader who claims no party membership. “These cars were given to the political parties. There are supposed to be 16,000 policemen, but we see very few of them on the street, and most of the ones we do see are militiamen dressed as police.”

Rutgers-Newark professors received a letter notifying them that at least 91 R-N students who are Reservists for the New Jersey National Guard will be recalled to active duty within the next two years. According to the letter many of the students that will be called in for duty will have to participate in at least three weeks of intensive training. Because of this they may have to leave sometime in late March or early April.

The stress of repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan is beginning to show in the declining quality of Army recruits, retention of midlevel officers, desertions and other factors such as suicide, the Army’s top general said Tuesday.

"Sayyid Moqtada Sadr renewed the decision to freeze the al-Mahdi army for another six months. The extensions will last until the 15th of Shaaban," read Asaad al-Nasiry, the imam of Sadr's gold-domed mosque in the city of Kufa, calling Sadr by the honorific for those considered descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.

Turkey's military units which have been stationed inside northern Iraq for nearly a decade were involved in a standoff with the peshmerga forces of the Iraqi Kurdish administration near the city of Duhok when they moved out of their bases and started to control some villages in the area.

An American soldier died in a rocket-propelled grenade attack while on patrol in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Wednesday. Three soldiers were also wounded in the attack. The military earlier Wednesday announced that three soldiers were killed the previous day when their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb in northwestern Baghdad.

Brent R. Wilkes, a California defense contractor and prominent GOP campaign contributor, was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison yesterday for lavishing a Republican congressman with money, prostitutes and other bribes in exchange for nearly $90 million in work from the Pentagon.

They waved their magic wands, paid off and armed a bunch of former Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda terrorists (about 80,000 "concerned citizens," as the President likes to call them), and magically lowered "violence" in Iraq. Even more miraculously, they made a country that they had already turned into a cesspool and a slagheap -- its capital now has a "lake" of sewage so large that it can be viewed "as a big black spot on Google Earth" -- almost entirely disappear from view in the U.S.

A growing number of active duty soldiers or recent Iraq war veterans are speaking up about the war in Iraq. "The honest truth is that if the American people knew what was going on over there everyday, they would be raising their voices too. They would be saying, 'Hey, bring those guys home," Sgt. Selena Coppa said.

As many as 15 Iraqi policemen responding to an attack against U.S. bases were killed Tuesday when rockets, set to be launched from the back of a truck, exploded before the officers could defuse them. Four U.S. soldiers were wounded when the initial rockets slammed into their outposts in the capital, the second rocket attack against American targets in as many days.

Oil futures shot higher Tuesday, closing above $100 for the first time as investors bet that crude prices will keep climbing despite evidence of plentiful supplies and falling demand. At the pump, gas prices rose further above $3 a gallon.

Seven people due to testify against two former Iraqi officials accused of orchestrating Shiite murder squads have received death threats, US officials said on Tuesday as the opening of their trial was delayed by a lack of witnesses. The trial marks the first time high-ranking Shiites are being charged over a wave of sectarian killings that exploded across Iraq after the bombing of a Shiite shrine two years ago.

U.S. and Iraqi troops are carrying out military operations in heavily populated areas of the northern city of Mosul to flush out insurgents. And in their bid they are separating and isolating residential quarters with security barriers and walls making movement rather difficult. Some quarters like Yarmouk, Thawar and Siha are completed isolated.

At least 2 million Iraqi children lacked adequate nutrition (according to the WFP assessment of food insecurity in 2006) and faced a range of other threats including interrupted education, lack of immunization services and diarrhoea diseases. Only 28% of Iraq's 17 year olds sat their final exams in summer, and only 40% of those sitting exams achieved a passing grade in South and Central Iraq.

The United Nations estimates up to six million people in Iraq are in dire need of help because of years of violence and economic hardship. It says some four million people are unable to buy enough food regularly, have no access to safe drinking water and have great difficulty getting the medical care they need.

By summer, U.S. commanders plan to have withdrawn more than 20,000 combat troops deployed as part of the surge. But officials indicated some support units sent around the same time would remain or be replaced. "It's likely that... the (total) number will be a little bit larger than the 132,000 or so that was the number of personnel on the ground pre-surge," said Army Lt. Gen. Carter Ham.

According to Janabi and a local police official, Ali al-Lami, three members of the Awakening group were killed on Saturday when they were attacked by gunfire from a US helicopter. "It was the third incident in a month. We have lost 19 men while 12 have been injured because of coalition attacks."

