Stories related to: Iraq

An explosion hit a restaurant inside the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad today, killing two members of parliament, wounding dozens and creating chaos in the capitol. The blast occurred when many MPs were having lunch, on a day when parliament was in session. The parliament building is deep within Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. More »

Army units in Iraq and Afghanistan will have their tours of duty extended to 15 months, from the standard one year, the military said yesterday. The policy—enacted to alleviate troop shortages—allows soldiers to remain at home for at least one year between assignments.  “Our forces are stretched," Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said, "there’s no question about that.” More »

Iraqi soldiers who raided a Baghdad mosque during worship set off an all-day battle yesterday the New York Times calls the most sustained fighting since the start of the new security plan. US troops and Iraqi soldiers fought Sunni militants joined by residents in the largely Sunni Ineighborhood of Fadhil. More »

Iran claims to have scaled up its nuclear capability by enriching uranium "on an industrial scale, " the Guardian reports, in defiance of U.S. and U.N. pressure to dimantle the program. The announcement from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  is sure to heighten conflict with the White House and provide new ammunition for those advocating military action. More »

Baghdad is no more stable than it was before the American troop surge, the Times reports. With death squads trying to stay off the radar, sectarian executions have dropped in some corners of the city. But executions have given way to increased car bombings, chlorine gas attacks, and the burning of local shops and homes. More »

Tens of thousands of Iraqis converged today on the southern city of Najaf, a Shia shrine, to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.  Waving Iraqi flags and chanting anti-U.S. slogans,  demonstators marched from Kufa to neighboring Najaf. AP reports that two cordons of Iraqi police lined the route, while others soldiers, in uniform, joined the crowd. More »

Firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on Iraqis Sunday to stop killing each other—and join together to rid their country of Americans. On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, he urged both Iraqi forces and insurgents to direct their fight against "the occupiers," CNN reported. More »

The Iraq war may be unforgiveable, but America has given Islam a priceless gift: a haven for Muslim scholarship, says a professor at the University of Deleware. "Muslim scholars have always maintained that true happiness comes from the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge," writes M. A. Muqtedar Khan. "I found this to be the case in America." More »

Political-risk insurance has quietly become a billion-dollar industry, the Economist reports, as Western corporations doing business in the developing world crave protection against coups, embargoes and civil wars. The Berne Union, a syndicate of 30 of the field's biggest insurers, says members have $113 billion in outstanding policies in some of the most hazardous places on Earth. More »

The U.S. Army is stretched so thin in Iraq and Afghanistan that it's sending ill-prepared and ill-equipped young people into harm’s way, Time reports. And the surge in troops is only deepening the crisis: Two of the five new brigades bound for the Middle East will skip vital situational training in the Mojave Desert. More »

U.S. oil companies are far from first in line as Iraq doles out its initial oil contracts.   China, India—even Vietnam and Indonesia—have the inside track instead, thanks to contracts and infrastructure dating back to the Saddam regime, and more positive Iraqi sentiment. "They have no involvement with the secular or ethnic people," an Iraqi energy analyst says. "The conditions favor them." More »

Lt. Col. Jeff Peterson is trying to pacify Baghdad one wall at a time, erecting concrete barriers around Sunni and Shiites neighborhoods in the sector of the city he controls. Each mini-community has its own market, mosque, and generator. It's a controversial strategy most often used during civil wars, the Journal notes—and thus flies in the face of official U.S. policy. More »

Officials deny that concessions were made to Iran for the release of the captured British sailors, but the Times speculates that there may have been a secret deal. An Iranian diplomat held in Iraq for eight weeks was freed the day before the British prisoners were. Also, American officials said yesterday that they would review a request that an envoy be allowed to visit five Iranians imprisoned after a raid in Iraq. More »

The fifteen British sailors captured by Iran are back in the UK. As soon as the British Airways jet touched down as Heathrow, Blair traded his measured diplomatic tone  for harsher words, warning the "elements of the Iranian regime" were still arming insurgents inside Iraq." More »

If the Democrats want to support the troops but call the question on the war, they should pass a "war tax,"  writes Richard Hall in the Detroit Free Press. They could adopt the supplemental appropriations, but attach an income tax surcharge to finance it. Would the president veto it because it pays for rather than borrows for his war? More »

"We are in a position of strategic peril," says a retired general who's just back from Bagdhad in a blunt, sobering piece in the L.A. Times . Barry McCaffrey, now at West Point, urges support of the surge and the new strategy to secure Baghdad without  sugar coating the prospects for success, which are grim. More »

How the so-called "Italian Letter"—the discredited document suggesting Saddam Hussein sought to buy uranium from Niger—made its way from the hands of an Italian journalist into the President's State of the Union speech is the subject of an irresistible piece of sleuthing by  Peter Eisner in the Washington Post. More »

Bush is staying the course in the war with Congress, ripping into "Democrat leaders" in a press conference today, and repeating his vow to veto any bills with troop withdrawal deadlines that crossed his desk. Congress, he said, is more clearly interested in fighting political battles than real ones. More »

A bill allowing Saddam's party members back into power in Iraq has been rejected by that country's most powerful cleric. The law, aggressively  pushed by the U.S.,  would  allow former low-level Baathists--most of them Sunnis--to hold positions in government. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the powerful Shiite cleric, dismissed the law through an aide, who cited a "general feeling of rejection." More »

Of course John McCain found Baghdad's central market perfectly safe during his weekend visit: He came with 100 soldiers in armored Humvees, backed by attack helicopters and sharpshooters. In a follow-up visit, Kirk Semple of the New York Times found merchants  incredulous at the Congressional delegation's sunny description of the security situation there. More »