Any true assessment of the happiness or misery of Iraqis must use a less crude index than the number of dead and injured. It must ask if people have been driven from their houses, and if they can return. It must say whether they have a job and, if they do not, whether they stand a chance of getting one. It has to explain why so few of the 3.2 million people who are refugees in Syria and Jordan, or inside Iraq, are coming back.

There have been at least three accidental drug overdoses and four suicides among soldiers in special units the Army set up last summer to help war-wounded troops, officials said late Thursday. A team of pharmacists and other military officials met early this week at the Pentagon to look into the deaths in so-called "warrior transition units" — established to give sick, injured and wounded troops coordinated medical care, financial advice, legal help and other services.

Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Staff Sgt. Javares J. Washington, 27, of Pensacola, Fla., died Feb. 11 at Camp Buehring in Kuwait City, Kuwait, from injuries sustained in a vehicle accident. He was assigned to the 6th Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

In his shop in Baghdad's central Karrada district, the scent of flowers freshens the air which is otherwise heavy with fumes, dust and despair. Small glass boxes inscribed with the words "I Love You" in English sit on shelves alongside red cushions in the shape of hearts. But the customers are staying away.

The immunity currently offered to contractors in Iraq is unique among the 120 or so status-of-forces agreements governing the terms of U.S. military operations in countries around the world.

Diyala--Gunmen opened fire targeting building workers while the workers were in their way to work from Sadiyah town to Himreen town northeast of Baquba city today morning. Five workers were killed and two others were wounded. Police found a head of a civilian in Khalis town north of Baquba.

A rally last Sunday led to armed clashes between Iraqi police and Sahwa members, in which three policemen were killed. Abu Haider al-Katib, spokesman for the 1920s Revolution Brigades, the largest of the Sahwa components, told reporters that if their demands were not met, they would "take up arms" against the police "and U.S. troops if they support the police."

Dog Company has been deployed for three of the past five years, with stints in Mosul and Germany, in addition to their time in Iraq. This kind of operational tempo, optempo in military parlance, has taken its toll throughout the armed forces. Capt. Doug Willig, the Dog Company commander, reports that of his six closest friends at West Point, five have left the military.

Car bombs in Baghdad on Monday killed at least 11 people and injured a prominent leader of one of the country's most influential American-allied tribal militias. Power to much of the nation, already anemic, is likely to lag in coming days because insurgents had blown up transmission facilities and natural gas pipelines that fuel generators.

Scientists, engineers, doctors, architects, writers, poets, you name it - everybody is getting out of town. Why? Simple: 1. There is no real job market in Iraq. 2. Even if you have a good job, chances are good you'll get kidnapped or killed. It's just not worth it staying here. Sunni, Shi'ite, or Christian - everybody, we're all leaving, or have already left.

The speaker of Iraq's fragmented parliament threatened Tuesday to disband the legislature, saying it is so riddled with distrust it appears unable to adopt the budget or agree on a law setting a date for provincial elections. Disbanding parliament would prompt new elections within 60 days and further undermine Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's shaky government, which is limping along with nearly half of the 40 Cabinet posts vacant.

The raids have angered local residents, who accuse U.S. troops of being indiscriminately heavy handed. Reuters pictures at the scene of the raids showed furniture strewn from houses, blood on the ground and women and children crying.

"The expectation has been that it can't continue to increase as it has. But it has surprised everyone to see how long this increase has continued. This budget was a great budget for all defense contractors."

RAND submitted a report in the summer of 2005 called “Rebuilding Iraq.” RAND researchers provided an unclassified version of the report along with a secret one, hoping that its publication would contribute to the public debate. But the study’s wide-ranging critique of the White House, the Defense Department and other government agencies was a concern for Army generals, and the Army has sought to keep the report under lock and key.

Military planners didn't anticipate contractors would represent such a high percentage of fatalities when they were privatizing functions once performed by uniformed personnel. Yet these contractor casualties go largely unmentioned by the Pentagon and unnoticed by the American public.

Iraq's medical system is all but incapable of caring for such patients. It was already beleaguered by the international sanctions imposed on the government of Saddam Hussein, but the problems have grown legion: Specialists have fled the country; necessities such as bandages, intravenous saline and electricity are in short supply; and hospitals are guarded by gunmen who intimidate and sometimes kill patients of rival sectarian backgrounds.

The soldier said that on Nov. 29, he was called to the office at Cedar Springs. His squad leader, his platoon leader, his Army Substance Abuse Program counselor and two counselors from Cedar Springs “came and ambushed me.” He said an Army alcohol counselor told him alcoholism and anxiety could not stop him from being deployed. “They said, ‘You know what? Tough it out. All of us like to drink.’”

As of Saturday, Feb. 9, 2008, at least 3,959 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,220 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

President Bush drew great applause during his State of the Union address last month when he called on Congress to allow U.S. troops to transfer their unused education benefits to family members. "Our military families serve our nation, they inspire our nation, and tonight our nation honors them," he said. A week later, however, when Bush submitted his $3.1 trillion federal budget to Congress, he included no funding for such an initiative.

The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion -- some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture. The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other "rules" that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.

The top uniformed military officer told a congressional panel that U.S. troops are tired, worn thin by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and unlikely to come home in large numbers anytime soon.

The 2007 study by the consulting firm Abt Associates Inc. found that 18 percent of the veterans were unemployed within one to three years of discharge, while one out of four who did find jobs earned less than $21,840 a year. Many had taken advantage of government programs such as the GI Bill to boost job prospects, but there was little evidence that education benefits yielded higher pay or better advancement.

U.S. and Iraqi troops raided Sadr City, Baghdad's largest Shiite slum, and arrested 16 people early Friday, witnesses and U.S. and Iraqi officials said. The American military said one of the detainees later died.

President Bush rolled out a $3.1 trillion budget Monday that boosts funding for the military while cutting projected spending for Medicare and Medicaid, proposals that would have a noticeable impact in Texas.

A teenage boy was arrested recently for the attempted rape of a girl his own age in a school in west Baghdad. He admitted he had chosen the particular girl as his victim "because I knew she was a Sunni and nobody would protect her".

A mass grave containing dozens of bodies was discovered west of Samarra. Elsewhere, a small but deadly U.S. raid on a civilian residence was reported for the second day in a row. Overall, 90 Iraqis were reported killed or found dead, and seven were wounded across Iraq. Three American servicemembers were reported killed in two separate incidents.

As the war nears two grim milestones - five years since the invasion and nearly 4,000 Americans killed - the question of what to do in Iraq is never far below the surface. In California, where polls show 42 percent of Republicans and 91 percent of Democrats oppose U.S. policy in Iraq, strong anti-war sentiment gives the issue staying power.

Turkish warplanes bombed 70 Kurdish guerrilla targets inside northern Iraq on Monday in one of the biggest raids for weeks, Turkey's General Staff said.

The US military accidentally killed nine Iraqi civilians during an operation targeting al-Qaida fighters south of Baghdad. They were killed on Saturday near Iskandariyah, 30 miles (50km) south of the city, US navy lieutenant Patrick Evans told Associated Press.

The government has decided to end the rationing food program which has saved millions of Iraqis from starvation. The decision, the government said, was in line with the obligations it has made to the World Bank.

Exxon Mobil said Friday record oil prices boosted its fourth-quarter earnings to $11.66 billion, the highest ever operating profit by a U.S. company.

The U.S. military isn't ready for a catastrophic attack on the country, and National Guard forces don't have the equipment or training they need for the job. Even fewer Army National Guard units are combat-ready today than were nearly a year ago when the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves determined that 88 percent of the units were not prepared for the fight, the panel says in a new report released Thursday.

Senior U.S. military commanders here say they want to freeze troop reductions starting this summer for at least a month, making it more likely that the next administration will inherit as many troops in Iraq as there were before President Bush announced a "surge" of forces a year ago.

A group of Vermont legislators is calling on the governor to reclaim authority over the Vermont National Guard and bring members home from Iraq. "The president's authority has run out," said Rep. Michael Fisher, D-Lincoln, lead sponsor of legislation slated to be introduced today. "The mission authorized in 2002 does not exist."

As of Monday, Jan. 28, 2008, at least 3,940 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,201 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

Iraqi members of parliament have asked the government to investigate the fires that devastated large sections of the Central Bank building in Baghdad. The MPs say the blazing fires were premeditated and were an attempt by certain senior officials to obliterate documents implicating them in corruption.

The Bush administration is sending strong signals that U.S. troop reductions in Iraq will slow or stop altogether this summer, a move that would jeopardize hopes of relieving strain on the Army and Marine Corps and revive debate over an open-ended U.S. commitment in Iraq.

There has been no improvement in the production of electricity in the country in the past 12 months, Minister of Electricity Kareem Waheed said. Waheed warned hard-hit Iraqi households not to expect better power supplies before 2011.

Fallujah is more difficult to enter than any city in the world. On the road from Baghdad I counted 27 checkpoints, all manned by well-armed soldiers and police. "The siege is total," says Dr Kamal in Fallujah Hospital as he grimly lists his needs, which include everything from drugs and oxygen to electricity and clean water.

In a daring ambush, insurgents blasted a U.S. patrol with a roadside bomb Monday and showered survivors with gunfire from a mosque in increasingly lawless Mosul. Five American soldiers were killed in the explosion — even as Iraqi troops moved into the northern city to challenge al-Qaida in Iraq.

The Iraqi parliament's move to adopt a new, temporary national flag has provoked an outcry, with one city refusing to fly it and ordinary Iraqis attaching the old flag to their cars in a silent protest.

Kurdish leaders accuse Maliki’s government of not acting on issues most important to the Kurds, such as resolving a dispute over ownership of Kirkuk province and the funding of Kurdish forces known as the Peshmerga. At the same time, the Iraqi Kurdish government has forged ahead with signing private oil contracts without the approval of the central government, irking Baghdad and reigniting debates about how much power Iraq’s regional governments should hold.

With even more U.S. contractors now in Iraq and Afghanistan than U.S. military personnel, government officials told Congress yesterday that the Bush administration is not prepared to manage the contractors' critical involvement in the American war effort.

A suicide bomber dressed as a policeman killed a top Iraqi police chief in the volatile northern city of Mosul Thursday as he toured the scene of a bomb blast in which 34 people died, police said.

Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

"A very large number of people like me rely on daily income for their living. On the contrary, government employees feel safe whether there is a curfew or not because at the end of a month they receive the salary regardless of stoppage of work."

War funding, which averaged about $93 billion a year from 2003 through 2005, rose to $120 billion in 2006 and $171 billion in 2007 and President George W. Bush has asked for $193 billion in 2008, the nonpartisan office wrote.

It illustrates the paradigm shift that has been taking place for the U.S. military across Iraq - trying to win over both former enemies and stave off potential new ones with the use of large sums of cash. The trouble is that there is only so much cash available.

The percentage of new recruits entering the Army with a high school diploma dropped to a new low in 2007, according to a study released yesterday, and Army officials confirmed that they have lowered their standards to meet high recruiting goals in the middle of two ongoing wars.

A suicide bomber apparently targeting a senior security official blew himself up inside a funeral tent Monday, killing 18 people in the latest of a series of deadly attacks chipping away at the notion of a calmer Iraq. The bombing in a village north of Baghdad was the third in as many days in Sunni Arab areas thought to have been largely rid of al-Qaida militants.

The cultivation of opium poppies whose product is turned into heroin is spreading rapidly across Iraq as farmers find they can no longer make a living through growing traditional crops.

As many as 20 percent of U.S. troops leave war with signs they may have had a concussion, and some do not realize they need treatment, Army officials said Thursday. Concussion is a common term for mild traumatic brain injury, or TBI. While the Army has a handle on treating more severe brain injuries, it is "challenged to understand, diagnose and treat military personnel who suffer with mild TBI."

In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon. As AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, "part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative," thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces.

He would pull out his gun, a .45-caliber, semiautomatic pistol. He would lovingly clean it, or just look at it and put it away. Sometimes place it in his mouth.

In the depths of a strangely cold winter in the Middle East, Iraqis complain that the lights are not on, the kerosene heaters are without fuel and the water doesn't flow -- and they blame the government.

The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq's borders from external threat until at least 2018.

The major surveys of Iraqi public opinion since 2004 are very clear concerning the effects of the US presence in Iraq: Iraqis overwhelming believe that the continued occupation is an impediment to peace, and indeed, that it continues to create violence rather than quelling it. Of course, the leaders of both major parties in the US have paid little or no attention to Iraqi public opinion.

Iraq's government on Monday blamed neighbouring countries, a gasoline shortage and sabotage for power cuts that have left people shivering in many parts of the country, gripped by a bitterly cold winter. "We have been without electricity for four or five days, not for a minute. Before that we used to have it for an hour a day. We have a small electricity heater that we all gather around."

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.

Unlike any other time since Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki came to power in 2006, his tenure is under real threat. This time, Maliki's exodus is not being engineered by his long-time rivals in the Sunni community, but rather by the Kurds: friends of yesterday, enemies of today.

That is the ultimate upshot of the war in Iraq: a response elsewhere would consist largely of U.S. fighters and bombers — even, perhaps, some degree of nuclear strike — because so many ground troops are tied up in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"If he didn't want to continue the drawdown, that's fine with me, in order to make sure we succeed. If you want to slow her down, fine, it's up to you," Bush said he told Petraeus.

The repairs essentially destroyed evidence that Justice Department investigators hoped to examine in a criminal case that has drawn worldwide attention. The Sept. 16 shooting has strained U.S. relations with the Iraqi government, which wants Blackwater expelled from the country. It also has become a flash point in the debate over whether contractors are immune from legal consequences for their actions in a war zone.

The new partnership deal with Iraq, including a status of forces agreement that would then replace the existing Security Council mandate authorizing the presence of the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq, will become a sworn obligation for the next president.

"The thing that worries me most of all is what happens over the next 12 to 24 months in Iraq," ret. Army Gen. Douglas MacGregor told National Public Radio (NPR). "Could we have actually made matters worse in the long term?"

NEW U.S. APPROACH: STICK IRAQIS WITH DISASTER WE CAUSED

"The new phrasing is both the dawning of reality, and the cynical use of language and common sense to camouflage past errors, hoping to avoid the audit of flawed logic that got us to this point," said a retired British general familiar with the U.S. experience in Iraq.

"AWAKENING GROUPS" ARE LED BY SADDAM LOYALISTS

One resident, Munaf Al Jabori, described the system. "I live in Al Saydia and in order to visit Al Ameria district I have to inform Abu Noor, the leader in Al Saydia, who will contact Abu Abed, the leader in Al Ameria, then Abu Nour gives me a paper to enter Al Ameria and this will keep me safe. I wonder where the government and law are?"

Six soldiers were killed and four were wounded Wednesday in a booby-trapped house in Diyala. The military also announced that three U.S. soldiers were killed and two were wounded in an attack Tuesday in Salahuddin province, north of Diyala.

DESPERATE IRAQIS FACE ENERGY SHORTAGE

It's turning out to be about the hardest winter Abu Muslih has known. Too often it's a choice between buying food and medicines, and buying kerosene to keep his children warm. "I see them feeling cold, so I go out to buy kerosene at any price. My salary cannot pay for kerosene. So I use my savings, or try to avoid other necessities."

SUNNI RESISTANCE: NO DEALS! YANKEE GO HOME!

The Islamic Army, the main Sunni insurgent group in Iraq, is adamant it will not make common cause with the Sunni militias tackling al-Qaeda with U.S. support, and will instead fight the Americans "to the end."

As of Monday, Jan. 7, 2008, at least 3,911 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,181 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

BUSH TRIP PROMPTS LAUGHTER IN MIDEAST

The official Arab view of Bush was summed up inadvertently by a diplomat from a major Arab state, who indicated disbelief that the president will use the trip to renew his drive for Middle East democracy. "Is that still on?" the Arab official replied sarcastically. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.

IRAQI WHO KILLED 2 U.S. TROOPS IS LOCAL HERO

"It is another example of Iraqi people's unity despite political conspiracies by the Americans and their tails (collaborators)," Mohammad Nassir, an independent politician in Baghdad told IPS. "Kaissar is loved by all Iraqis who pray for his safety and who are ready to donate anything for his welfare."

US TROOPS BACKSHOT BY IRAQI "ALLY"

The killings occurred Dec. 26 as a joint American-Iraqi patrol was setting up a combat outpost in a dangerous neighborhood of western Mosul. Gunmen hiding in a building and in a car opened fire on the patrol, the senior Iraqi officers said. During the brief firefight, one of the Iraqi soldiers turned his weapon on unsuspecting Americans, they said.

BOMBER TARGETS IRAQ ARMY DAY

A suicide bomber blew himself up among soldiers and civilians celebrating Iraq's national Army Day holiday in central Baghdad on Sunday, killing 11 people in the latest in an upsurge of suicide attacks.

2007 DEADLY YEAR FOR IRAQIS

The death rate in Iraq in the past 12 months has been the second highest in any year since the invasion, according to figures that appear to contradict American claims that the troop "surge" has dramatically reduced the level of violence across the country.

NOT-SO-FRIENDLY FIRE

The Iraqi soldier who killed two U.S. soldiers in Mosul 10 days ago was a member of an armed group who infiltrated into a joint Iraqi-U.S. force, the commander of the Iraqi army's 2nd Division said.

McCAIN: 1000 YEAR OCCUPATION IS FINE

The two went back and forth several times, with McCain insisting that what matters most is ending American casualties, not their presence in Iraq. He said he would be fine with keeping troops in Iraq for decades as long as they weren't being harmed, similar to the arrangements that exist in South Korea, Japan and other countries. "A thousand years. A million years. Ten million years. It depends on the arrangement we have with the Iraqi government."

SAGINAW GUARD HEADED TO IRAQ--AGAIN

More than 120 soldiers from Saginaw's National Guard unit and another 80 from Bay City are getting ready to deploy for a one-year mission in Iraq. Company B soldiers went to the Persian Gulf in February 2005 and spent the next 16 months participating in patrols, raids, ambush missions, searches and base defense operations near Baghdad. The unit suffered six combat deaths and returned in June 2006.

U.S. BOMBINGS DEVASTATE KURDS

Air strikes on mountain villages around the town of Sankasar in northern Iraq on December 16 destroyed much of Rasheed's modest home as the family slept, injuring her 16-year-old daughter so severely that she had to have her leg amputated above the knee.

SUICIDES SHOW V.A. HAS "FAR TO GO"

When the National Guard called his father to say that he'd missed weekend duty, Gary Dana pushed his son to get in touch with his unit. "I can't go back. I can't do it," Chris Dana responded. Things went downhill from there. He blew though all his money, and last March 4, he shot himself in the head with a .22-caliber rifle. He was 23 years old.

CANDIDATE HIDES AS PROTESTERS BUSTED

Mike Huckabee waited in his campaign bus across the street while three demonstrators, all in their 50's, were arrested for "criminal trespass" at Huckabee's Iowa headquarters. The protesters bore signs reading "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" called for an end to the war in Iraq, any other planned military adventure, as well as citing sections of the Bible endorsing the need for peace, and forgiveness, according to the Catholic Peace Ministry.

WORST YEAR SINCE INVASION ENDING

The second half of 2007 saw violence drop dramatically in Iraq, but the progress came at a high price: The year was the deadliest for the U.S. military since the 2003 invasion, with 899 troops killed.

LIFE IN 'PEACEFUL" BASRA

Abdul-Jalil Khalaf had already survived six assassination attempts since he was placed in control of Basra's police force in June, with orders to battle the Shi'ite militias who held sway in the city's streets.

BUSH TO VETO TROOP PAY RAISE BILL

For months, President George W. Bush harangued Democrats in Congress for not moving quickly enough to support U.S. troops and for bogging down military bills with unrelated issues. And then on Friday, with no warning, a vacationing Bush announced that he would veto a sweeping military policy bill because of an obscure provision that could expose the new Iraqi government to billions of dollars in legal claims dating to Saddam Hussein's rule.

INSURGENTS COULD ATTACK "ANY PLACE"

"We have made no projections of peace at hand. We realise that security is very fragile and that at any moment any attack could occur at any place in Iraq," military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith told a news conference in Baghdad.

BEGINNING OF THE END?

This is one of the dangers of the continuing US presence. The longer it goes on, the more the government of Iraq becomes incapable of existing without US support. The government in the Green Zone is a hothouse plant that would wither and die without the American military presence.

THE WORST JOB IN BAGHDAD

It must be a candidate for the worst job in Iraq. It falls to Baghdad's street sweepers, who use their bare hands, to pick up the fingertips and scraps of flesh spattered around every bomb site in the Iraqi capital. They do it without gloves, in all but the coldest weeks of winter.

NAVY J.A.G. QUITS OVER TORTURE:

“The final straw for me was listening to General Hartmann, the highest-ranking military lawyer in charge of the military commissions, testify that he refused to say that waterboarding captured U.S. soldiers by Iranian operatives would be torture. His testimony had just sold all the soldiers and sailors at risk of capture and subsequent torture down the river.”

TWIN

ECONOMIES IN BAGHDAD

The mechanic remembers his former Shiite colleagues fondly and speaks to them every now and then. But he cannot remember the last time he saw his friends. "My relations with them are now conducted by telephone," he said. "They can't come here, and I can't go there."

3900

As of Thursday, Dec. 27, 2007, at least 3,900 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,175 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.